Do you ever feel like you are getting pulled in different directions at the same time? We can find ourselves unable to make a decision because of the choices before us. So many choices, so little time. Some choices bring us closer to the LORD. Some drive a wedge or build a wall. And sometimes it can be hard to know if a choice is in God’s will. Many books have been written on the subject of finding God’s will for our lives.
We are in a battle, a battle between what Scripture calls the world and the will of God.
Our lives are filled with desires, lusts, many of which are God given desires. We desire food, clothing and shelter. We want connection with other people in meaningful relationships. We want laughter and pleasure. We want purpose and a sense of satisfaction. These are God given desires. But sometimes those desires get out of hand. We push them beyond what God intended. John defines three areas where the worldly desires bump up against God’s desire.
The lust of flesh gets us in trouble when those desires are driven by the fallen part of us rather than the Spirit. These godly desires can go too far, are out of sequence, or expressly forbidden. This lust is the drive to do something apart from the will of God. We can take a good thing, something the LORD says is good, and take it out of bounds.
Eating food is a God given desire. We need food in order to continue to exist. But when our waistline expands perhaps it has us in its grip. We yield control to the physical hunger and let it determine our portion sizes and frequency of consumption. Hunger becomes the driving force. We control other feelings by stuffing our face. We are no longer in control. The food controls us. This can be true for any natural desire. It can get out of balance, becoming the passion of our lives. It can become what defines us.
These desires can also be out of sequence. Sex is a great thing, a God given thing. But when it is out of sequence it gets us in trouble. This is God’s sequence: date, marry, sex with only one partner. But when we mess up the order of things, then the desire takes over. We can rationalize almost any behavior, and our culture does. “We really love each other. We were going to get married eventually. It made more sense to save money and move in together. We found the perfect house. Everyone else is doing it. What’s the big deal!” But when you don’t do things in God’s timing, in God’s way, then you are asking Him to remove the blessing from your life and allow the natural consequences of sin to come into effect.
And then there are some things that the LORD has specifically forbidden, like sex outside the safety net of marriage. We don’t have to search very long to find some of those forbidden things. And when you hear someone using the Old Testament dietary laws, personal hygiene or clothing laws as an excuse for not obeying the sexual boundaries, run away! They are trying to divert our eyes from their sinful behavior. Don’t fall for their deflection. Eat lobster, don’t have sex with your animals. Wear blended material in your clothing and don’t rape.
The next area of the world that John defines is the lust of eyes. This is a drive guided by the eyes, searching for the new, the exciting, the extremes. It is the desire to have something apart from the will of God. I like to call it the “Something New Syndrome.” In the extreme it can turn into hording. But most of us don’t let it get to that point. But many of us are driven by the new this or that. We as a culture have lost the ability to make due, to repair, to let necessity be the mother of invention. Our storage units are filled with unneeded things, and yet we pay the rent every month. The corners of our homes are stuffed with stuff, yesterday’s bargains.
The final area John outlines is the pride of life. This is driven by envy. It is always focused on what others think. Rivalry, jealousy, rank, and position are the bywords of this pride. It is the desire to besomething apart from the will of God. We want our five minutes of fame. We are just keeping up with the Jones’. We want others to admire what we have built. Comparisons are the trading cards. With over 200 people added to the list of the world’s billionaires this past year, I can hear the chest swelling in pride.
None of these desires must be followed. We have the choice to obey rather than yield to the desires. They can be brought into submission to Christ. These drives can never be satisfied. They will always leave us feeling empty and wanting more. Just because the desire is there does not mean it must be gone after and fulfilled. We might have the desire to hurt someone who has hurt us. We might want to take something that we deserve even though someone else has it. We might want to yield to pleasure because life has been so difficult and you deserve a little happiness. But we as Jesus-followers have an obligation to follow the Spirit rather than yielding to the desires of the flesh.
I think that often we find excuses for not obeying the LORD. We find the one fuzzy area and argue about topics as a way to avoid the hundreds of clear areas that call for obedience. We deflect other’s attention away from our areas of disobedience. We become sleight of hand experts, getting the focus to change in order to stay in darkness. My challenge, both for my own walk and for yours, is to obey rather than yielding.
The Arnold Journey 