From Julie:
Throughout my life, and especially when I was single, I sometimes bought into some of Satan’s favorite lies: If you live your life God’s way, you’re going to have to give up everything you love and want. You might as well kiss your desires goodbye—maybe for good! This world is your one chance to really experience life, but if you live in obedience to God, you’re totally going to miss out!
Have you ever had these thoughts? Have they ever enticed you into taking matters into your own hands, and maybe even plunged you into sin while trying to get in on your “one shot” to experience the elusive life you’ve dreamed about?
Here are a few truths that Satan doesn’t want you to know—truths that will help you understand that waiting for God and doing life His way is not losing out on once in a lifetime opportunities, but resurrecting them for later! Say these out loud…
God made me, desires and all. You and I are made in God’s own image. There is not one person who has ever lived who did not have certain sinless longings and desires—even Jesus. Our core desires are a reflection of the desire in the One who formed us (Jeremiah 1:5, Romans 8:5).
My core desires are not wrong. Sinful desires arise out the mishandling of the core desires we were created with. Core desires might include desire for companionship (friends or life mate), belonging, security, purpose, and physical appetites including hunger and sexual desires. What we do with our desires is what makes all the difference. Acting out on them God’s way and in God’s time brings life and peace. Acting out on them the world’s way brings death and despair (Isaiah 55:2).
Jesus is not asking me to give up my righteous desires forever. He asks each of us in different circumstances to delay some of our desires until the proper time for them to be fulfilled. We all have delayed desires (sometimes we errantly think of them as lost dreams) in this world. Fulfillment for our desires might be in this life, or it might be in the coming resurrected life (Matthew 19:29).
Jesus wants to be the fulfillment of my deepest desires now. The problem is that, because of sin and the fall, none of us can ever find total, lasting satisfaction in the things of this world (people or things), despite our illusions to the contrary. Seeking after these things leads to sin and does not satisfy permanently, but instead only brings more emptiness and longing in the end. On the other hand, cultivating a “romance” with Jesus as our greatest love affair in this life will not necessarily eradicate our other desires, but it will pale them in comparison. In His love, we will find strength to live above all our unmet desires in the here and now (Psalm 145:16, Isaiah 30:18). Learn more about how to cultivate this kind of relationship with Jesus here.
This world is not my home. This is the single most revolutionizing thought in all my adult life. We live like this brief existence in this world is our true home, forgetting that this is only a stay in a temporary “hotel room.” Why not hold our desires here with an open hand, realizing that there is lasting and better fulfillment just around the corner?
Jesus is my true home. Living with Him in person someday, we will experience the satisfying fulfillment of all our many desires. In fact, our future life with Jesus (new earth) will not be the absence of desires, but the continuous fulfillment of them (Psalm 37:4, Revelation 22:2).
Remember, by following Jesus, even if He asks you to give up a few dreams and desires here (which is no less than He did for you), you are not missing out a bit. According to His Word (Matthew 19:29), you are setting yourself up for 100 times as many blessings in the next resurrected life just by practicing a little delayed gratification! "
In the mean time, take heart as you consider His love and provision for you in your short stay in this world: “And the LORD will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; And you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail” (Isaiah 58:11).