Choices Pt. 7: The Choice to Desire

Desire.  There are times it seems like almost a dirty word.  Desire can be as innocuous as craving a sandwich, or as consuming as the deep passions of the heart for love and companionship.  It can be as passing as a fleeting thought or as enduring as the chains of our strongest addictions.  Yet desire, by its very nature, is empty.  It represents a void unfilled, a longing unmet, and hope yet to be realized.  Without fulfillment, desire can leave us hollow, searching, or enslaved.

So I used to flee desire.  Let’s be honest, more often than not my desires have seemed to be for the selfish or unholy rather than the righteous.  I long more for my own attention and enjoyment than the salvation of my neighbors.  I long for my “needs” to be met more than to meet the needs of others.  Desire reveals the selfishness of my heart.  And so I may try to run from it.  Squelch it.  Label it as “bad” and seek to eradicate it.  Yet you probably know as well as I do how futile the battle to bottle desire can be.  Containment is difficult.  Deletion even harder.  Even if we say “no” to the desire, we have to live with the hole of what’s unmet. 

What’s unmet… Not that long ago a friend shared with me something about desire that set things in a new light for me.  The first chapter of James shares a lot on temptation, desire, and sin, and in verse 13 it says: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.”  Then James goes on to say: “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin” (vs. 14 & 15).

So desire is the problem just like we thought, right?  But look at verses 16 and 17: “Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with who there is no variation or shadow of turning.”

So right after showing the bad results of desire, why does James tell us not to be deceived? Why does he suddenly go into talking about how all good things are from God?  I believe that James is actually telling us one of the keys to escaping temptation.  Think about it: First, we’re reminded that all good things come from God, and God only creates good.  Second, we know the devil does not have creative power.  So how does the devil tempt us?  He takes the good desires that God has created within us, and he twists them for our ruin.  He takes our God-given desire for deep connection and turns it into lust.  He takes our genuine need to be loved and understood and turns it into self-seeking desires for attention and people’s applause.  He takes our deep need to lay down our burdens and worries and tries to turn it into a desire for the addictions we escape to instead.  Then, when we feel guilty, he tries to convince us that God doesn’t care about our needs and serving Him means giving up all we love and desire!  Just as James predicted, I was deceived by the lie – and I resented God because of it.

But now I realize how big of a lie it is.  God actually wants to give me the true fulfillment of my desires and needs.  Instead of empty relationships, God wants to give me true communion with himself and others.  Instead of winning the approval of man, He wants to give me the true security and worth that comes with comprehending His approval of me.  Instead of trying to have some kind of “fun” to get away from my problems, He wants to take those burdens to I can have the real peace and joy my heart yearns for.

So now, when desire comes on strong and with it those familiar temptations, I ask: “Lord, you know how I’m feeling right now.  You know what I THINK I desire.  But what is my heart truly longing for that You are trying to fill?  What is the true desire?” 

As C.S. Lewis once put it, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”  And I believe this is true.  We were made for a better world – a world of union with God and life in His image – an image of true love and grace.  And in the shadow of the fall, we may feel that void.  We may feel that desire of what’s yet to be redeemed.  We may sometimes wish that desire could just disappear because it’s easier not to feel the void.  But yet desire, even though not fully met now, is an opportunity to long for that better world, to seek for it, and I believe, to find it.  In the book Desire of Ages p. 331 it says, “As through Jesus we enter into rest, heaven begins here…. As we walk with Jesus in this life, we may be filled with His love, satisfied with His presence.  All that human nature can bear, we may receive here.”

And I want that. I want to trade temptations for cheap fixes for the real thing. I choose to feel that desire, face its empty void, then call on the God who wants to come in and fill it – starting not in the next world, but here and now.