Reflections on Patience Covetousness and Desires

OK, Here's the deal, one night I was really awake but didn't want to waste my night watching TV, so I grabbed my phone and picked a topic to write on. I tried to post this from my phone but it wouldn't let me do it. So I sent an email to myself via my text messaging on my phone and then copied it to the blog (I didn't even know I could do that!) Remember this is late night theology, and I was typing on a cell phone, so take everything I write with a grain of salt, which most of you do anyway.

Sometimes I wonder why God must continue to teach me patience. But then I again come to the realization that what I want Him to do right now, I tend to want more than I want God Himself. I want the gift more than the giver. It is not always so much that He wants patience from me as much as He wants me to desire Him and a relationship with Him more than that thing which I may be waiting for. Patience then, is not the ultimate, be all, end all goal. The goal is a deep, thriving, ever widening and pervasive relationship with Christ. Patience is not an end, but a means to a greater end. For me to want something and be patient for it is not bad in and of itself, it is the wanting of something in a timeframe which demands it before or more necessarily or forcefully than God Himself. I have heard covetousness defined as, "a desire for something or someone that God has not provided," but with all due respect to the author of that particular definition, I would disagree. What God has not provided may not be in itself a bad thing, and for me to want something that God has not provided is not the sin of covetousness. When my desire for that which is being denied me becomes larger and bigger than my desire for God and my willingness to seek things through the processes that He has set up, or to desire something that God will in fact never provide, it at that point becomes the sin of covetousness or impatience. Nor do I think that covetousness can be fully separated from impatience. We must give freedom where freedom is due. To desire something that God has not provided us is not necessarily sin, for that would deny us the motivation of such things as rightfully longing for heaven, longing for a wife or kids, or longing to do or seek any of the good things that God has not provided. It is dangerous to make such a blanket statement about our desires. Has not God given them to us for a reason? Does He intend for us to blindly forsake all our desires as being utterly sinful? Do we rip the scripture of our "heart being deceitful above all things" out of context and use it as an easy way out of self control, or use it to control people, making them deny any desire straight away? How then would we be able to really enjoy the reality and newness of anything if we first did not allow ourselves to want and desire it? So, it seems that covetousness and impatience revolve less around the desires themselves and more around our responses and thoughts about those desires. We cannot and should not take the gift of our desires and wants and throw them all completely out because they many times lead is to make unwise and sinful choices, as if declaring, "You should always doubt your feelings," or, "Repent and get rid of them, because they cause you to make bad choices.". If that were the case, I would need to get rid of all my friends, Christian and non, for the very same reason. No, I would ponder and suggest that we reform our view of our unfulfilled desires and longings. We must come to a conclusion that is both far from denying our desires and far from rushing headlong into them without regard to the will of God. Desires and longings, and I would even include those longings that are for something that God will never provide, are still given and or allowed by a loving God who desires obedience that springs form the entire person, intellect, emotion, and will. Emotions, wants and desires are a gift. First, longings for something that God will never give us are a gift because they ought quickly remind us that we are searching for something that we don't think God can fulfill, whether we consciously admit it or not. It reveals a wrong view of God, a God who we deem as inadequate to fulfill all of our needs, as we by our desires seem to be convinced of this kind of God. Hence the reason we are seeking fulfillment outside of God. This gets right at the root of much of both our impatience and covetousness. We have a false view of who God really is. So when we have those desires for the things that God won't fulfill, ever, we must be desiring something that we, by the providence and decision of God, never really will need and the desire for that should prompt us not to deny the desire, but to embrace it as a grace to think and find out what it is that we are missing in our view of God that is creating this particular longing or desire. An outright rejection of acting on this longing may be necessary in a lot of cases, but should never be the last step. It must make us seek the character and the person of Christ to find out why we had this particular want or longing, and most often it is for the express purpose of coming to a better view of who God is and to find that the root longing can and should really be fulfilled only by God Himself. Therefore a desire for something that God will not give to us, is a desire that is longing to be fulfilled outside of God. If we blindly sweep this kind of desire under the carpet, The desire will remain unfulfilled and unchanged. This desire will continue to come back up, like a lie that will always come out. This is a dangerous (and may I say slightly prideful) way of life. Thinking we can manage our desires on our own. We cannot rely on our own grit and determination to deny our wrong desires, but we must bring them to God to let Him transform both our desires and we ourselves. God allows that desire in our lives to bring it to Him, so that in whatever way it needs to be changed by the will of God it can be changed and then ALSO fulfilled. It is the difference between DENYING our desires and letting God TRANSFORM our desires. This is, I think, the reason why many people see God as a cosmic killjoy, because they have been told for so long that they have to deny their desires, period, no questions. Rather than denying their desires in such a way, and long enough to let God transform it into something that spurs us on toward a deeper relationship with Him. Second, then, are the longings that God has not YET fulfilled. These may be wants that God has the capacity to fill, and someday may fill, but by his will has not acted in such a way as to bring to fruition that need or want at the present moment. The answer here is not to squelch or hold down that desire, but let it come to the surface in order to be tested and refined by God. As I mentioned before, this want for something that has been denied is a gift of grace from God. Without Him allowing, or even prompting us to want certain things that we can't have right now, (or even ever) we would never be in a position where we could bring God a great amount of glory. What I mean is this: If God existed as the only option of things to want and desire, it would not leave us much of a choice as to what to choose? It wouldn't make for a very joyful or willing choice on our behalf, that is for certain. It would make for a fate type religious roboticism. Don't get me wrong, I do not want to exalt human choice as that which is above the providence of God, nor do I feel I have to because of my view on this. It does though all the more reflect the fact that God is not at all threatened by the other things that may lure us away from Him, but is convinced and knows us well enough to know that in our choosing we will consciously have to think about the reality of His supremacy and grace for providing an option in Himself that does not, unlike everything of the world, pale in comparison to the One that made it. It is only in this way that we would ever really realize that the things that we want FROM Him, the things that we want that only He can give, are the very things that are put in our lives specifically to lead us TO Him. All in all, then, our desires for the things that require patience because they can only come from Him, are of great reason to praise God. We can now praise Him for His wisdom rather than be frustrated and rebel against Him because we don't always get what we want, and to praise Him again that He doesn't just turn over to us those things that we might both need and/or want without Him showing us again our need for a deeper all consuming relationship with Him. Him knowing better than we often do that knowing Him better and more fully is always our greatest good and should be our greatest want and desire as well.

Thanks for listening, This has been Late Night Theology with Pastor Steven
(Wow that sounds strange!)