You might be thinking:  This is the third week of discovering my Heart’s Desire, and my life hasn’t radically changed for the better yet.  I haven’t even found my Heart’s Desire.  It’s the same old same old.  To which I say:  Breathe.  Go slow, go far.  Take time to read the Tortoise and the Hare or the Three Little Pigs.  Seriously.  I am not trying to belittle any concerns.  There are profound and practical lessons to be gleaned from these stories and others like them.  Slow and steady wins the race is crucial for me to keep in mind when the temptation to get into a manic burst of enthusiasm about your Heart’s Desire occurs.  Usually these types of explosions propel us to crash and burn in a short time and we give up and complain it’s not working.  Building my dreams in a solid brick house, made of persistence and faith, is much better than building my dreams in a house made of twigs.  So breathe, and stick with it.  The view is grand.

Paragraph 3, by Emmet Fox

But how is one to find his true place in life?  Is there any means whereby you may discover what it really is that God wishes you to do?  You may feel inclined to say: “Even if it be true that God has some splendid thing that He wishes me to do, and to be, how can I possibly find out what it is?” Perhaps you may even be tempted to add:  “I am a very plain, everyday sort of person; my circumstances are extremely restricted; the conditions of my life are just drab commonplace.  How then can there be something wonderful, beautiful, splendid awaiting me?  Or, even if there were, how could I possibly get to know about it?”  And the answer is divinely simple—already in your past life from time to time, God Himself has whispered into your heart just that very wonderful thing, whatever it is, that He is wishing you to be, and to do, and to have.  And that wonderful thing is nothing less than what is called Your Heart’s Desire.  Nothing less than that.  The most secret, sacred wish that lies deep down at the bottom of your heart, the wonderful thing that you hardly dare to look at, or to think about—the thing that you would rather die than have anyone else know of, because it seems to be so far beyond anything that you are, or have at the present time, that you fear that you would be cruelly ridiculed if the mere thought of it were known—that is just the very thing that God is wishing you to do or to be for Him. And the birth of that marvelous wish in your soul—the dawning of that secret dream—was the Voice of God Himself telling you to arise, and come up higher, because He had need of you.

 

Commentary, Questions, and Exercises by Joseph Anthony

The secret’s out.  Fox tells you what Your Heart’s Desire is: It’s God whispering into your heart.  It’s the “wonderful thing He is wishing you to be, to do, and to have.”  And Fox calls this process, “Divinely Simple.”  There are no complicated formulas here, no mental gyrations.  You simply need to learn to listen to the secret wishes that God is whispering into your heart.  “But why,” you may wonder, “doesn’t He shout it out so I’m clear?  Why whisper?  There is so much noise and clutter in my head (heart); how am I ever going to hear a whisper? That does not sound simple.

As you have noticed, I have taken a cue from Fox regarding how he gives voice to the doubts that might be running through your mind.  We both know these voices well because we’ve struggled through them to the other side.  And that’s the kicker.  Most of us stop when the going gets tough.  We are so conditioned to have everything easy, fast, “on demand,” that when the journey starts hitting a few bumps or it slows down to a veritable halt—we jump ship.  We jump back onto the computer, the TV, the magazines, the food, the money, the drugs, the lust, whatever.  We run.  If it stops “feeling good,” we stop.  We are so trained to live our lives based on our feelings that the slightest hint of annoyance or set-back makes us stop and, like a butterfly, flit to the next flower. 

This journey takes commitment and persistence—the two keys to any achievement or success.

