Hijacked by Desire – Getting the Order Right

We’ve been talking in this series about what happens when emotions take the wheel.

Anger
Worry
Desire
Pride

Last time we talked about how desire can quietly hijack us — how it can move from something we feel to something that starts steering.

But today I want to flip the question. Because here’s what’s interesting:

The problem isn’t that we desire too much. The problem is that we often desire too little.

Or we desire the right things in the wrong order. Or we hand the keys to something that was never meant to drive.

Desire is not the enemy. Desire is fuel.

The question is: Who’s driving?

Because desire always wants the keys.

And when desire takes the wheel unchecked, it leads to slavery — like we talked about last time.

Not all at once — but one small steering decision at a time.

But when desire is rightly ordered, it becomes one of the primary ways we experience the presence and goodness of God.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Let’s start with this thought.

Sometimes we sing certain worship songs, and the lyrics will have words to this effect:

God, you’re all I desire.
I don’t want anything but you.
You’re the sole longing of my heart.

Those kinds of words.

Is that true for you?

Sometimes I get a little twinge when we sing words like that, because I want God — I do want God — but the truth is, I don’t ONLY want God… I want other things, too.

I want really good pizza sometimes.
I want new golf clubs.
I want sunny days.
I want to do good work.
I want the Cubs to always win like they won the world series in 2016.
I want to achieve some goals.
I want to laugh really hard.

Understand my spirit in this. I don’t mean to be critical of these songs.

I take the general sense of these words as meaning — God’s the one I want to give my ultimate devotion to, and I do want God and the things that God wants to give me.

But as I thought about those kinds of songs, it does lead to the question: Is it wrong to want things other than God? Should it be true that all I want is God?

I recently read what I think is a fabulous statement written by Dallas Willard. I love this. This is what Dallas wrote:

God is so big he does not demand to be the only thing we desire.

That’s how good our God is.

Part of the greatness of our God is that he is not an egomaniac. He is so humble.

And his goodness is so vast that it inevitably spills out into other areas of his creation. He can’t help it.

And he loves it when we find his goodness in his creation as well as in himself.

Our God is so good that he doesn’t demand that everyone look at him all the time. When people look at the things that he created and they like those things, God’s heart is pleased.

The key for us is we have to get our desires in the right order. We need to desire things or want things in the right way and to the right degree.

And I have to be ready to say no to any desire that could interfere with my following or pleasing God.

So today we’re going to look at how we discover God and his goodness… and come to love him more than the other things we desire…

So I’m going to walk us through a few categories of things we desire.

But before we get there, we have to look at one distorted approach to desire management that has warped a whole lot of well-intended Christians over the years.

This is a distorted approach to desire management… and this has done serious damage.

We talked last time about how wrong desires are at the root of sin.

Way back at the beginning of Genesis the very first sin occurs.

The writer of Scripture says in Genesis 3:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable… (Genesis 3:6)

It was desirable. And our desires — wrong desires — are what get us into trouble.

So here’s what happens with many, many people.

Many people think: “If I want to be spiritual, I’ve got to avoid sin, and the best way to avoid sin would be if I could just do away with desire altogether — if I just didn’t want anything.

If I didn’t want sex
If I didn’t want money
If I didn’t want food
If I didn’t want success
If I didn’t want pleasure

Then I’d be really spiritual because then I wouldn’t sin.

But it’s real important to understand — that is not God’s desire for the human race. It’s not God’s plan.

Here’s the deal. Our culture says that life is about the gratification of desire.

Be like Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster has a thing for cookies.

And a Cookie Monster philosophy is real simple: I am a collection of appetites to be gratified.

And a lot of real smart people in our culture have devoted their whole lives to convincing us of that.

Our culture says life is about the gratification of desire.

While distorted spirituality says the goal of life is the elimination of all desire, because then you won’t do wrong things.

Do any of you know which of the major world religions says our goal should be to eliminate all desire?

Buddhism.

Although, ironically, if you’ve ever noticed, the statues of Buddha makes him look like he had a thing for cookies.

The New Testament writers and Jesus said — the goal is not the gratification of our desires… and it’s not the elimination of our desires.

It’s about the transformation of our desires.

It’s about getting our desires right.

Another quote from Dallas, and I think this is another fabulous one, from his book Renovation of the Heart.

Feelings are very good servants, but they are very bad masters.

When servants start steering, things go sideways fast.

That’s worth the message right there. You can all go home. I’m going to keep teaching, but you can all go home now.

Carry that one with you.

Uncorrupted by sin, desire is fabulous. It’s fabulous because it’s part of God’s design.

