KykNET Lent Guide 2023Sample

Week 5: Purity

Day 4: Disordered Attachments

“You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.” Matt 5:8 (MSG)

When you go on this journey of discovering your desires, you will discover that you have many desires, but that one or a few of them are dominant. Your dominant desires also change from time to time.

According to the early teachings of the church on desires, desires in and of themselves are not bad, but when I attach too much value to a certain desire, it can become destructive in my life. When we become too attached to a need – like food or sex or pleasure – it can derail our entire lives. The need becomes a desire. We try to get more out of the fulfillment of the need than it can give us.

The solution is not to get rid of the desire, but rather to reorder it and to attain a dominating desire. A greater desire reorders other desires and even overcomes some desires. To have superficial and destructive desires rule our lives does not lead to fulfillment, but to a life that becomes small and takes us away from God. When our desires are in order, my life becomes bigger and it draws me closer to God.

Exercise:

Take a look at your dominating desires and judge them. Are there perhaps good needs that God has placed within you that have now become dominating and disordered? Share your dominating desires with Him. Confess if some needs have become dominant desires in your life. Ask Him to lead you to the deepest desires of your heart.

Repetition Prayer:

Create in me a pure heart, oh God.