20. Help Me Not to Want So Much
20
Help Me Not to Want So Much
Who of us has not known the pitched battle between the thirst for God and all that God wants for us—thirst like that of a hunted deer, gasping for the waterbrooks—and our very human, very earthy desires? As long as we live in this body of flesh and blood and passion, most of us will wrestle with these conflicting wants.
“My desire is to do thy will, O God, and thy law is in my heart” (Ps. 40:8 NEB) is our true prayer, yet we are simultaneously aware of many other desires. Once we have tasted the goodness of the Lord, our desire for Him is whetted. Once we have tasted the pleasures of the flesh, our desires for them are not easily abated.
A twice-divorced woman testified of her struggle to give God her physical hungers after “a lifetime of sexual activity.” Tired of compromise which had never brought satisfaction, she wanted God’s best, God’s intimacy.
“My patterns are my enemy. The things the Lord impresses on me are: 1) Put Him first; 2) Be still and know that He is God; 3) Progress, not perfection; 4) Continually give my thoughts and desires to Him; 5) Take time.”
She was not sure why she was writing to me—“I guess just to air my doubts, seek encouragement and hope, but also to hear straight bottom-line how to start.” I could add nothing to what the Lord had already shown her. Obedience to those five things would take her a long way. But the last line of her letter cried for an answer: “If only this would help me not to want so much! Will it? Eventually?”
The answer is yes—eventually. I can promise her that no one who trusts in God will be desolate. I can promise her that the more she drinks of the water Jesus gives (as opposed to all other kinds of thirst-quenchers), the more she will find it satisfies the deepest thirst. I can promise her that as she eats spiritual food she will acquire an ever-increasing taste for the Bread of Life, which fully satisfies the deepest hunger.
I can promise this because God promises it. I also know by experience that it is true. The operative word is deepest. Because our physical and emotional hungers are so strong, we easily imagine them to be our deepest hungers—until they are met, at which point we know that there is a bottomless one. It is that one God promises to meet. We must not demand from Him what He has not promised. Although He is a God of miracles, He does not promise miracles (by which I mean what C. S. Lewis means—an interference with nature by supernatural powers).
From graduation from college at twenty-one until I was twenty-six, I waited for Jim Elliot, wishing that I wouldn’t want him so much. I had no promises from him or from God that we would ever be married, but I was hungry for him—no, I was ravenous. Instead of taking away my appetite, the Lord showed me the indispensable lesson of Deuteronomy 8, a review of Israel’s wilderness experience. While they craved for the food they had had in Egypt, God gave them manna. Manna was supernatural food, miraculously provided, and it was all they needed. But even a miracle did not stop the wanting of leeks, onions, garlic, watermelons, and fish. If He had given them what they naturally craved, they would never have learned to eat manna, they would never have acquired a taste for the bread which came down from heaven. God made them hungry on purpose—in order to humble and test them, to discover whether it was in their hearts to obey Him, and to teach them what was far more important than leeks and onions: that man does not live by those things alone, but by the Word of the Lord. “The Lord your God was disciplining you as a father disciplines his son.”1
So He disciplines us. He pays us that “intolerable compliment” of loving us inexorably. He harrows our souls, making us long for something we cannot have, in order to reveal to us what He wants us to have, which in the long run is far better.
“If only this would help me not to want so much!” My correspondent knows she must continually give God her thoughts and desires. But immediate effects are not always visible. She may keep on wanting for a long time.
One day when Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem, somebody asked Him if only a few people would be saved. His answer did not deal with the percentage, which was none of their business any more than it is ours. He made clear what is our business: “You must try your hardest to get in through the narrow door, for many, I assure you, will try to do so and will not succeed” (Luke 13:24 Phillips).
From another recent letter:
I am confronted with that same troublesome mystery—suffering, pain, and tears are a part of God’s economy on earth. The truth just sickens me! There is no growth and no fruit apart from pain. Christianity is not for the weak, although the world would have us believe so. It is for those who find the courage to humble themselves.
It is a small door we must get through. I wanted to encourage both of these women to see that the small door opens up to a very large place. If they believe that, they will certainly find the courage to humble themselves. I have not heard again from the first, but the second has prayed, “Be it unto me according to Thy word.”
Sometimes we prefer to “struggle” even when we are quite clear about what we ought to do. Struggling in such a case only postpones obedience. While we play for time, we can put off the moment of terrible choice. Sooner or later someone is bound to come along and say just what we hoped to hear, “Go with your feelings.” That may seem the easiest way until we try it, whereupon we find that feelings are always cancelling each other out—which ones shall we go with? When we have once met God we know there’s a war on. We have a lower nature that sets its desires against the Spirit.
