God embeds all kinds of desires and needs in us. What a wonderful thing he’s done – intending that these desires and needs would find their joyous fulfillment in him and in what he gives. The trouble for us comes when these normal, good, needs and desires are distorted. And boy are they distorted; not because of a corrupted culture, but because of a corrupted us. As bad as we hear “the world” is, and is getting, the perverting of good urges within us will always be the worst source of mischief.
Think of yourself, and those you know, and people you see as you go thru your day. Too theoretical? OK, just watch the kids – they’re a laboratory of sin (oops, sorry, didn’t mean to say it). Behold the things that would be a behavior or attitude that you’d say should be fixed. Can you see a God-given urge or need behind each of those “problems?” Can you see the trouble that comes from insisting on the right to have that desire fulfilled, and in being obsessed with making it happen? Some of those God-given desires:
- Hunger
- Love
- Acceptance
- Intimacy
- Significance
- Justice
- Respect
- Comfort
- Rest
- Relationships
We’re human, and the distortion is gonna happen, one way or another, to some degree, with each of us. And it’s funny, too – putting up with someone whose warped desires are the same as mine is way easier than putting up with those other people who have real issues (is that just me?).
They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water – Jeremiah 2.13
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