The Desire of the Righteous

This is something that hit me the other day when I was reading in Proverbs the other morning:

"The desire of the righteous ends only in good, but the hope of the wicked only in wrath."--Proverbs 11:23

I read that, stopped and thought wow! The desire of the righteous ends only in good! And then I looked in my footnotes and they said to look at chapter 10 verses 24 and 28:

"What the wicked dreads will overtake him; what the righteous desire will be granted."--Proverbs 10:24

"The prospect of the righteous is joy, but the hopes of the wicked come to nothing."--Proverbs 10:28

Now if the Bible says something once, it's true. But if it says basically the same thing three times in a row?--God must really want to get the point across. (some days I need that--I didn't really catch it until the third time!) And while all our righteousness is like filthy rags, God looks at us (those who have been sanctified, saved by grace, and redeemed) through the filter of his son's blood--in his sight we are righteous. That means that our desires will be granted. That's huge. The God over all the universe, maker of heaven and earth, is promising to grant our desires.

Now we do need to be careful, while He sees us as righteous, we still have a sin nature and so not all of our "desires" are righteous. We must not think that God will just give us every little thing we want. That would make us lazy and selfish, and God doesn't operate that way--He wants (and acts for) what is for our good.

But if our desires are good and pure, ones that He Himself has implanted into our hearts--they will be granted.

That means that there is hope for my dreams--and yours. Not that we can just sit back and expect a huge farm or whatever to be dropped in our laps, no we need to keep working to gain our goals, but we can reasonably expect our desires to be fulfilled. Not in our time but in God's time. "He has made everything beautiful in His time." Ecclesiastes 3:11 So it may not be in our lifetimes, but if we follow His leading, our goals, our dreams, our desires will be accomplished.

What an encouragement! Isn't God good?


Matthew

P.S. Sorry for the formating--I've fought with it for quite a while now and I'm giving up!