I can’t tell you how many times over the last twenty something years I have asked God the question, “Do you care about my heart?”

In setting out to walk in obedience to Him, and follow where He leads, the terrain of my life has often not looked like my heart’s desires.

In fact many times I have had to walk on paths of suffering and challenge: difficulties that have come in all sorts of ways.

The depth of cry to Him in that question has been shouted from the places of pain I have had to stand in. It has been an honest cry to my Father and one He has wanted to answer for me again and again.

On one occasion I was driving home from a walk around my favourite lake, when I heard Him say, “My plans aren’t to harm you.”

I knew this was biblical truth, but having walked years of infertility, and already lost my first child to miscarriage, His plans to bring to pass His promises to me, (and my heart’s desire), felt harmful.

Another time when my heart had come back to this question, I went to a meeting where South Koreans were ministering at our local house of prayer. They had a word for me, “God is going to do everything in your heart, because He put it there.”

A few years before this, God and I were talking about my love of acting in my teenage years. He showed me how this was my adventure during that time. For the first time, I saw my failures and successes as one big adventure, and in that found acceptance of myself in my failures in acting, as well as my successes.

During our conversation, I couldn’t remember the name of a particular play I had acted a part in. As I went out that afternoon into the town where we were on holiday, there on an A-board outside a building, was the name of this play, ‘The Crucible’. I couldn’t believe the intimacy of it, nor the expression of value from God on my acting.

As I walked into a shop, I asked Him if I should still be acting. If He valued it so much, I didn’t want to be missing something He wanted me to do.

He said, “If you were called to it, it would be in your heart.”

And I realised that it wasn’t in my heart.

One of my main few promises for having children, that I have carried for many years, is from Psalm 37: ‘Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.’

I now have Nathanael, a rambunctious 17 month old. Although I equally value my first two children, (who I miscarried), Ezekiel and Abiela. My children are my heart’s desire.

The other day, God showed me what He means by this verse in Psalm 37. It was different than I had realised, but makes sense in light of what I have tried to live and other things He has said to me.

When we delight in Him, the desires of our heart, become the ones He gives us. They don’t come from our flesh, or the enemy, but from Him.

Our delight in Him, allows Him to plant desires in our hearts.

Because He has put the desires there, as he said to me, ‘He will do everything in our hearts because He put it there!’

Wherever you are in the journey of your heart, keeping learning how to delight in Him. Follow Him in all things, so He can do everything  that He has put in your heart.