What do you want most?
The longer I follow Jesus and try to help others do the same the more I’m convinced everything comes down to desire.
What do you want?
Now, I believe the ultimate answer to that question is the same for everyone: God. What we all want most is God. All other wants are manifestations of that want or misplaced alternatives for it.
But simply affirming that theoretically (or theologically) doesn’t mean much when it comes time to make a decision. For instance, if given the choice between having a steady, high-paying job that affords you a comfortable life but doesn’t foster any real intimacy with or trust in God or losing your job for a season, struggling to pay your bills, and worrying about your future but finally coming to the end of yourself and experiencing the presence and grace of God in profound ways, which would you choose?
Most people I know (myself included if I’m being ruthlessly honest) would choose the former. We’re like the religious leaders about whom Jesus said, quoting the prophet Isaiah, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”[1]
We might say we want God, but we routinely choose that which makes God less necessary in our lives.
Again from Isaiah, the people to whom he was called to speak did not want their seers to be honest with them or for their prophets to tell them what God really thinks.[2]
Why? Because the truth would disrupt the lives they’d built. Jesus recognized the same was true for many of the people he spoke to, which may be why he taught in parables.
We are desiring creatures. Everything we do, we do for want of something. That is not a bad thing. That is by God’s design. The problem, says James, is that our desires can be hijacked and our allegiances compromised.[3]
What we most want is intimacy with God but it’s easy in our world for that desire to be hijacked by substitutes until we’ve built an entire life of affirming with our mouths that God is the most important “thing” to us when the hard truth is that most of us would rather have stuff without God than God without stuff.
And in my experience, that only changes with experience. What I mean is only when the scaffolding of your life without God has been taken down—you lose a job, your marriage is about to end, you’re struggling with a child, you get that diagnosis—and you finally begin to come to terms with the truth that all you are is a naked soul before a loving God, helpless, utterly dependent, and you experience God’s presence and grace do you begin to want God more than other things.
You have to experience God to want God. Put more strongly, to experience God is to want God. If you don’t want God, you haven’t yet experienced God. For many, God is more an idea than a person and so long as God is an idea, God can be unwanted, or at least not chosen.
Unfortunately, where we are most likely to experience God is in our suffering and loss, which we spend most of our time, energy, and talents trying to avoid. I’m not suggesting we should manufacture struggle to invite God’s presence. Faith is not a séance. But I am saying we shouldn’t work so hard to avoid struggle either. Hard times will come. As Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.” But he also said that we can “take heart” in those times of trouble because he has overcome the world.[4]
And once you’ve experienced the truth of that claim in your inner being because God has met you in your time of need, you’ll begin to want God more authentically.
Everything in this life comes down to desire. What do you most want?
[1] Mt 15:8
[2] Is 30:10
[3] Jm 1:14
[4] Jn 16:33
What do you want?
Now, I believe the ultimate answer to that question is the same for everyone: God. What we all want most is God. All other wants are manifestations of that want or misplaced alternatives for it.
But simply affirming that theoretically (or theologically) doesn’t mean much when it comes time to make a decision. For instance, if given the choice between having a steady, high-paying job that affords you a comfortable life but doesn’t foster any real intimacy with or trust in God or losing your job for a season, struggling to pay your bills, and worrying about your future but finally coming to the end of yourself and experiencing the presence and grace of God in profound ways, which would you choose?
Most people I know (myself included if I’m being ruthlessly honest) would choose the former. We’re like the religious leaders about whom Jesus said, quoting the prophet Isaiah, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”[1]
We might say we want God, but we routinely choose that which makes God less necessary in our lives.
Again from Isaiah, the people to whom he was called to speak did not want their seers to be honest with them or for their prophets to tell them what God really thinks.[2]
Why? Because the truth would disrupt the lives they’d built. Jesus recognized the same was true for many of the people he spoke to, which may be why he taught in parables.
We are desiring creatures. Everything we do, we do for want of something. That is not a bad thing. That is by God’s design. The problem, says James, is that our desires can be hijacked and our allegiances compromised.[3]
What we most want is intimacy with God but it’s easy in our world for that desire to be hijacked by substitutes until we’ve built an entire life of affirming with our mouths that God is the most important “thing” to us when the hard truth is that most of us would rather have stuff without God than God without stuff.
And in my experience, that only changes with experience. What I mean is only when the scaffolding of your life without God has been taken down—you lose a job, your marriage is about to end, you’re struggling with a child, you get that diagnosis—and you finally begin to come to terms with the truth that all you are is a naked soul before a loving God, helpless, utterly dependent, and you experience God’s presence and grace do you begin to want God more than other things.
You have to experience God to want God. Put more strongly, to experience God is to want God. If you don’t want God, you haven’t yet experienced God. For many, God is more an idea than a person and so long as God is an idea, God can be unwanted, or at least not chosen.
Unfortunately, where we are most likely to experience God is in our suffering and loss, which we spend most of our time, energy, and talents trying to avoid. I’m not suggesting we should manufacture struggle to invite God’s presence. Faith is not a séance. But I am saying we shouldn’t work so hard to avoid struggle either. Hard times will come. As Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.” But he also said that we can “take heart” in those times of trouble because he has overcome the world.[4]
And once you’ve experienced the truth of that claim in your inner being because God has met you in your time of need, you’ll begin to want God more authentically.
Everything in this life comes down to desire. What do you most want?
[1] Mt 15:8
[2] Is 30:10
[3] Jm 1:14
[4] Jn 16:33
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