Have you ever wanted something in your life so badly that you could hardly stand it? Not when you were a child but as an adult. You want something so bad that you almost obsess about it day and night. You talk about it whenever you can; you think about it a lot....I know that some people feel that way about their spouses or significant others, but I'm talking about something outside of a human being. I'm at that place. It's probably not a good place for me to be, but I know I am there.

I know that the Bible says that God can give me the desires of my heart if I delight myself in Him. The big question of the day is this - Does God withhold the desires of my heart if I haven't delighted myself in Him? Where's that line in the sand? Is there a fictional line in the sand that makes God say, "Yep, I know you want this thing, but I don't think you've delighted in me enough this week, so, nope, you can't have it."? Is that how God operates? I don't believe that He operates like that. To me, that's too human of a characteristic. We would do that in a heart beat, and we do, don't we? When others aren't "pleasing" us the way that we want them to, I don't know about you, but I know a part of me wants to withhold stuff from them....not love or anything psycho like that. I'm talking about giving 100% of myself to someone - no strings attached. It's so hard for me to marry the two concepts - the human concept of conditional love vs. the spiritual concept of unconditional love.

I think it's an interesting topic to contemplate. In scripture, God blessed people who weren't all that spiritual. Think of the most extreme example (in my mind anyway) - Rahab. Rahab didn't live a pure life; I'm sure she wasn't delighting herself in God every chance she got, but God gave her an amazing gift - the gift of salvation - salvation from the wreckage of the city. It's an amazing picture of God's grace to someone who we would consider rather "unworthy". I thank God all the time for not thinking like that - thinking that "unworthy" doesn't get grace. Where would I be? Where would anyone be? Unconditional love - doesn't matter what we do - good or bad - we can't make it better or worse. He loves me unconditionally. He desires a relationship with me, and wants me to delight in Him, but He grants me unconditional love - unconditional grace - new every morning.

I really want this one thing to happen. I've been praying hard for it. In the end, God will give it to me if He thinks it's right for me. If not, then He won't allow the circumstances to come to such that this will happen. In the meantime, I will keep praying diligently for it to happen. It's a desire of my heart....