Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for
they shall be filled. Matthew 5:6
Unsanctified desire will stop the
growth of any Chris tian life and conversely, purified desires will tend towards
righteousness by a kind of gentle moral gravitation.
In the moral world, right desires
tend toward life and evil ones toward death-that in essence is the scriptural teaching
on this subject!
Whatever a man wants badly enough
and persistently enough will determine the man's character.
Wrong desire perverts the moral
judgment so that we are unable to appraise the desired object at its real
value. However we try, still a thing looks morally better because we want it.
For that reason, our heart is often our worst counselor, for if it is filled
with desire it may give us bad advice, pleading the purity of something that is
in itself anything but pure!
When our dominant desires are bad
the whole life is bad as a consequence. When the desires are good the life
comes up to the level of our desires, provided that we have within us the
enabling Spirit.
At the root of all true spiritual
growth is a set of right and sanctified desires. The whole Bible teaches that we
can have whatever we want badly enough if, it hardly need be said, our desire
is according to the will of God!
The desire after God and holiness
is back of all real spirituality, and when that desire becomes dominant in the
life nothing can prevent us from having what we want. The longing cry of the
God-hungry soul can only be, "Oh, to be like Thee!"
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