In Psalm 145, the psalmist, speaking to God, wrote:

The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing. The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does. (Psalm 145:15-16)

He “satisfies the desires” — that’s just a great line.

Our God is a desire-satisfying, desire-fulfilling God.

Think for a moment about the role of desire in creation.

God made creatures. And part of what he did when he made them was to place in their hearts certain desires — to eat, to drink, to reproduce.

He made birds with an impulse to jump out of a nest and fly. That’s what they do. They want to do it because God made them to do it.

He made dolphins with an instinct to swim.

God doesn’t plant wrong desires in his creatures.

Now when it comes to human beings — how did Adam know that he was supposed to become one flesh with Eve? How did he know?

Do you think God put it on his to-do list?

“Adam, name the animals, take out the trash, and by the way, don’t forget to become one flesh with Eve.”

No. Adam looked at Eve, and he discovered he had desire.

Where did that desire come from?

It came from God.

God created desire. It’s brilliant. That’s God’s creation.

And it’s God’s delight to fulfill desire.

I know my desires are easily junked up and distorted by sin. I know this… and I suppose everyone knows it in their own way.

And I’m going to be real careful in this message. I’m very concerned that this message not be misunderstood.

I’m not saying in this message that whatever desire you have, it’s an indication that God wants to gratify it. I’m not saying that.

I know our desires are easily junked up and distorted by sin… so they need to be purified and cleaned up and retrained.

Here’s my question: What if God’s plan is that every time we experience an authentic desire — a God-implanted desire within us — every time we experience an authentic desire fulfilled, we come to understand more deeply what a good God God is… and we come to understand how God has wired us… and what it is that God wants us to do?

And what if we find ourselves loving this great God more and more?

What if our desire can be part of living in his presence and power in such a way that gives us power and energy? What if our desire is to be part of that?

I want to go through categories of this desire and talk about how I find the goodness of God through the gifts that I desire.

And I want to give this caveat because the Bible is so full of warnings about wrong desires.

If pursuing certain desires in my life has the effect of making me

more demanding
more selfish
more isolated
makes me hoard more of my money rather than being generous
makes me focus on myself rather than serving others

Then these desires are quenching the Spirit in my life, and I need to say no to them.

They’re moving me out of the presence and power of God.

This is what Jesus refers to when he says in Mark 8:

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (Mark 8:34)

That is, you must say no to any desires that would keep you from living in the presence and power of God.

I always have to be ready to sacrifice a lesser desire for the sake of a greater desire.

On the other hand, if pursuing a desire is leading me to become

more loving
more generous
quicker to serve
less vulnerable to temptation…

Because I’ll tell you

Nothing makes a human being more vulnerable to temptation than a joyless life.
Nothing makes people quicker to fall than a life without joy.

But if pursuing an authentic, God-honoring desire is leading you to become

more loving
more joyful
less vulnerable to temptation
more filled with gratitude

It could be that it’s because this is a desire God has planted in your heart.

That’s the kind of fulfillment of desire James refers to when he says, “Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of all lights who satisfies the desires of those who fear him.”

That’s why the writer of Proverbs says in Proverbs 13:

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. (Proverbs 13:12)

A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul.
Every desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

I want to walk through five categories, and I’m going to ask you to do a little assessment and to be real honest, because these are going to be categories that don’t look real spiritual.

Because if we don’t understand what desire is for, we’ll either suppress it… or let it steer.

I’m going to ask you to be real honest with yourself and see if you have any desires in these areas.

Maybe you’ve always thought of them as having nothing to do with God, but maybe, if you let them, they can be part of your living in the presence and power of God all the time.

Here we go — five areas of desires.

And I’ll explain why, when you purge the sin away, each one of them has a God-designed foundation in our lives.

First of all, we have

Material Desires

Desires that are attached to things like possessions, finances and so on.

Again, these material desires easily get junked up. They’ve got to be watched carefully.

But if you could purge away all the sin, people would like material stuff… because God created stuff.

All stuff, ultimately, is part of God’s creation and, therefore, it’s all good. Therefore, it is desirable.

Material desires — got any of those?

Anybody here like money?

Let me tell you about a woman in Acts 16.

Her name is Lydia.
She is the first convert to Christianity in Europe.
She was a businesswoman in textiles.
She had an eye for design.
She had a flair for making money.

Think about this for a moment.

Imagine the amount of passion and drive and skill it would take for a woman to succeed in business in the ancient world, where the vast majority of the human race lived in servitude or poverty.

For the vast majority of people, if they could make a living, it was hand-to-mouth, working in the fields in agriculture.

But here is a woman succeeding in this business.

She’s good enough at it that she owned her own home… and it was large enough that it became part of her ministry.

