Have you ever put your heart’s desires on God’s altar? Given them to Him in order to pick them up His way? Like Moses…

The LORD said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand and grasp it (the staff that had become a snake) by its tail.”—so he stretched out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand. Exodus 4:4

Now, I’m not sure I could’ve picked up that snake, but Moses did, and look at what God did—He freed the children of Israel and led Moses and the Israelites to the Promised Land. God didn’t put something new in Moses’ hand—He created something better out of what Moses already had. But it was no longer an ordinary staff. This staff brought plagues down on Pharaoh and parted the Red Sea. It was the staff that struck the rock at Horeb and water gushed out. When Moses held up the staff, the Israelites had victory over Amalek.

God can do the same thing with us if we’re willing to give him our desires.

Several years ago, I decided to take a year off to write my murder mystery. I was cruising along, totally loving this writing time, when I felt God leading me to write an abstinence curriculum. “God, are you sure? I mean…I don’t like to write non-fiction. I want to write about romance and murder and suspense..You know, scary stuff.”

Did I mention I didn’t want to do it? But I had recently put my writing on God’s altar, and if that’s what He wanted…For the next ten years, I worked in the abstinence program, co-writing a curriculum and then teaching it. Lives were absolutely changed. Mine included. He didn’t give me something new. He took what I had and made it powerful.

Then, one day during my prayer time, a fragment for a new scene in the old manuscript I’d been working on years ago popped into my mind. Then another. I knew God had given me permission to go back to writing my suspense and romance. And I did.

Again, not something new, He just made the old better. And now I have seventeen completed Inspirational novels, and I’m working on book eighteen.

I want to leave you with Psalm 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD and He will give you the desires of your heart. When you delight yourself in Him, His desires become your desires.