God's Desire In Us
Heart Ring of Fire
Is Desire Good or Bad?
Ever since I came to the Lord many moons ago and I learnt the Christian lingo, there was the unspoken thought patterns about words and their good or evil meanings that I picked up. Being a man that had his own struggles with sin and trying to get a Christian grip on things I leaned toward the negative side of the word passion and the word desire. To me they just mostly fit into the category of sin.
I finally overcame my one sided view of passion as I came to understand passion for God and passion to do His will.
My struggle with the word desire was harder to transform because desire seemed to lead so many of us into sinful feelings and actions.
The Lord has finally made a breakthrough in my heart and mind concerning the understanding of desire and its kindred, passion.
Fire in His eyes
The Fire of Purity, Desire and Passion
Fire in His eyes. This is a phrase used in the book of Revelation and has a depth of understanding contained in the word 'fire'. I have heard that this meant that our Lord was pure in heart. No doubt this is true. The fire of God is an all consuming fire and will purge any unholy emotion from your vessel. Thus the phrase 'purified by fire'.
The other thing about fire is its progressiveness, or hungry to spread or change things.
Mankind has learned to harness the fire that comes from our sun for useful purposes. He has learned to harness electricity in the same kind of what. I am convinced that nothing lives without fire. Us, our homes, our cars, our planet, nature, etc.. Literally everything lives on fire. Fire causes growth.
The progressive nature of fire can be called 'desire'. Desire causes movement.
Burning Desire
When Passion Came Back to Life
I went through what I call a renewal in 1996 which lasted for more than four years. So much changed in my thinking and actions that the year 1997 seemed to be a five year period. I would look back to things that had happened or changed and would say to myself ‘that was earlier this year?’
One of the experiences that I had was out in my prayer field taking to the Lord about the things He was showing me. I symbolically reached out my hand and said ‘Holy Spirit I want to take your hand so you can lead me’.
As I did this it was like Holy Spirit literally grabbed my hand because what I felt shocked me or scared me so much that I withdrew my hand.
It was like for a second I held the hand of unhindered ambition, pure energy, undaunted willingness, and an eagerness I had never experienced. It was like I touched uncontrolled fire. It was as if there was a body of fire holding my hand. This being was ‘Ready Freddie’ so to speak as to the doing of the will of God on earth.
What I immediately knew was that I was not as ready to follow Holy Spirit with all my heart like I thought I was.
I felt that if I didn’t let go, He might pull my arm off because He was moving out and I mean right now! I was holding the hand of pure desire.
As understanding came to me over the next few years I came to see that Life, Light, Fire, Love and Desire now mean the same thing to me. They describe God.
Our God is a consuming fire. I had held hands with ‘pure desire’.
The scriptures say we are the light of the world, and that we should not cover our light. I’ve come to realize that covering your light is a dangerous thing. When you allow opinions of others, circumstances, your past, your own view of yourself, shame, guilt, inadequacies, or any thing else that is not the conviction of Holy Spirit to cap your life, it will lead you to sin.
The Greek word translated sin means ‘missing the mark, and not share in the prize’.
When Desire is Quenched
Uncover Your Desire
Let me paint a picture to help you understand this. Imagine a fire (which is what all light is) that is roaring good and strong, flames leaping high and unhindered toward the sky and then someone places a piece of metal over it. This metal is not large enough to put out the fire (but eventually could) but its too thick for the fire to melt or burn through. You got it in your mind? So where does the fire go now that there is a block over its natural expression of burning. It don’t go out, at least not yet. The flames leap out the sides and look for any way to continue to exist.
Now lets look at you, the vessel of His fire. You were created in the image of God and with His likeness out of the earth, then He breathed into your nostrils the breath of life (fire, passion, desire etc. of God) and man became a living being. Mankind was created to carry the passion of God. Man became a pure desire being. There was no fault in him. God gave Him dominion of the earth and some instructions and basically said ‘have at it, do what you want to’ and man started by naming all the animals as God brought them to him. Adam was free to express himself as he pleased, he was not under a harsh hand. There was no metal covering his fire.
When satan came and placed the lie into the womb of Adam(the woman) both male and female ate. What satan placed was an accusation against their Creator, which immediately cause their view of God to change. The fruit of this lie also caused their view of themselves to change. They felt ashamed and condemned, which happened even before the presence of the Lord showed up to fellowship with them.
Their desire did not go out, it was just blocked by a ‘lie’ that said ‘you can not have or do what you want anymore’and ‘your not pure now’. This lie caused them to shrink back and hide from God.
Thus sin began. The desire inside of them was now missing the mark of pure expression and love for their Creator. Every thing they did while under guilt produced sin. The more they tried to quench their desire, the sicker they became, 'dying you will die'.
Jesus was sent to remove (destroy) the works of the devil. He was sent to undue the ‘lie’ against God and to remove the fruit of that lie in man if we will let Him by changing the way we think. He was sent to remove the piece of metal from off our ‘desire of God’, our light. The life of God that we were given to have life and have it more abundantly. Understand that I not only mean our desire for God, but God's desire freely burning through us.
The more you believe that your sins have been forgiven and that the shame has been removed, the less you will sin. Your desire will not be misdirected by a lie against your Father or yourself. Gods will is to promote you, not hold you back.
So as you yield to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, don’t let your fire be ‘covered, smothered, chopped or diced’. Walk in pure holy desire.