Does desire really follow duty?

For some time I have understood that, when it comes to self-discipline, there are two types of people in the church: those who can and those who can't. I'm definitely one of the latter! Before I started to understand the implications of the gospel on every day life I used to beat myself up thinking I'd be never be a 'good' Christian like those organised folks. I think I knew that it was a motivational issue but my understanding of the Gospel was so limited that I didn't realise that it was the only God-given power to motivate me. When discussing this with other Christians who seemed so much better organised and committed than me I'd often be given the advice that "desire follows duty". In other words buckle-down and do your duty then you'll get the desire to do it! This felt like telling me that the way I could jump ten feet in the air is to jump ten feet in the air! I didn't know what to say at the time, but now I do: Rubbish! This is to get it exactly the wrong way round. The biblical way is always "duty follows desire".

The question we should ask is not, what duty do I need to perform, but how does my heart get so transformed that my greatest desire is to serve and glorify God? To answer this we need to start by recognising that we are born to worship. If we don't worship God, we will make our own 'idols' to worship. An idol is anything which we think we have to have in order to feel satisfied/accepted/valued. So, if we lack the desire to live the way God calls us to its because we have other desires which we love more than Him. Therefore the only way our hearts will be transformed is when we see the futility of chasing after our idols and see God as more desirable. How do we do that? Through the Gospel. The gospel reminds us of God's great love for us in dying in our place. It reminds us of His faithfulness and mercy and of our unconditional acceptance and adoption as His son or daughter and of our hope in Him that will never perish or fade. Transformation has two sides to it: we root out our idols and we replace them with love for Christ. To paraphrase Thomas Chalmers in his expulsive power of a new affection, the only way our hearts will relinquish their idols is when they are replaced by a greater love. A love born out of a deepening undertanding of the depths of our sin and the riches of His grace. So, in answer to the original question, in the words of Jonathan Dodson :
"until we clear the shelf of our hearts of subtle idolatries, discipline will not give way to desire".

What about you? What are you chasing after?
May Jesus be the treasure of your heart.

They call me the seeker

We are all seekers. We seek and strive after many things: pleasure and happiness, peace and security, contentment and fulfilment, comfort and prosperity, self-worth, meaning and purpose. Though we might not recognise it as such, a desire to be free of any guilt and to avoid the consequences of our mistakes is also at the heart of much of what we do. We may seek in different places and in different ways but, to differing degrees, deep down we all seek the same things. That’s because we’re all made with the same deep needs. But most importantly of all, we were made to know God.

Though we may try to satisfy many of these needs with the material things and pleasures of this world, in time we realise that they never bring lasting satisfaction. And so we are always seeking the next experience, the next thrill, the next possession, the next accomplishment, thinking that perhaps that will satisfy our needs. As some come to realise the hopelessness of this cycle they become very cynical and bitter. At some point everyone turns to ponder matters of eternity. Perhaps there is a God? Perhaps I can please Him?

The fact that we are all groping after similar things and that all of us, at some point, pause to consider such things as whether there is a “god”, whether there be life after death and so on leads some to conclude that all roads lead to ‘god’ in the end. There does seem to be an increasing dissatisfaction with the drudgery and materialism of this world. People want something deeper. They seek spiritual encounters and experiences but there are so many forms of religion and spirituality to choose from!

For some what matters is experience (does it feel good?) or practicality (does it work?). Whether it’s ultimately true doesn’t really come in to it. For others what matters is not so much experience or practicality but knowledge and truth. But if our deepest needs are to be truly met we must know that it is both true and that it ‘works’.

Yet a problem still remains. What ‘works’ in the short term may not work in the long run. What we need is ultimate truth that will stand the test of time and meet the longings of our hearts. Such truth can only be found in a person: Jesus Christ, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

The story of my life in verse

I have chased fortunes
And pleasures, its true.
But deep down my searching
Was searching for You.
I don't need fame,
Or a gadget-filled life,
But I need Your love,
More than food to survive.

Do you have an image problem?

In Fight Clubs: Gospel-Centred Discipleship (The Resurgence. 2009), Jonathan Dodson writes:

"All too often, our online identity is very different from our offline identity. Our Facebook status projects what we want others to think of us, not who we truly are. Our blog posts are shrouded in airs of intellectualism or edginess. We all face the temptation to project a false image of ourselves because we find the real image inadequate. If we are honest, the real image is nowhere near as attractive as we want it to be. We want to be more beautiful, more successful, more creative, more virtuous, more popular, and more intelligent than we actually are. We all have an image problem. The problem, however, is not that we lack beauty, success, creativity, virtue, popularity, or intelligence. The problem is that we believe the lie that obtaining those images will actually make us complete, happy, and content people."

Having believed the lie, we endlessly exert ourselves trying to create and preserve the image we want others to see. But all the while we remain unsatisfied. Our deepest needs go unmet. The irony is that Christianity is also about image and identity. But it teaches that we are made in the image of God, designed to find our identity in Him. We have all failed to live in line with what God created us for yet in His great love for us God does not cast us into hell. Instead Jesus willingly suffers in our place and God raises Him from the dead so that, through faith in Him, we can be forgiven and given a new identity in Christ Jesus.

When we trust our lives to Jesus we are freed from the endless cycle of trying to impress others because Jesus has impressed God on our behalf. As Dodson says: "I can tell people my sins because my identity doesn’t hang on what they think of me. I can be an imperfect Christian because I cling to a perfect Christ".