All tagged desire
This morning my devotional reading was incredibly uplifting; E.M. Bounds instructed us not only on praying our personal desires, but on discerning our holy desire and dedicating ourselves to it. He made a couple of statements that I found most revealing. The first was his observation that desire "contains choice, attitude, and fire." The second was that "Serious thought, practiced before praying increases desire." Let’s dig into these two thoughts today.
04/01/2024
Passion, desire, and prayer are the topics of our devotional study this morning. In my morning reading E.M. Bounds wrote that he found them to be interrelated to one another, and he called prayer "the verbal expression of desire." He went on to say that "Without desire, prayer is a meaningless mumble of words."
Do we believe that our relationship with God is all we have of value in our lives? Have we given ourselves up completely to Him, or do we feel that we are glorious, and a bargain for God at any price? When we have the least thought that we might be of some intrinsic value or service to Him we have fallen from His hand. Only when we realize that we are nothing without Him are we of any true value to our Lord and Father.
The Lord provides for His children. Do you believe this, I mean REALLY believe this? Saying such a thing is easy when we are surrounded by the things we need, but when we are facing a time of war or famine, when we can’t see where our next meal is coming from, or drought is upon us and our mouth is parched… do we trust the Lord in such times? Are we certain of His provision? Do we listen faithfully for the sound of raven wings as they bring us sustenance, or the gushing sound as the staff of Moses draws water from the rock?
When the enemy is approaching our gates do we fret over what is about to happen, or put our trust in God? If we see wicked people prospering, and living exceptionally well, are we envious of them? Well, when we are under attack our trust needs to be in the Lord because he is our strong tower, and will defend us against all forms of evil. As for envying the treasures of the wicked, He causes them to spoil in their warehouses, and on their vines. In other words, if we fear then we have doubt and our faith is weak, and if we envy then we covet, and fall into sin. We are taught to fear only the Lord, and are commanded never to covet. This is the message in our opening scripture today, but is this how we behave in our lives?
When we first come to know Jesus, what are our desires? What is it that we want from the relationship that has drawn us to Him? When we pledge ourselves to follow Him, and go down in the waters of baptism, we begin a spiritual transformation that changes who we are, and it alters our initial desires as well. In this way, after we have walked with Jesus for a while, we find that perhaps some of our earlier wants were satisfied, but that a great many of them have fallen to the wayside… they fell victim to our change; our blossoming righteousness; our purification, and the will of God.