We can take comfort in the fact that God has been whispering His wonderful plan into our hearts all along.  In fact, He ever stops whispering—as long as we have a pulse—He’s calling.  But like the miner who stopped digging an inch away from the richest gold mine in the world, we usually stop when things haven’t materialized the way we want them to or in the time frame we deem appropriate.  We need to, with the help of friends, push through the doubts, pain, failures and discouragement that inevitably crop up.  I naively think that just because I hear God’s plan the road will rise to meet me–that it will all run smoothly; that no glitches, bugs, inconveniences, snags, or otherwise negative experiences will ever happen again.  And while I do believe that once we hitch onto our dream, the road does rise to meet us.  However, that does not mean there won’t be frustrating days.  But when I look at the lives of those who have achieved their Heart’s Desire, or that have true peace of mind, or helped change the world for the better on a large scale, all of them, without exception, went through struggles, heart aches, failures, and pain.  True love, they say, travels a gravel road.  But not all the time.  Sometimes it’s smooth.  The point is there are always ups and downs, just as the landscape doesn’t stay the same.  And if we can succeed in viewing these ups and downs as helpful and instructional, instead of as good or bad, then we will achieve peace of mind even before we’ve reached our goal.

One last thing: Some might call these whisperings–intuition, and I would agree.  They are the “still, small voice.”  And like Elijah, we hear that voice after the storms of doubt calm, after the earthquakes of discouragement settle, after the fires of undesirable passions cool.  But how do we calm these storms and settle the earthquakes or put out a fire?  Discipline.  We must discipline our thinking and learn to toss out the thoughts we don’t want to think.  We must get into the habit of “move a muscle, change a thought.”  We simply keep moving through the difficult feelings.  We can lean on the strength of our friends.  We can know that sometimes the weather affects our moods and so our feelings will change.  We needn’t always analyze every thought or feeling.  Feel the feelings and keep moving.  The feelings will change, but your Heart’s Desire will not. 

And the message Elijah heard wasn’t an admonition, threat, or a punishment.  It was a question: “What are you doing here?” In effect It said to him, “Why are you hiding?  Your life is waiting.  Don’t live your life on the safe side.  Get out of your cave and rise.  Your life is waiting.  There is service for you to do.”

So please bear that in mind.  God has need of you.  And if He has need of the duckbilled-platypus, the aardvark, the giraffe, and the ladybug, He has a plan for you, and it is indescribably wonderful.

 

Question 1: Do you feel discouraged or doubtful that you will ever hear God’s whisperings?

Question 2:  Do you feel annoyed that Your Heart’s Desire has anything to do with God and listening for His call?

Question 3: Do you believe in intuition? 

Question 4: What things have you dreamed of doing, being, or having that you have never told anyone for fear of ridicule? 

Question 5: Are you willing to find someone–your buddy, me–someone you can trust that you can tell those wishes to?

Question 6: When you think of that secret wish what, if any, negative voices come up instantly?  Whose voice is saying the negative things?

Question 7: Do you believe God has need of you? 

The ability to hear the whisperings of God takes work and practice.  In the next few weeks we will get into very specific exercises on how to clear the channel and learn to listen.  For now, try these as a daily discipline:

Exercise 1:  God speaks quietly, the negative side shouts and repeats itself constantly.  Describe those thoughts that most frequently run through your head and practice, thought by thought, “tossing them out,” which means replace a negative thought with a positive one.  Pick a short, positive, inspirational saying or prayer to repeat every time a nasty, yucky, fear-based, resentment-based thought comes up.  Remember: progress not perfection.  Just begin and keep vigilant and steadfast.  And remember, you are not fighting the negative thoughts—only noticing them and replacing them with positive ones.  The negative ones are often charged with strong emotions, and the positive ones might feel false, but keep going anyway, the feelings will change, guaranteed.

Exercise 2: Do something really, really nice for someone today, and do it secretly.  The more I help and serve others the quieter my head becomes. 

Exercise 3: Practice moving a muscle and changing a thought whenever you notice yourself getting into a fear-frenzy or find yourself feeling stuck in a warm pile of self pity or bitterness.  Move and breathe.

Keep on keeping on.  As the journey might seem to get harder, the fruits will soon be sweeter. 

See you next week for

Part IV, Paragraph 4
of Your Heart’s Desire

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog