Desires of the Heart: A Guide to Finding Your Faith

By Darren Cushman Wood

Regardless of our differences, we all share the same basic human desires. This five-part study explores how God fulfills the desires of our hearts through the stories of passion and longing in the Old Testament:
* the desire for peace and David’s relationship with Saul;
* the desire for affirmation and the story of Jacob’s dream;
* the desire for purpose and the call of Joshua;
* the desire for a legacy and the prophet Jeremiah, and
* the desire for companionship and the relationship of Ruth and Naomi.

Along with each week’s readings, you will examine how the most popular hymns and songs express our faith and desires. This study guide is excellent for persons who are exploring their faith.

The North Church study guides are ideal for both individual and small-group use, and as companion guides to sermon series. Each study guide includes background information and questions for personal reflection and small-group discussions. And all of the studies have been “road tested” with a real congregation — North United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, Indiana.

• Language: English
• Publisher: North United Methodist Church
• Release date: Jul 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781732776135

Book preview

Introduction: Everybody's Got a Hungry Heart

Whether you are young or old, male or female, rich or poor, we share the same basic desires. Bruce Springsteen said it best:

"Everybody needs a place to rest

Everybody wants to have a home

Don’t make no difference what nobody says

Ain’t nobody likes to be alone

Everybody’s got a hungry heart

Lay down your money and you play your part

Everybody’s got a hungry heart.[1]"

St. Augustine would agree. Seventeen hundred years earlier he had a similar perspective on life. What drives us is desire, and at the core of all our desires is our fundamental need for God: You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. Created in the image of God, we long for God to fulfill us and give order to all our wants and needs.

And yet, our hungry hearts eat themselves up. This divine longing is misdirected toward other things that can never satisfy us. But even in these desires is a reflection (to be sure, distorted) of our deeper desire for life in God.

Ironically, when we focus our desire on God, we discover that God fulfills all our desires. All people need the basics: peace, affirmation, purpose, legacy, and companionship. Those basic needs are met when we seek God first.

The central theme of this study is summarized in Psalm 37:4: Take delight in the Lord and God will give you the desires of your heart.

Each session concludes with a prayer exercise on this psalm that will help you focus on the theme for the week and focus your desires with God at the center of your life.

Each week we will explore one of the five basic desires and the way God fulfilled them in the lives of key people in the Old Testament. We can relate to the struggles of David, Joseph, Joshua, Jeremiah, Ruth and Naomi because our needs are