Quotes about Desire

But it would be a great mistake to think that the awakening of desire for the Bridegroom would produce a wave of monastic withdrawal into the fasting and prayer of passive waiting. That is not what the awakening of desire for Christ would produce. It would produce a radical, new commitment to complete the task of world evangelization, no matter what the cost. And fasting would not become a pacifistic discipline for private hopes, but a fearsome missionary weapon in the fight of faith.

God created us with sexual passion so that there would be language to describe what it means to cleave to him in love and what it means to turn away from him to others.

Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God. No one sins out of duty. We sin because it holds out some promise of happiness. That promise enslaves us until we believe that God is more to be desired than life itself (Psalm 63:3).

What masters us has become our god; and Paul warns us about those whose "god is their belly" (Philippi- ans 3:19).

If we only trust Christ to give us gifts and not himself as the all-satisfying gift, then we do not trust him in a way that honors him as our treasure. We simply honor the gifts. They are what we really want, not him.

God is not worshiped where He is not treasured and enjoyed.

The final answer is that God rewards fasting because fasting expresses the cry of the heart that nothing on the earth can satisfy our souls besides God. God must reward this cry because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Desire for and delight in God's Word are inseparable.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

We desire the wrong things, and we desire right things in the wrong way. And both are deadly—like eating pleasant poison.

We should waken to the truth that it is a treacherous sin not to pursue our fullest satisfaction in God.

If we desire that there be no boasting except in the cross, then we must live near the cross-indeed we must live on the cross.