Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? James 4:1 (NKJV)
Wars are ugly.
If you are a believer you have most likely experienced a civil war of sorts raging in your own body when it comes to "desire."
Desire can be good or bad. (Desire - to wish, design, purpose, resolve, determine; to crave pleasure; to crave gratification)
It is at its best when Isaiah 26:8 is at the core.
Yes, LORD, walking in the way of your laws, we wait for you; your name and renown are the desire of our hearts.
It is at its worst when it craves, yearns, pulls and urges for its own way. For whatever will gratify its own pleasure.
The "desire" battlefield has distinct sides. One side is to glorify God; the other is to gratify self. Will we spend ourselves on His purposes or our own? The problem is not the clarity of the sides as much as it is muddled motives. The reality is even though we verbalize one thing our desires surreptitiously press for another. I know that’s been true in my own life.
These are some examples I've been turning around in my head. Some of them really make me squirm:
Do we really want to honor God with our bodies or do we just say that while covertly gratifying desires to be lazy, overindulgent, or lustful?
Do we trust His goodness enough to share our posessions or do we spend excessive amounts on ourselves and hoard?
Is our request for His fame genuine or are we really hoping to become famous ourselves?
Is our prayer for His anointing so that He might have greater recognition and honor or is it so that we can be admired and sought after?
The intoxicating lure of status, position, possessions, image, honor and approval can twist and taint our desires.
There is only one cure.
Christ.
We need Him for salvation and we need Him just as much to live a life that brings honor to Him.
We need Him to bring our desires to light and take His surgical scalpel to what needs to be cut out and replaced. Are we willing to ask Him to do this?
How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults. Keep your servant from deliberate sins! Don’t let them control me. Then I will be free of guilt and innocent of great sin. Psalm 19:12-13 (NLT)
There is nothing like the penetrating gaze of God into a heart to cut through all our pretense and see our naked desires.
Nothing like His Word to shine a light into the hidden recesses.
We need Christ to Cleanse us through the Word. John 15:3
We need Him to sanctify us by the truth of His Word. John 17:17
And we need Him to purify us as we obey Him. 1 Peter 1:22
Sisters, if the Word is not at work in us then we are left to the world and its systems being at work in us. And that will lead to a constant pull to please and gratify self.
And that will lead to death. (James 1:15)
Wars always bring death. And the "desire" war is no different. But Christ’s death makes possible for us to consider our earthly desires as dead.
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. Colossians 3:5 (NASB95)
And it makes it possible for us to deny ourselves and follow Him.
Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. Matthew 16:24
But the choice is ours.
How is the Word at Work in you this week?
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