Rethink Your Self: A 5-Day PlanSample

Deformed Desires

Just as it does to our design and our display, sin also affects our desires. 

The world tells you to follow your heart no matter what, but as we know, your heart may lead you astray. The Bible warns against over-trusting your heart. Sometimes your heart leads you in the right direction; other times it’s way off. Being led by the desires of your heart is good only if your desires are good—for you and for others.

The last thing parents should do is give their children everything they want. Why? Because kids aren’t mature enough to know what they should want. They don’t know what is good for them long-term. Immediate instincts and immature impulses dominate. That’s why good parents work hard to form and shape the desires of their children so that they want the right things. It’s childish to chase everything you want, which is why we define maturity by the ability to put your desires on the examination table in order to determine which are good and which are bad. We’re told by society that the way to happiness is to pursue your deepest desires, but unless we interrogate our desires, we’re actually being told to act like children again—to go after short-term pleasures and succumb to selfish impulses.

Thankfully, some of the wiser self-help books encourage you to analyze your desires so you can make more informed choices based on which desires you believe are best to pursue. But the Bible goes a step further. 

When you look up to God rather than inside yourself, you find you are not the ultimate judge of what desires are right or wrong, good or bad. The Bible says we should put our desires on the table and then examine them in light of an external benchmark. You need a standard from outside yourself by which to judge the rightness or wrongness of whatever it is you want. Even more, the Bible claims the greater answer to the question of desire is not that you should always reject your heart or dismiss your desires, but that you need a new heart and new desires.

What we need most is to be changed into the kind of person who wants the right things.

One of the most brilliant crystallizations of the Bible’s teaching comes in a simple question and answer: What is the chief end of man? (which means, what is the ultimate purpose or goal of a human being?). The answer is: To glorify God and enjoy him forever. Do you see the picture here? We were made not for grudging obedience to God without relationship, but to enjoy him. This implies that we are to know him. Our joy is part of the picture. Our ultimate happiness is at stake.

Here is where desires come in. Our deepest desires don’t have to be unearthed in some sort of self-focused project. They are revealed in the Bible. Our deepest desire is to love and be loved, to know and be known, and to give ourselves totally in love to another. All our human relationships reflect this desire dimly; ultimately, only God can satisfy it.

PRAY 

Father, I want to be satisfied with you and only you. I want my heart to desire only those things that you want me to desire. Help me, Lord Jesus. In your name I pray, Amen.