Coming to grips with the fact that your desires are too weak.
To be a Christian is by nature to be in a struggle. Many time I hear Christian’s lament the fact that they struggle constantly with sin. This should be a cause for great thanksgiving. The fact that you are struggling is an evidence of grace. Pity the poor souls who have quit struggling and who have just given up.
One of the most clever tactics that Satan employs is that of distraction. He makes you think that the very tool that God can use for your sanctification is somehow dirty and shameful at best or irredeemable at worst. This is certainly true of desire.
Desire is an affection that was created by God. He put it in our hearts as a compass to point to Him. Satan’s PR machine however has hijacked this affection and has effectively equated it with everything from pornography to eating that third piece of cheesecake. I began to see through Stan’s sham when I read a quote from my old friend the gentleman pictured here on the left: C.S. Lewis.
Jack, as he was affectionately known, was a great thinker and exposer of Satan’s tactics. One of his books that exposes Satan more than any other is an easy read entitled, The Screwtape Letters. It was, however, in another of his works entitled, The Weight of Glory and Other Essays in which he addressed our topic of weak desires:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Since I first read this, my prayer has been for strong desires. Desires so strong, in fact, that only He can satisfy them. This has changed not only my perspective of desires but my perspective of the overwhelming desirability of God.
Are you struggling with habitual sins? Do you fret that your desires are too strong? Not so my friend, they are way too weak.
I never thought of this before,isn’t is amazing how easily we let Satan deceive us!!!