Desire
To want. To strive for. To fulfill. And to hunger again.
Desire, this is a thing apart of us from our very beginning to our very end. We cannot escape it, and perhaps it is eternal. But some things on the menu will not be.
Some things are essential, such as food, connection, shelter, and the fulfillment of dreams. And even these things can be distorted against what we truly want and what is truly good for us.
I have learned that the best things take time to take root, grow, and become the beautiful fruit that they were meant to be. They take not only effort to grow, but some effort to wait for.
Having learned to cope better with anxiety that has accompanied me most of my life, and the accompanying scarcity mindset that comes with it, when the pursuit of the heart is affixed on knowing the face of God, the good things start to follow. For this is not merely a goal to accomplish, it is, in the words of Steven Curtis Chapman, “a magnificent obsession.”
I can testify all of my life I have had an awareness of God, but understanding the walk came later, with many falls and difficulties. But this is the path of the pilgrim striving for the higher way. The way of meaning that fills desires rightly and continually.
God understands the path that swerves, gets bungled, and has dead ends where we must turn around in order to course correct. This will happen even to the best of us with the sincerest and most honest pursuits. Yet as it is written, provided we do not become weary with seeking the good, ergo we remain consistent in the pursuit, the Lord does faithfully reward those who seek him.
I have made mistakes, I have confused the voice of serpents with God’s. Not by the means of what they said as much as the tone of judgment and doubt against my nature making sense in many a moment. In spite of the mistakes I have made from this place, He has remained faithful to deliver me from all works of evil.
Even for King David in scripture. For all of the colossal moral blunders he made, it is written of him that he was a man after God’s own heart.
“Even when we are faithless he is faithful.” (2 Timothy 2:13) “And we have an advocate with the Father who is faithful and just to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
The process of sanctification is a long one. It is a pursuit over a lifetime. And perhaps when we go to be with him, there is the final touch of his perfection upon the characters of our hearts, but in no way does that mean the work of the Lamb is finished. We have all of eternity to abide with him in purest light in heaven. Life as it was meant to be.
What shall we experience? Shall there be commerce? Shall there be worlds and kingdoms to explore? That is something that the Wisdom of God knows no doubt. Here we receive glimpses of these glories and powers that he has made to abide in the heavens.
I feel the biggest thing that we have to slog through in having our desires met in a wholly holy way is to change the lenses of our heart and understand that in the wisdom of God there are untold riches and connections readily available to those who seek it, both the person and the wisdom in a committed way.
God is not the God of the one hit-wonder, he is the God of faithful bond with blessed events and provisions in his divine process. It’s in walking with him that we have this grand access to wisdom. Not merely standing still. We must allow ourselves to change in the same fashion that the direction of his wind and flow does within us. Though his character never changes, indeed… he expresses himself as he so wills freely.
And in being open and trustingly humble with him… we will know him as desire — sweet and pure desire fulfilled, in practical life and life within.
