17. The most important part of my spiritual health plan is noticing my desires.
(Before looking at the questions below, take a few minutes to think about this statement. Invite Jesus to speak to you about what He would like you to notice.)
How often do you stop to think about what you really desire in your life?
How much of what you do in a typical day comes from or works towards your desires?
If you could create a list of goals or activities that were produced by and intended to fulfill your deepest desires, what would the list include?
What does your current way of life say about your desires?
Desire is an essential part of any healthy relationship. That’s why it is critical that the plan we create for our spiritual activities reflects our true desires. God has created us with the capacity to connect with Him. While God deeply desires that we enter into a relationship with Him,
He never uses force, manipulation, or fear to cause us to connect with Him. God’s desire is that our plan and our choices to connect with Him be done out of our desire and not from any sense of obligation, or fear. It is possible to participate in a relationship with God based on fear and we may need to start with this kind of relationship, but
God’s desire is that our relationship transition to us freely wanting to be with Him. God understands that we cannot “fake” our desires. No one can force us to desire something, and our desires, even if we aren’t aware of them, are what truly guides us. An example of this is the story of the rich ruler recorded in Mark 10. The man comes to Jesus and asks “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (10:17, NIV).
We could paraphrase this for our context and say, “What should I put in my spiritual plan so that I can have a relationship with you, Jesus?” The story continues and at one point it says, “Jesus looked at him and loved him” (10:21, NIV) Jesus then tells the rich man to go and sell all of his possessions. At this point the rich ruler leaves in sadness, unwilling to give up his possessions. In other words, what this person ultimately desired was wealth, not a relationship with Jesus. There are several important things to notice. First, Jesus loved this person and we can assume that He desired a relationship with the man. Second, Jesus helped this person come to understand his true desire. Third,
Jesus did nothing to try to change the man’s desire. Even though Jesus wanted a relationship with this man, He refused to manipulate the man into a better desire. He simply let the man choose. Jesus desires the same for us. When we create a spiritual health plan, it will be best if we choose what we really want and not include things we think, or someone tells us, we should choose. Now there is a difference between desire and want.
There are things we desire that require us to do things we may not want to do. We may not really want to go on a diet but we deeply desire to be healthy and so we make choices base on our desires. The tension and difficulty then, is to discern between our true desires and our wants. As we see in the story of the rich ruler, it may not be easy for us to know our true desires and we may need help in finding them.
We can be helped in searching for our desires by inviting someone to help us, a trusted friend or a spiritual director. This needs to be someone who asks us questions and helps us listen to our own deeper longings. In our journey with Jesus, we will find that our desires play a very important role and that, over time, with intention and attention, we can get better at knowing our desires. Finally, our walk with Jesus allows Him, through His Spirit to help grow our desires into what is truly best for us and our life with Him.