What Do You Want?

Learning to Want What God Wants

Wanting is not inherently wrong; what matters is the object and direction of our desires. Scripture shows that desire can lead toward sin and death or, when shaped by God’s purposes, toward action and abundant life.

• Desire itself is not the problem; the question is what we want.
• The New Testament uses desire to describe both harmful wants and good longings.
• Biblically shaped desires can become the starting point for faithful action and life.

By Mark A. Taylor

All of us know people who never stop wanting. They’re always after the next trend, the newest gadget, the latest fashion, the next promotion.

They’re like a dog chasing a porcupine. The hunt is exciting, but the catch doesn’t satisfy. And so they’re perpetually pursuing another challenge, a goal or a goodie they want even more than the last one they grabbed.

Is It Wrong to Want Something?

It’s easy to criticize people who want the wrong things. But some Christians are burdened by an unexpressed fear that it may be wrong to want anything. After all, the Bible lessons and sermons we’ve heard since childhood are replete with stories of selflessness and sacrifice. The very word desire is used most often in the New Testament when speaking of covetousness or lust.

James 1:14, 15 is a prime example. The passage warns us against a downward spiral toward ruin that begins with “evil desire.” The writer reminds us that our temptations do not originate with God but within ourselves. Once we are “dragged away” by the wrong that we want, this desire “gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”

But the Greek word translated desire sometimes denotes good wants. Jesus told the disciples he desired to eat the Passover with them (Luke 22:14). Paul told the Romans he had been longing to see them (Romans 15:23). He wrote the Philippians that to live is Christ and to die is gain and admitted that his desire was “to depart and be with Christ” (Philippians 1:23).

The Upward Path of Desire

And so it seems that the downward staircase described by James—desire, sin, death—could be matched by an upward path whose first step is also desire.

A member of a Bible class I was leading last month expressed it well. “The upward staircase could be labeled desire, action, life,” she said. She reminded me of Steven Covey’s suggested “habit” for effective people, “Begin with the end in mind.”

The problem is never the fact that I want something. We can’t stop wanting, and if we’re honest, we’ll admit that we mostly do just what we want. So the issue for me is what do I want? The challenge is learning to want what God wants.

Wanting is something to be embraced, not feared. Every year, maybe even every day could begin with the question, “What do I want?” Filtered by biblical precept and followed by a plan for action, our answers to the question can lead us toward abundant life.

Author: Mark A. Taylor

Mark A. Taylor, who served as Christian Standard editor from 2003 to 2017, retired in June 2017 after almost 41 years with Standard Publishing (Christian Standard Media).