The Desires of MY Heart

May I begin with a plea? I would love to see more posts! What did you learn while studying the scriptures this week? Perhaps your two-year-old reinforced a gospel principle that we all could benefit from? Did you learn something as you prepared a lesson for Sunday? What's been on your mind lately that has caused you to ponder some aspect of the gospel? Share, share. :)

The desires of my heart...the desires of my heart...the desires of my heart. I have thought about these words repeatedly. Today, I plugged them into a scripture search. There are a lot of scriptures that include the words desire and heart. Not all of the desires mentioned are righteous ones.

For example, Mosiah 11:2 "For behold, he did not keep the commandments of God, but he did walk after the desires of his own heart..."

Then you have those that have a change in desires, such as, Alma 19:33, "that their hearts had been changed; that they had no more desire to do evil."

There are those that have seemingly unusual desires as is found in D&C 62:7

Certainly there are many throughout the scriptures that have righteous desires. What makes it so? I found a couple of scriptures that to me indicate how we can make sure we are having righteous desires. Not surprisingly, it happens when we are focused on the Lord.

Psalms 37:4 says, "Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart." It looks to me like this scripture is telling me that when I am delighting in the Lord, He will give me the desires that my heart should have. Almost like the concept of praying to know what to pray for. It seems kind of a silly statement at first, but if we have the Lord first and foremost in our hearts, He will guide us to what our desires should be. And, of course, the scripture seems to also indicate that we will be able to have what it is that we desire. If we had no hope of obtaining our desire, the desire would be fruitless and discouraging. See Proverbs 13:12

Then, in D&C 6:20, we read, "Be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, and I will encircle thee in the arms of my love." That is how we keep having righteous desires. It becomes not so much the desires of MY heart, as it is the deep desires of my heart through following the Lord. Partnering our own desires with His yields the true desires we have within us.