Lydia’s house became the first meeting place of the first church in the history of Europe.

Think about all the churches built over all the centuries — Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, the Sistine Chapel. The very first one in Europe was the home of this Philippian businesswoman named Lydia.

Some of you have a flair for money. And the truth is, you enjoy it.

You lied about it a minute ago, but you enjoy it.

When it comes to possessions, some of you love to be surrounded by beauty and design and color.

That in itself is not a bad thing. Our God created beauty. Our God loves beauty.

Now again…

If there’s always a craving for more
If it chokes out your generosity
If it causes you to live in debt
If it causes you to neglect tithing
If it causes you to avoid the movement of God in your finances

That’s the moment desire has stopped serving and started driving.

Then it’s time to make some sacrifices. It’s time to say no to some desires.

It’s a good thing to have beauty in your environment that speaks to your soul… and when you see that beauty, to feel joy and to thank God that he’s such a good God.

In that moment, you experience the presence and power of God in your life.

And maybe part of what God will enable you to do is what he did with Lydia — give you ideas about chances to share your home with other people, to practice hospitality… which was huge in the early church.

In the early church, there were no church buildings.

As it spread from one city to another, the church depended on home-owners who were generous with their homes and practiced hospitality.

That’s why hospitality is talked about as a spiritual gift.

Another material desire — is it a bad thing to like fast cars? Is that an un-spiritual desire?

No.

Maybe God made you to like fast cars so that you could be a policeman, so you could drive really fast and it would be legal.

If you love engines, if you love to work with your hands, understand that it mirrors the fact that you were made in the image of a creative God who created this unbelievable, cosmic machine with all of its forces and energies that are so fascinating and transcendently mind-boggling that people devote brilliant scientific careers to trying to understand just a tiny little bit of it.

God sees this giant machine and operates it all the time, moment to moment, and he loves it.

Do you understand when you have a fascination with engines, that’s not a neutral thing that has nothing to do with spiritual life?

That’s a direct reflection of the fact that you’re made in the image of this creative God.

Now again, if you have a desire regarding cars that leads you to spend good money in a way that blocks good stewardship, puts you in debt and interferes with tithing… then it’s time to start saying no.

If not, is it possible that enjoying a car might be something you could do with God?

And when you’re driving, you might say, “God, I just invite you to be with me in this moment, right now.”

And you could be driving in the presence and power of God… under the speed limit, but the Spirit could be part of that with you.

These are material desires. They can get us off track, but underneath the sin, they’re a reflection of the fact that God has created all things.

And, of course, we like the stuff that God made because God made it.

A second area of desire is

Achievement Desires

We have desires to achieve things because God created us to have dominion.
God created us to be fruitful.
God made us to partner with him in reigning over his earth — his creation — for the good of all his creatures.

That’s why the writer of Ecclesiastes says in Ecclesiastes 9:

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

It’s a good thing to want to achieve.

I think there have been few people in the history of the world who were more motivated by achieving goals and accomplishing objectives than the apostle Paul.

He’s a bundle of energy as we read about him and read his letters.
He’s constantly moving, teaching, building, motivating.
He describes his life with metaphors like, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race.”

God did not take away Paul’s desire to achieve. He harnessed it so he could serve others.

Maybe you have a strong drive around your career.
Maybe you’re highly motivated by a chance to learn.
Maybe you just love to accomplish certain objectives in some task… or in ministry.

Now, if your achievement desires are leading you

to workaholism
to worshiping status
to neglecting prayer
to blowing off worship
to using people rather than loving them
or to neglecting your family

That’s not ambition serving God — that’s ambition grabbing the wheel.

And God would be calling you to say no in this regard. You’ve got to say no to some desires.

You need to deny some of them… reign some of them in.

But if that’s not the case relative to the achievement dimension of your life.

If you find yourself growing in prayer and worship and love for others… and there’s this inner fire in you to achieve, go ahead — achieve.

Revel in the joy of exercising dominion. That’s part of your being made in the image of God.

Use your ability to accomplish good for others.

And every once in awhile when you’re doing it, when you’re at work and you’re contributing to a meeting, and you can tell you’re really adding value, or you’re working at a desk and ideas are just coming to your mind — you’ll know it’s more than just you.

Or if you’re connecting with clients and you have relational skills that enable you to do that in real strong ways, you can simultaneously pray for them and bless them.

Or as you’re at school and your mind is being stretched, you’re learning and you love that — every now and then just stop and thank God that you get to do that.

As you achieve and feel joy in it, you’re exercising dominion, and you’re opening yourself up to the presence and power of God in your life.

Another area of desire:

Relational Desires

This one is safer to admit.

