DESIRE

Desire is a sense of longing or hoping for a person, object, or outcome. The same sense is expressed by emotions such as “craving”. When a person desires something or someone, their sense of longing is excited by the enjoyment or the thought of the item or person, and they want to take actions to obtain their goal.

James 1:15

Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.

Desire leads to Sin which leads to Death – DSD

The Lord has recently been giving me an understanding of how powerful our desires can be and where they can lead us to.  Some desire is good and He places it on our heart but some desire is of our own free will and it leads us down a path that takes us to the wrong place.

LSD is a hallucinogenic drug that effects a person and takes them on an altered path and DSD has the same effect where we are taken on an altered path from the path that the Lord has for us.

“Be holy for I am holy”

This is the path the Lord has for us and He tells us this six times in Leviticus and also once in 1 Peter 1:16.  This is the path He wants us on a holy one reflecting Him.

He wants His light shining from us so we can fully walk in His power and reflect His glory.  When we allow sin into our lives then we allow darkness to put death to His light that He would have shining from us. When we are fully light we are fully walking in Him and we are fully walking in all He has for us.  That is a healthy goal and desire.

2 Corinthians 4:6
For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

The light is meat to shine out but DSD replaces that with darkness so don’t go there with the wrong desires.  The Lord knows that the wrong desires will lead to sin and then death to this light of His. Sin takes a part of Him away as He can’t exist where sin is.

The enemy know that desire will cause death to the light so he encourages the wrong desires

Romans 7:8

But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.

The enemy will use sin to create evil desires as he knows it will lead to further sin and death.

We are shown this in the following story where we see the walk we need to take against DSD

Genesis 39:7-10

And it came to pass after these things that his master’s wife cast longing eyes on Joseph, and she said, “Lie with me.”

⁸ But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Look, my master does not know what is with me in the house, and he has committed all that he has to my hand. ⁹ There is no one greater in this house than I, nor has he kept back anything from me but you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?”

¹⁰ So it was, as she spoke to Joseph day by day, that he did not heed her, to lie with her or to be with her.

First of all we see there is sin in the master’s wife and this leads to evil desire on her part. Without the Lord this path is easy to go down.

But we are shown the alternative for our walk through Joseph’s stance.

Here is Joseph a young single guy being propositioned by his master’s wife who I am sure was an attractive woman.

If Joseph had the wrong desire here then he could have easily sinned and this would have altered the path the Lord had for him.  I am sure it would have not only lead to a physical death (punishment for a slave) but also a step closer to a spiritual death with the father.

God wants us on His path and to do this we must be holy and we must have a heart for Him. Joseph had God in His heart so had a foundation for the right desires and actions. Remember in the opening definition above of desire that desire leads to action.
2 Corinthians 5:4

For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life.
We want to be holy and we don’t want the burden of sin. We hunger for Him to be fully in us.  No darkness only light.

If we let our desires such as greed, covetousness, lust etc. rule us then it will lead to sin and then death. We are being asked to be strong like Joseph and to avoid these desires.  Jesus gave us the example of where He was subjected to every temptation on earth but He didn’t go down that path.  Wrong desires leads to action and that action is sin.
Genesis 4:7

If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”
God laid out from the beginning with Cain this trap that existed.

He doesn’t want us to go down into the trap of sin.  If we are holy as He is holy then our desires reflect His desires and not the desires that come from sin.

But He expects us to rule over our desires to choose the Godly desires and not the sinful desires. He shows us in in His instruction to Cain that we can overrule sinful desires.  Jesus taught us this as well.  It is an expectation He has of us.

Psalm 51:11
Do not cast me away from Your presence,

And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

We don’t want to be out of His presence, we don’t want to be in darkness but instead we want to be in the light and in His kingdom.

Romans 6:15-18

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! ¹⁶ Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? ¹⁷ But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. ¹⁸ And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

The Lord tells us here that there is a way to have our desires aligned with Him.  Let our heart reflect Him.

When our thoughts go down the path of desire let it be His desires.  If our desires are going down the wrong path then look to stop those desires as early as possible by reflecting on Him.  What can start as littles foxes in the den can end up causing us major sin problems and then we die to His darkness and all He has for us.

As we head into 2020 He wants to bless us and He will highlight those things in your life that will cause darkness and stop the full abundance of what He has for us.

Be focussed on Him, and let our hearts desires be for Him and kill the sinful desires.

Proverbs 23:7

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.

 

Remember as you walk

James 1:15

Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.

 

But we can rule over our sinful desires.

Be a ruler in 2020 not a slave.