Mensa Otabil - The Lord Will Grant You Your Heart's Desire (10/17/2025)
Psalm 20, and this is verse number four: May He grant you according to your heart’s desire and fulfill all your purpose. As I’ve said from the beginning of this week, Psalm 20 is a recorded prayer of intercession for the people of Israel, for their king, for their leader. But by application, it is a prayer of intercession for everybody we love, whom we look up to, and for whom we really wish that God will do good things. So if you want to pray for me, go to Psalm 20 and use it as a guideline to pray for me. If you are a husband and want to pray for your wife, go to Psalm 20 and use it as the basis to pray for your wife; the same goes for a wife praying for her husband. If you are a church member and you love your pastor so much that you wish God will bless them, but you don’t even know how to pray for them, go to Psalm 20 and use it as a guideline to pray for them and for every other person you want to pray for. Psalm 20 is our guideline for intercessory prayer for God’s favor to rest upon people.
There are two things here in verse number four: it says, «May He grant you according to your heart’s desire.» Each one of us prays and goes to God because we have something in our hearts; we call it our heart’s desire. When we pray, we trust that God will give us our heart’s desire. However, giving us our heart’s desire is not a blanket prayer that God gives us everything that is in our hearts because some of the things in our hearts are not good, and God will not give them to us. So, this prayer is within the will of God. If we desire something, and it’s in the will of God, and it does not offend God or the Word of God, and it’s clean, and not a sinful desire, may the Lord give us our heart’s desire. The Bible actually encourages us to bring our desires before the Lord, to bring our requests before the Lord. So every prayer is an expression of a heart’s desire. Not every heart’s desire is pleasing to the Lord, but once our heart’s desires are in alignment with God, then God will answer us. Thus, this prayer is for the heart’s desire that is in alignment with God’s will. That’s what we pray for people: may the Lord give you your heart’s desire according to His will.
Then the second thing says, «May you fulfill all your purposes» or «May He fulfill all your purposes.» That’s a very heavy one: What is God’s purpose for my life? So this prayer is saying: Lord, whatever You want the king to be, help him to become that. Whatever You desire for him to be, Your purpose for his life, Lord, make it come to pass. That probably is the greatest thing I want for my life, or you want for your life: that what God desires for you, God’s purpose for your life, will become manifest. We don’t want to live unfulfilled lives; we don’t want to go through life and come out saying, «Oh, I lived for so long. I don’t even know whether what I achieved was pleasing to the Lord.» We want to be able to live our lives and say, «You know what? I think I did what was right before the Lord,» like Paul would say at the end of his life: «I have run the race. I have fought the fight. I have finished it.»
So, it’s important for us to know that our lives are in line with God’s purpose, and this prayer says that as we intercede for people, we pray, «Lord, let Your purposes be done in their lives.» It’s probably the greatest desire you want to have for somebody: that the purposes of God will manifest in their lives. The desire you want for your children is that the purposes of God will manifest in their lives, that your children will grow to be the men and women that God has designed them to be. So, we pray and intercede for people that the purposes of God will be done in their lives. I pray the same for you, that the Lord will answer according to your heart’s desire and that His purposes will be done in your life.
Let’s pray: " Heavenly Father, fulfill Your purposes through me, and let the desires of my heart be pleasing to You. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.» Well, I’ll catch you again tomorrow. I’m Pastor Mensa Otabil. Shalom, peace, and life to you.