I think everyone here would acknowledge that they have relational desires.

We have them because we were made in the image of a God who exists as Trinity: Father, Son and Spirit, in perfect relationship with each other through all eternity.

We’re made in that image. And we’re invited to be part of that. And, man, we do desire that.

I think of Jonathan in the Old Testament — the friendship between David and Jonathan that the writer of Scripture says was stronger than death.

Even though Jonathan was heir to the throne and everyone expected that he would become king of Israel, king of God’s people, his love and loyalty went to David… even though he knew that David would take the place everyone thought that he, Jonathan, would take.

Think what that says about Jonathan’s value of friendship.

Jonathan wanted to be friend more than he wanted to be king.

That’s pretty unusual among people in circles of power.

It’s a funny thing when you think about it. There have been a lot of kings through a lot of centuries that no one remembers. But Jonathan’s friendship for David has inspired the human race for thousands of years now.

Some of you have a hunger, a desire, for deep relationships, but you never really pursue it.

You get too busy.
You have a long to-do list, and other priorities end up getting in the way.
If deep relationships don’t just fall into your lap, you give up. You quit trying.

But deep relationships don’t just fall into anyone’s lap.

Jonathan had to overcome unbelievable barriers to build his friendship with David. And there’s a good chance that you will, too.

So if you have deep relational desires, if you say, “There is definitely a hunger inside me for that.” — then fight for it.

Get in a small group. That’s why we have small groups in this church. They don’t make relational desires get satisfied, but they create places where they can.
Invite someone out for coffee to get to know them.
Pray for God to send a Jonathan or a David your way.

Some of you in this church have relational skills that are unbelievable. You could be leading a small group and you’d be phenomenal at it.

You have no idea the relational hungers that exist in our community and in our church.

And some of you have got these God-given desires and skills where you could build a little community, where people would come and would experience joy.

And they would start to self-disclose.
They would know and be known.
They would love and be loved.
And they would enter into relationships.

And you would get all the joy that flows out of that. You ought to consider it.

Remember this… in any context, when you experience the joy of a good friendship, remember it’s a gift from God that you’re experiencing this tremendous sense of fulfillment, because in your own little way, you have entered into the purpose for which you were created.

And you can pause and in that moment thank God for the joy of community. Then you’re living in the presence and power of God.

Next area is

Physical Desires

Because you have a body, and your body was made by God, you have desires that are related to certain appetites in your body — things to eat and drink and see and smell… or physical challenges… or experiences that you want for your body.

Look at Deuteronomy 14.

Interestingly enough, the Old Testament is filled with commands for people about feasting.

To eat, to drink, celebrate, sing, dance, shout, and make music — all are things people are called to do with their bodies.

These are appetites and desires and delights that involve the body as a way of remembering how good our God is… and then becoming more joy-filled people.

Some of you have seen this before; for some of you, this is going to be your first time through this passage in Deuteronomy 14.

Moses has told the people they are supposed to take a tithe of their grain, new wine and oil, and the firstborn of their herds and flocks and go to the place where God will choose to set his name. That’s Jerusalem.

Now look at Deuteronomy14:

But if that place is too distant and you have been blessed by the Lord your God and cannot carry your tithe (because the place where the Lord will choose to put his Name is so far away), then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the Lord your God will choose. (Deuteronomy14:24-25)

And now look what they’re instructed to do. This is unbelievable. Deuteronomy 14:26:

Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice. (Deuteronomy14:26)

Can you believe that’s in the Bible?

I grew up in a Baptist church. We never read that verse in the church when I was growing up. I’m not even sure anyone would acknowledge that was in the Bible when I was growing up.

That’s an unbelievable verse.

Now again, let’s go back to a caveat.

This is not an excuse for destructive indulgence.
It is not an excuse for abusing alcohol, which is an absolute tragedy in our day.
It doesn’t mean feast every day. There is a time for feasting and there is a time for fasting in the spiritual life.
If someone else is hungry, we’re always to be ready to share with them.

We’re always ready to sacrifice a lesser desire for the sake of a greater desire… but it does mean that we’re to remember our God is a good God who just loves to satisfy the desires of his creatures.

Sometimes, those creatures need to enter into denial so that their desires can get retrained, but God loves satisfying desires.

Physical desires

Anyone here ever desire to be physically attractive? No hands on that one.

Now obviously, this one, too, can get out of whack.

It can lead to vanity, self-preoccupation. It needs to be reined in.

Proverbs 11:

Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion. (Proverbs 11:22)

The writer of Proverbs is saying that beauty of character is a greater good than exterior beauty.

But God created our bodies.

