Do What You Want

I've been reading Erwin McManus' book "Chasing Daylight"  for... well... for a while.  I find myself starting over frequently.

But something I read in it stuck with me. He wrote, "When you are passionate about God, you can trust your passions. God uses our passions as a compass to guide us.  To put it crassly, when you are madly in love with God, you can do whatever you want."
At first, obviously, that sounds odd.  But look at Psalm 37:4:  Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

So do you want to do whatever you want?  Are you tired of having to suppress what you want in order to please God?  We have found the way!  All you have to do is align yourself 100% with God.

The reason you can do whatever you want is because everything you want is God.

That is something I have heard for years, but never really heard.  People would always say "You have to give God 100% of your heart.  You can't tell him a room is off limits" or something similar.
The problem with these is this:  all it talks about is giving up stuff you love.  It focuses on the negative.  No one ever told me that when I give my entire being over to God, when I love God with everything I am- I can do what I want because what I want is to please God.

This is no easy task.  Anyone who has ever tried to be perfect can tell you- its hard to let go of the worldly things we love.  It is a lifelong battle to kick these worldly loves out of our souls and guarding our hearts from them, but it is a reward worth fighting for- a reward of righteousness.  A reward of our hearts and minds being aligned with God's.

I am guilty of this just as much as the next person.  Far too often I find myself entertaining worldly ideas or thinking selfishly, instead of focusing my life on glorifying my Lord.  But you have to start from somewhere, and I say we take this road together.