Desires… What a Concept!
Imagine a life without them. No craving for ice cream on a scorching summer afternoon. No longing for a cold watermelon crush when the Durban humidity is doing its absolute worst. No hot chocolate on a winter morning. No desperate desire for a shower after a workout—assuming, of course, that you first had the desire to work out.
We are creatures of desire. We want. We long. We crave. We reach. We imagine. Sometimes our desires are wonderfully ordinary. Sometimes they are deeply good. And sometimes, if we are honest, they are downright ridiculous. We can desire a job and, at the very same time, desire to sleep through the alarm. We can long for Monday to come with fresh opportunities and then, by Tuesday afternoon, passionately desire that the weekend had been extended by government decree. And then there are those desires that contradict each other entirely. We want to save money, but we also want the dress. We want to be healthy, but we also want the chips. We want to be productive, but we also want “just five more minutes.” Our hearts are busy places. Now imagine if every one of our desires was granted exactly when we wanted it, exactly how we wanted it. What a chaotic world that would be! We would have everything we wanted and, very likely, ruin ourselves with it. Thankfully, we are not God. The One who holds the power to do whatever he pleases is also good. He is kind. He is generous. He gives good gifts, but he is wise enough not to give us every desire simply because we desire it. And that’s mercy.
What do we really want?
I remember a season growing up when I had absolutely no desire to get married. Social media had already given me a very compelling theology of marriage—and I had swallowed it whole. Marriage looked exhausting. Marriage looked like losing yourself. Marriage looked like becoming somebody’s doormat. So, before I had properly opened the Bible to ask its Author what marriage was actually meant to be, I had already decided: Not for me, thank you very much. That was my desire.
Fast-forward to now—I am writing this while preparing for my wedding, which is one month away, and there is currently nothing I desire more than sleep. Just sleep. Glorious, uninterrupted, eight-hours-of-it sleep. Except even that desire is complicated because whenever I do have time to sleep, I somehow find myself wanting to plan something for the most special day of my life. My desires are fighting among themselves: “Sleep!” says one part of me. “Wedding! Flowers! Food! Seating! Everything!” says another. And therein lies the problem.
Our desires are not exactly known for their consistency. We think we know what we want until we want something else. We change like the weather, and if we are left entirely to the leadership of our desires, tranquility is hopeless. One desire pulls us one way, another pulls us in the opposite direction, and before long our hearts resemble a room full of toddlers all shouting for different things. But Scripture gives us something—or rather, Someone—far steadier than ourselves.
The God who does not change
From Genesis to Revelation, God’s desire is remarkably consistent. He desires to reveal himself. He desires to dwell with his people. He desires his glory to be known. God does not wake up one morning and think, ‘Actually, I’ve changed my mind.’ He does not have mood swings. He does not get bored. He does not discover a new version of himself. He is
not tossed around by competing desires like we are. He is unchanging. And this makes the story of Scripture so beautiful!
In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve saw, desired, and took. The fruit was pleasing to the eye. They wanted what they believed it could give them. They desired to be like God—not in holiness and righteousness, but in independence, power, and knowledge. Their desire was not merely for fruit. They desired to decide for themselves what was good. And we have been doing it ever since. We see something > we want it > we convince ourselves we need it > and then we act.
Sometimes the thing we want is objectively good. But our desires can take even good things and put them in the wrong place. Consider Uzzah in 2 Samuel 6. When the ark of the covenant began to shake, he reached out his hand to steady it. Perhaps, on the surface, it looked like a helpful thing to do. Perhaps he thought, I’m just trying to stop it from falling. But God had already given clear instructions about how the ark was to be handled. Uzzah’s ‘desire to help’ did not make his disobedience holy. And that should make us pause… Because sometimes our desires come dressed in very respectable clothing. I’m only trying to help. I just want what is fair. I’m doing this for the right reasons. Surely God understands. But underneath the respectable clothing, there may be a heart quietly saying, I know better than God. Our desires are not always innocent simply because they feel sincere. They reveal something.
