Where is this instruction? Of course, some of His wishes are stated outright. For example, in many different places He tells us He wants our hearts to be broken and humbled before Him. He often tells us He wants us to trust Him. There are many other principles of life that He clearly spells out in scripture.
But there are also hidden places where He reveals His will. Before I explain, let me give the analogy of a photographic negative, which the Encyclopaedia Britannica defines as a "photographic image that reproduces the bright portions of the photographed subject as dark and the dark parts as light areas."
I made this discovery in Psalm 78, a very long psalm describing the rebellious ways of Israel. This is simply an example, but here is the passage where I first saw this concept at work (Psalm 78:5-11).
For He established a testimony in Jacob
And appointed a law in Israel,
Which He commanded our fathers
That they should teach them to their children,
That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born,
That they may arise and tell them to their children,
That they should put their confidence in God
And not forget the works of God,
But keep His commandments,
And not be like their fathers,
A stubborn and rebellious generation,
A generation that did not prepare its heart
And whose spirit was not faithful to God.
The sons of Ephraim were archers equipped with bows,
Yet they turned back in the day of battle.
They did not keep the covenant of God
And refused to walk in His law;
They forgot His deeds
And His miracles that He had shown them.
Through the psalmist, God outlines what He intended His people to do and what they did instead. He intended them to teach His law and precepts to their children. He intended them to put their confidence in Him and not to forget His works. He intended them to keep His commandments. [This is where I started to notice the principle:] He intended them not to be stubborn and rebellious, not to not prepare/put right their hearts, not to not be faithful to Him...
Oh, wow. Flip it! See what it tells us about what His heart aches for His people to do:
He wants us to be yielding and obedient. He wants us to prepare/put right our hearts before Him. He wants us to be faithful to Him. He wants us to teach His ways to our children. He wants us not to turn back when the going gets tough. He wants us to walk according to His ways. He wants us to remember the things He has done to intervene on our behalf.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Wherever God expresses His displeasure, there is a positive principle He is trying to reveal. If He says it makes Him angry when the poor and the outcasts are mistreated, He wants us to ask Him to teach us to treat people properly -- to be just and fair, to nurture the outcasts as He would nurture them. If He says it makes Him angry when we serve idols -- an idol is anything apart from God that we think we can't live without -- He wants us to ask Him to make our hearts serve Him only; to break us to the point where we surrender all our idols; to fill our hearts with such loyalty and love for Him that He reigns in every corner of our being. If He says He hates it when our prayers are self-serving (gimme, gimme), He wants us to ask Him to teach us to pray from the heart of Jesus -- that is, in perfect accordance with His own will. He wants to ask Him to make His priorities our priorities.
Behind every negative there is a positive -- a principle He wants us to ask Him to make a reality in our lives. Sometimes the original context is very specific and doesn't apply directly to what's going on with us, but there is still a divine principle behind it. Ask Him to show you what His heart wants you to see, the holy principles behind both the imperatives ("Do this") and the things hidden in the shadows.
There are days when the Bible seems to grow wings before my eyes. Its pages cannot contain His heart -- we are to go seeking His heart there, but He Himself is the treasure His words are meant to lead us to.