Identity Thief Series

I think we have all been there at some point in our lives. We wrestle with our desires and we don’t really talk much about desire in the church. Think about it, we never really have. When we read and understand the religious world that Jesus was born into we see that the religious of his day were practicing a very soul killing spirituality, a lifeless religion that was all about duty and obligation. They had abandoned desire and replaced it with knowledge and performance as the key to life. We have followed suit. There was no life in it then. There still isn’t. In fact, over time it kills our souls.

So what has happened to the dreams and desires of our hearts? We have abandoned them. I am convinced that we don’t dream enough as followers of Jesus. Churches don’t dream big dreams either. We don’t desire, we simply try to survive. One of the things that I love the most about the 50 or so core people who are still here at DCC who were here when I arrived 8 years ago is that despite all the challenges and hardships along the way they never let go of their dream that God wanted to do big things through Discovery Church. They held on to desire. What has happened to the desires of our hearts. Unfortunately, I think we have concluded that all our desires really do is get us into trouble, so the only answer is to ignore, abandon, dismiss or even kill or destroy them. That’s not God’s plan.

ILLUST> One of the most painful conversations I have ever had in my life came about 2 months after I crashed and burned in ministry over a decade ago now. If you don’t know my story it’s brutal. I had an affair as a pastor and resigned from the church I was leading. Stacy my wife stayed with me, she’s the hero of the story. When that happened my dad had passed away a few years before and that the thought of telling my widowed mom killed me. I couldn’t do it. I don’t know how she didn’t find out but she didn’t until she read a letter that I had written here. She immediately called me. After asking if Stacy and the girls were okay she said something that I will never forget. You should have never been on the stage, in the spotlight, or an upfront leader in the first place, you can’t handle that. My desire for that was wrong, it was bad, it was misplaced. That was years ago, she didn’t intend to hurt me, she is proud of me today, but the only thing I heard in that moment was that my desire was bad and should be destroyed. God wasn’t in that.

The last thing our enemy wants is for us to step into and live out of the desires of our hearts, he sees who we could become and fears that. If he can’t kill it, he will attempt to seduce it, divert it, and trap it somewhere where it will never be set free in addictions like food, work, sex, alcohol, drugs, pornography. Why? Because he knows that if desire is unleashed in our lives it will lead us directly to God, the life he has for us, and the into the difference that he created us to make in the world around us. I love what John Eldredge says in his book Desire, you have to read it, our desire reveals our design and our design reveals our destiny. The invitation of Jesus is for us to be people of passion who don’t ignore or destroy but learn to live out of the deep desires of our heart. What have we done with the deep desires of our hearts? So things are not looking good for the son, let’s keep reading…