Check Your Desires

The wisdom of God reaches a crescendo in the verses we read the last two weeks—these five couplets that give us a spiritual discipline and the return that it brings to us. It ends with “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops. Then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine” (Proverbs 3:9-10).

Someone will surely say, “This has not happened to me. My barns are not full. My vats are not brimming over.” And they will accuse God of unfaithfulness toward them. The scarcity of their lives or the pain that has come uninvited into their lives seems to them to belie the proverb that insists that giving and recieving are connected, as Paul observed in Philippians 4:15: “In the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only.”

I want you to think about your childhood and the parents or parent who loved you. Did they never cause you pain? Did they never take anything from you that you desired?

No, the parents who love us sometimes do deprive us of things that we think we need or pleasures that we see as rightfully ours.

• Graham’s first request after he gives me a hug is this: “Can I play with your iPad?” If I tell him “No” he may be disappointed and upset. Sometimes a child will even say, “You don’t love me” because you have done something that is actually good for them, but they do not know it yet.

Today we are going to seek to integrate into our understanding of God’s love and our trust in him the problem of pain, loss, and deprivation. This includes the loss of money and other worldly goods. Sometimes God says, “No, you cannot play with my iPad.”

Identify the Activity of God:

God is involved in our lives directly. We who have received Christ as Lord, we are the objects of his special concern now, for we are his. We believe that God created, that he sent Jesus to rescue us, and that he continues be at work in us and around us. “My father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working” - John 5:17

Somewhere in the daily mix of your life—the circumstances, situations, challenges, problems, and pains—God is at work. He may be initiating some things. He may simply be using what others have initiated. If you look at your life you are likely to see the handiwork of God both in the pleasures and the pains.

No one wants to be disciplined or chastised. We do not desire it. In fact, we work hard to avoid pain and suffering. We do not inflict it on ourselves, if we have a choice, and we do not want others to hurt us. Yet it happens. Often it happens for our good. Our body is hurting because it is alerting us to an infection, a wound, a brokenness, that must be addressed if we are to be health.

• When discipline is brought to us with a love that is well-informed, it is good for us. “Love does no harm,” Paul said (Romans 13:10).

• God disciplines those he loves. We do not want this discipline. But it comes our way because he loves us.

I want you to take a moment and try to identify the discipline of God in your life. I do not want you to try to identify the discipline of God in some other person’s life right now. That comes too easily to us. And our view is often perverted by self-righteousness and pride.

• The chastisement of the Lord is personal. You are his son or daughter. He loves you. Therefore, you can identify his activity in your life either in pains or troubles or in surprising triumphs and pleasures. It should be a great comfort to you to see the work of God in your own life.

• If you cannot see the activity of God in your own life, then you may wonder about your relationship with him. Are you born again of the Spirit? Jesus told Nicodemus, “Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God” (John 3:3). Our blindness to God’s activity may be an indication that we do not know him and have not been born again.

We do not want to resent the Lord’s correction in our lives. We do not want to despise his activity. But we often do. And we do so for the same reasons that Graham is upset because I take the iPad away from him. Our desires are out of wack.

Examine Your Desires:

“nothing you desire can compare with her” - Proverbs 3:15

Nothing you long for, nothing you crave, nothing covet, nothing you lust after can compare with godly wisdom. Godly wisdom is the highest and greatest desire of your heart.

• This is true because the desire for true wisdom is the same as a desire to know God. “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul longs for you, O God.” This is the highest and greatest desire that we can cultivate—to be like the One who made us, saved us.

• This is true also because it delivers Better Returns than all other cravings and human desires. Desiring God orients your life to the one place where true joy and peace are found. This is the water that satisfies the soul.

My desires are not always right or good.

• I think all my desires are right and good. I want to be rich. I want to have all the toys. This seems to me to be a legitimate desire and need in my life. Why would anyone who wants the best for me make me drive a VW when I want a Porche?

• So I put pleasure in the center. This notion that my desires are always good and right is deeply imbedded in our culture and is the prevailing ethical theory approach. “This feels so good, it has got to be right.”

• These desires become gods to me, the standard idols of humans—money, power, sex. Silver and gold are mentioned here because they were the currency of the ancient world. They represented wealth and power and social status. They were desired above almost everything else just as they are in our generation.

My other desires cannot deliver on their promises.

• My cravings and lusts are actually traps. The promise me peace and happiness, but they enslave me instead.

• These are thirsts that cannot be satisfied. You cannot get enough money or power or sex to fill the voide inside your soul.

• The pornography you are using will have to be increased. You will have to have more power. You will have to have more money.

Desiring God: “I want to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering,” Paul wrote.

• Cultivate a desire for God in your life through prayer, reading the Bible, fellowship with other believers. Don’t just strip your life down in harsh disciplines that say no to drugs or illicit sex or ill-gotten gain. You must add to that the yes for God’s person and purpose in your life.

• This desire alone has the potential to truly satisfy your soul. “Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed” - Proverbs 3:16-18

• Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God…” - Matthew 6:33