The better Adam
And then Jesus comes. The second Adam enters the story and, unlike the first, perfectly desires what God desires. When tempted in the wilderness, Jesus is hungry. His desire for food is not sinful. Hunger is a good and natural desire. But Satan tempts him to satisfy that desire apart from trusting his Father. Jesus responds, again and again: “It is written.” What a beautiful contrast. Adam and Eve looked at what was desirable and said, I want it. Jesus looked at what he desired and said, but what has God said? That is the question we so often forget to ask. Not simply: “What do I want?” But: “What has God said?”
Because our desires make terrible gods. They promise happiness, but cannot guarantee it. They promise satisfaction, but always seem to whisper, just one more. They promise freedom, but can quietly become chains. Sleep promises rest. Money promises security. Romance promises belonging. Success promises significance. Food promises comfort. Control promises peace. And none of these things are necessarily bad. But anything good becomes a terrible master when we ask it to give us what only God can. So what do we do with our desires? There is nothing inherently wrong with having desires. The problem is what happens when our desires have us. The stronger a desire becomes, the more carefully we should examine it. What is it promising to deliver? What am I hoping this will give me? What am I willing to do to get it? Am I willing to disobey God to get it? And, perhaps most importantly: What does this desire reveal about what I believe will make me happy? Because desires are windows into the heart.
And our hearts are constantly being discipled by something. Right now, I desire sleep. Very deeply. But even if I get eight hours tonight, I will eventually become tired again. I will need sleep tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. There is no end to that cycle. And perhaps that is a small picture of our desires. We satisfy one, and another appears. We get the job, then desire the promotion. We get the promotion, then desire recognition. We find love, then desire security. We achieve something, then desire something bigger. We rest, then eventually desire rest again. Where does it end? It ends when Christ returns. Until then, we live with hearts that are constantly being pulled in different directions. So we
pray. We examine. We repent. We redirect. We learn to desire rightly. You know what’s funny? Desires don’t only plague our hearts when we’re old enough— even babies want things!
I recently watched my friend’s baby, and it is mind-boggling to remember that this little human has been on earth for fewer than 100 days and already has very strong opinions. She cries when she wants something. She coos when she gets it. She has desires. And yet, she wasn't in Eden when Adam and Eve saw, desired, and took. She has never read Genesis 3. And yet there is something almost comical about how naturally this pattern appears in us; we are born wanting. But watching her has also made me think about a different kind of desire. The way she looks for her mother. The way her face lights up when she sees her. That gummy little smile—working with the limited equipment currently available to her—spreading across her whole face. Who smiles with only 2 teeth? But if only I desired God like that. If only I longed for him with that kind of single-mindedness. If only my heart instinctively reached for Him the way she reaches for her mother.
Because He calls us His and He is ours— that’s the desire worth cultivating. Not a heart that stops wanting, but a heart that learns what is worth wanting. A heart that can enjoy ice cream without worshipping it. A heart that can desire marriage without making marriage its saviour. A heart that can want success without needing success to prove its worth. A heart that can enjoy sleep without believing that comfort is the ultimate good. A heart that can receive good gifts while still knowing that the Giver is better than the gift.
And perhaps this is where our desires begin to fall into place: worship. When we worship God as Creator, everything else can finally take its proper place as creation. Our loves become ordered. Our desires become examined. Our good things become gifts rather than good becoming god. Because the problem was never that we wanted. The problem was always what we wanted most. Augustine famously prayed, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Perhaps that is why we are so often tired from wanting. We keep reaching for things that were never designed to hold the weight of our deepest desires.
So, Lord, teach us to want you, to love what you love. Teach us to distrust the desires that promise us life apart from you. And when our hearts run after a thousand things, gently turn them back to the One they were made for.
“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” (Psalm 37:4)
Not because God exists to fulfill every desire we have, but because as we delight in Him, He teaches our hearts what is truly worth desiring. Oh, God, help us. Make us want you more because the problem isn't that we have desires, it’s that our desires are disordered, and only worship puts them back in their proper place.