Now, cultures often get goofy ideas about what kind of body is beautiful… and what kind is not.

And I expect God sees bodies quite differently than we do.

But God created them… and God loves our bodies.

God wants us to be really pleased that we each have a body and to be grateful and pleased with the body we have.

Even things like physical desires are not neutral things. If we’re willing to allow them, they can lead us to God.

It is a good thing to enjoy physical desires in a proper way…

to sometimes eat food you love to eat
wear clothes you love to wear
listen to music that makes you feel glad

And then in those moments, to just thank God that he gave you your body so you can experience life and see and hear and touch and laugh and dance.

What’s happening as you open yourself up to the Spirit of God in all this is you’re starting to love God more and more and more… not because you should, not because it’s commanded, but because when you get to know him, you just can’t help it. What else could you do?

Last area:

Recreational Desires

We have desires for rest and recreation and restoration because we were created finite. God made you that way.

God designed you to desire rest.
God made you to desire sleep.

Some of you are desiring that right now.
Some of you are gratifying that desire right now.

That’s not God’s intent… but I’ll be done soon.

God designed you to stop sometimes… and he designed stopping to feel good.

God designed you to engage in activities that restore your spirit and recharge your batteries.

And when you do that, do you understand you can do that as a spiritual activity — you can do that in the Spirit, with God, in his presence and power.

I don’t know where I got it, but I grew up with this idea that there are certain activities that are spiritual and they count, and then other activities that don’t count.

I don’t know where I got that idea, but it sure was not the Bible.

In the Bible, every moment counts, even sleep.

Even sleep is spoken of in the Psalms. It is a gift from God that God gives to those that he loves.

When you receive it with gratitude, then something is going on between you and God, and you’re not off the clock in your spiritual life. You receive it like a humble, little child, and it just fills you with what a good God God is.

And there are other things we love — hobbies, pastimes.

David loved music.

He’d be out watching the sheep, and he’d be playing his lyre and making up songs.

What if David hadn’t followed that desire?

It doesn’t seem like a real spiritual thing to do.

But over the centuries, how many people have stood by the side of a grave or lay in a bed in the hospital, and the only words they can cling to are the words, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I’ll fear no evil.”

What if David hadn’t followed that desire?

Some of you have seen an old classic movie — Chariots of Fire.

It’s a story about Eric Liddle.
He was a Christ-follower.
He wants to be a missionary, but he’s also a great runner.
And his sister criticizes him for running because it doesn’t seem spiritual.
He ought to just want to preach all the time.

Liddle has this great line where he says to his sister, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.”

God used Eric Liddle’s running to give him a platform for his ministry… and that was an amazing thing.

But even if he hadn’t, even if no one had ever known that Eric Liddle could run except God and Eric Liddle, it would have been a very good thing for Eric Liddle to run. Even if it was just between him and God.

Because as Liddle ran, he was learning what a good God God is. And his heart was just filling up.

He was receiving love from God and coming to love God more.

And when you do that… you just start to become God’s kind of person, and God’s presence and power is being active in your life.

And you don’t have to think about doing it.
You don’t have to do it on purpose.
You don’t have to try to be nice to other people because they might find out that you’re a Christian, and that would be bad if you weren’t nice to them.
You are just doing what God created you to do… because it wouldn’t make sense to do anything else… and because of that God’s presence and power are at work in your life.

So, recreational desires.

You’ve got to be careful with them. They can lead you down wrong paths… but at the root, at the foundation, they exist in you because of the nature of God and the way God created you.

So here’s what we need to remember.

The problem is not that we want too much. The problem is that sometimes we hand the keys to smaller desires and let them drive us away from larger ones.

God is not asking you to become less alive. He’s inviting you to become more alive.

He’s not asking you to eliminate desire. He’s asking you to reorder it.

Because when desire is disordered, it enslaves. But when desire is rightly ordered, it leads you into joy.

It leads you into gratitude.
It leads you into generosity.
It leads you into love.
It leads you into the presence and power of God.

You don’t have to become someone who wants nothing. You become someone who wants the best things most.

And when you start experiencing the goodness of God in the gifts he gives…

When you pause in the middle of achievement and thank him…
When you enjoy beauty and receive it with gratitude…
When you fight for deep friendships…
When you feast with joy…
When you rest without guilt…
When you run and feel his pleasure…

You begin to discover something. You begin to love God more.

Not because you should. But because you want to.

And that’s when desire is finally in its proper place.

Not eliminated. Not indulged. But aligned.

And when desire is aligned, it doesn’t hijack your life. It becomes one of the primary ways God fills it.

That’s the invitation.

Alright, would you pray with me as the worship team comes to lead us in a closing song.