Quicker. Faster. Easily attainable. The ways of the world. We have fleshly desires and spiritual desires, what’s difficult is differentiating between the two. The enemy is quick, yet very subtle to attack our blindspots and confuse us into believing that what we’re pursuing is in fact Christ centered, but something inside you is aching, crying out, telling you to turn away, but the feelings of satisfaction and desires being fulfilled is hard to turn your back on.
I fell into this trap.
Psalm 37:4- “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Desires: a strong feeling of wanting to have something, or wishing for something to happen.
The word delight can also be defined as to “rejoice with.”
Rejoice: to feel or show great joy.
According to the Vine’s Expository app I have on my phone, (10/10 recommend) these are the reasons and occasions for rejoicing in the Lord as believers:
His incarnation
His power
His presence with the Father
His ultimate Triumph
Hearing the Gospel
Salvation
Receiving the Lord
Enrollment in Heaven
Liberty in Christ
Hope
Suffering for Christ
Suffering in the cause of the Gospel
Rejoicing in persecutions, trials and afflictions
The manifestation of grace
Meeting with fellow believers
These are all beautiful reasons for rejoicing in the Lord, and they are all centered around Christ.
Desires are a gift, an incredible feeling and longing that the Lord has given us. He trusts you and loves you so much to let you choose your own desires and pursue them. The even more beautiful thing is the closer you get to Jesus, the more He molds your heart to better match His, and your desires begin to turn into something more beautiful than you never knew you could imagine or think of. He loves us even more by gifting us with His vision for the purpose of our lives. I don’t know about you, but I want what He wants.
Melissa Applebee wrote a beautiful blog on desires, and I encourage each of you to read it. I will be pulling a lot from what I learned from her blog and a separate blog by Kelly Needham, I’ll share the link at the end.
The problem is and the trouble comes when we want certain desires more than we want Jesus. It’s safe to say almost everyone wants to be married, pursue their dream job, have a family, belong to a Christ centered community, have beautiful friendships that choose to call each other higher, walk in vulnerability, and endlessly point each other to Jesus. All of these things are so, so sweet. I desire all of these. These desires should draw us and call us closer to the Father, not distract us from Him, because he is the point of it all. These are all just a small glimpse of something deeper, better, and more satisfying the Father wants to give us.
My month in Cambodia can be described in three words: discipline, confession and revelation. I experienced an overflow of the Father’s love, but it wasn’t by doing anything quick, fast or easy. In Genesis 3:4 Satan is having a very convincing conversation with Eve about taking a bite of the forbidden fruit, “You will not certainly die…For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Satan has been telling this same lie for thousands of years, and what’s sad is we continue to believe it. “You’re missing out. God’s holding out on you.” I’ve believed this lie and have abused the gifts God has given me.
I chose God’s creation instead of God himself for satisfaction. Anything we look to for satisfaction other than God is an idol, but idols will always be less and we will never be fully satisfied. We will continue to run, chase, or pursue but we’ll never be satisfied.
I was committing idolatry.
I grew up with a major deficit in my life. My father was absent for the majority of my life, I grew up across the country from him. I never had a tangible representation of the Father’s love through the father the Lord gave me. Growing up I held onto a lot of bitterness and anger that was bottled so deep in my heart it manifested through my words, my behavior, and in my walk with the Father. Ultimately, like every single person in this entire world, I was after something deeper, to replace a void that only Jesus can fill. I wanted intimacy, affirmation, I wanted to be seen, desired, pursued, loved, by a father. I started pursuing these things within friendships, and the enemy quickly distorted my hearts desires into misplaced feelings and emotions. This happened on the race. It was something I wasn’t prepared for and something I thought I had experienced freedom in. However, the only thing that changed the first time around was confession of my sin. I repented but did not turn away. Through Vietnam I continued in the same pattern of my life, unwilling to let go of the comforts I had at my fingertips. Unwilling to finally see that He was there waiting for me to finally choose him.
My month in Cambodia was incredible, I experienced true freedom, and real depth to my relationship with Jesus. Leaving ministry in Kampong Cham, where we lived, and entering into debrief was incredible. That month I made a decision to choose Jesus first, every day, every second, before anybody or anything else and the fruit came in abundance. My mentor Fran had our squad draw out on paper a family tree and go through each family member to repent and ask for forgiveness for the ways we may have wronged them. When it came to my dad, my heart broke and I began to weep.
“Father, forgive me for the times I said I hated my dad….forgive me for the times I was bitter or cold toward my dad…forgive me for the times I rejected him out of resentment.”
On my knees, on top of the roof I heard Him say to me, That is my son. Love my son. The way you love him shows the way you love me. He cannot meet your expectations, he cannot love you the way you desire, he cannot pursue you the way you desire, but I can. Let me.”
Until my dad steps into sonship, accepts Jesus as his Lord and Savior, he will not understand how to love me the way I’ve always desired. In that moment I was able to forgive my father, truly, from the depths of my soul, forgive him and free him from the debt I was holding over him that he could not fill. I had all of this built up in me, trying to wrap my head around the revelation I had received from my heavenly Father. I stood up and walked over to Fran and buried my face into her shoulder and wept with everything I had left in me.
It’s not something I can’t easily explain, I felt grief and heartbreak, but joy and freedom at the same time. It was as if I had come into alignment with my Father’s heart and had finally heard what He’d been telling me for so long. We grieved for my dad but rejoiced for the restoration that had taken place between me and Jesus. It was unreal. That freedom overflowed into the shame I was carrying from the friendships I had failed in on the race.
Jesus loves us so much. It is SO evident to me, because even sometimes in my inability to steward friendships well, He still gives me opportunity to show Him that I can by giving me some of the greatest friends I’ve ever had in my life. He wants to bless me, and love me so well, and give me these gifts and continue to give me chances to show him I can do this, because He knows I can, and I have been. This new season I’m in with my Father has been the best season of my entire life.
Sweet, sweet victories.
