Like a child with a loaded gun or a teenager behind the wheel of a sports car, so are our unchecked desires! Our desires have enormous power to fuel us in or out of godliness. As powerful and risky as they are, our desires are given by God as a gift to us and they are our secret weapon! 

If we are able to understand ourselves separate from the enemies influence and temptation, as God created us, then we can discern and choose accordingly. Our now inner struggle is between our fallen desires (which acts and smells a lot like you know who) and our godly desires (which originated in and are like our holy and good God)! 

The Bible categorizes our desires into three categories, however we are most familiar with their fallen description as the lust of the flesh, lust of the eye and the pride of life – the root of all fallen desires is to covet for self.

The Hebrew word ratson means desire which is synonymous with will, more particularly good-will or good-desire. It is from the root word twot, meaning to delight in desire. To the point, our will is rooted in our desires. 

Science can tell us exactly what happens in our physiological bodies when an electrical charge is generated (where thought and action begin), but it cannot tell us where the spark of that electrical charge comes from. Friend, those sparks are our deepest desires! 

Interestingly enough, our physiological brain sorts our sparks of desire into three different regions of our brain: the neo (new) cortex (which is the highest and most refined part of the brain, processing intellect, creativity, motivation and task), the limbic (which is the intermediate part of the brain, processing emotion and memory) and finally the reptilian, yes, you read that correctly, reptilian (which is the lowest part of our brain, which acts and reacts to preserve self, more particularly, the unregenerate self – it is our most primeval instincts to survival).

God’s Creation was pristinely good and beautiful before the fall and we were created to both interpret and experience His beauty and pleasure. We were authorized to live within ordained desires which included the desires of our bodies (eating, drinking and sexual), the desires of our eye (to enjoy and interpret beauty), and the desire to glorify (to glorify God as we ruled with Him in our very special echad).  Remember, we are the only ones in His Creation authorized to bear His Image, to showcase Who He Is and what His desired will is in the earth. We are some of The One - we were created as an ordained someone to glorify The One and act as one in God’s glorious echad!

Temptation has been defined as that which excites a present desire. So often we think the enemy will tempt us with the “biggies,” like smokin’, spittin’, drinkin’, cussin’ and fornicatin’ – and somehow if we are not doing those then we are not being tempted – wrong! The enemy will tempt both the good and bad desires of our own heart as an effort to hijack God’s intended and ordained identity in us! The very axis of temptation is sheer raw desire, our desire – and we get to choose!

Our godly desires are jewels to be mined, refined and carefully guarded! We must unearth them from the depths below and go through a divisionary process, sorting our true and godly desires (good) from our fallen lustful desires (evil) and freely invite and unite with the nuclear force of the Holy Spirit! Holiness is not “prude” or an “insatiate experience” – the opposite is true!

The blushing intimacies exchanged between God and His people that are illustrated in the Song of Solomon are our future with the coming King – if we so choose! Let’s not let the enemy hijack our desires and reduce us to mere lust and pride. No Beloved, we have full permission to own our true and godly desires, unite them, by conscious choices, to their original Godly Source, Jesus Himself, making His desires our own. Guaranteed, we’ll enjoy the realm of good and holy!