“Anyone can see the kind of behaviour that belongs to the lower nature: fornication, impurity, and indecency; idolatry and sorcery; quarrels, a contentious temper, envy, fits of rage, selfish ambitions, dissensions, party intrigues, and jealousies” (Gal. 5:19–21 NEB). Those who go with feelings like that will never inherit the kingdom of God.
You would not have read so far in this book if you were one who in your heart of hearts wants to go with feelings like that. You want what Paul calls “the harvest of the Spirit”—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, self-control. You can’t have it both ways.
Great literature, which holds up a mirror in which, with a shock of recognition, we see ourselves, portrays the deep conflicts that result from good desires contending with evil ones. The great characters of the Bible had great struggles. It is the Spirit in us, Paul explains, that fights against the lower nature. Sometimes, alas, we imagine that the Spirit is fighting against us and our deepest longings. We picture God as a spoilsport, when in fact His Spirit contends against the sin in us which will prevent our ever having what will bring us the greatest happiness.
The story of a girl I’ll call Millie illustrates how easily we cheat and deceive ourselves when we do what we “feel like” doing. She had been a Christian for nearly fifteen years, and thought of herself as “basically old-fashioned.” But, like most other young people, she had a tough time trying to stay pure.
She met a very attractive non-Christian, went out with him “too many times,” allowed him the liberties he felt he had a right to, and soon found things out of control. “I feel so STUPID!” she told me, “I could just kick myself!” Rationalizing all along, the pair indulged in various kinds of sexual play. Millie told herself that as long as there was no actual sexual intercourse she could still call herself a virgin.
“So I did everything else” (and here she went into lurid detail). “I am so ashamed.”
Far from bringing her the love and happiness she had longed for, this course of action made Millie utterly miserable. Although a year had passed since the man disappeared, she still fought overwhelming guilt and self-hatred. She knew the Scriptures—that Jesus died for her, that His blood would wash away all her sin, that “nothing is too awful for Him to forgive.” She had confessed it all to Him. She was sorry—couldn’t be sorrier. Yet she was tormented by the thought that she could never be worthy of the kind of Christian man she had always dreamed of marrying. Was she lying to herself to think she was still a virgin? Filthy was the only word to describe how she felt.
She had read my book Passion and Purity twice. “You are so right on the money!” she said, “That’s why I thought you might help me.”
My heart went out to her. Her loneliness had opened the gates of her soul, as it were, and let in the world beasts of sexual sin. She was drawn by temptations she might otherwise have been immune to, and because she had yielded, was filled with guilt, shame, and fear. So many have written of similar experiences and the same deep regrets—sickened, wanting to kick themselves, ashamed, couldn’t be sorrier. I have tried to assure them of the total forgiveness promised to those who truly repent. No sin is great enough to drain dry the ocean of God’s grace.
Having said that, we must also say that sins have consequences which God Himself does not necessarily undo. Virginity is a gift even God cannot give back. He gave it once, to be given once—in marriage. If marriage is not in His will, virginity is His will. When it has been squandered, it is not restored. It is possible to squander sexual purity in many ways besides “technical” intercourse. This is why it is of such huge importance to draw the line very far on this side. The only really safe rule is hands off, clothes on. One thing leads rapidly to another, until one can no longer offer oneself whole and unspoiled to a prospective wife or husband. When one of the opposite sex has been “known,” he or she cannot be “unknown.” A choice has been made. It cannot be unmade.
That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news. It’s about Amazing Grace. Though the Lord cannot restore virginity, He will restore purity to the heart that has confessed and forsaken the sin. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses. It cleanses from all sin.
The church at Corinth was like every other church in Christian history—a motley collection of sinners. Churches, because they are made up of human beings, are full of human beings’ problems. Paul wrote two long letters to the Corinthians to help sort them out. He said this:
Make no mistake: no fornicator or idolater, none who are guilty either of adultery or of homosexual perversion, no thieves or grabbers or drunkards or slanderers or swindlers, will possess the kingdom of God. Such were some of you. But you have been through the purifying waters; you have been dedicated to God and justified through the name of the Lord Jesus and the Spirit of our God. . . . Your body is a shrine of the indwelling Holy Spirit. . . . You do not belong to yourselves; you were bought at a price.
1 Corinthians 6:9–11, 19–20 NEB
To those who ask for help in receiving the complete pardon Christ offers, I usually say something like this: Make a habit of consciously putting your mind on what Christ has done for you, not on what you’ve done. Praise Him, memorize Scripture and hymns, pray, and follow Him in obedience. Even if the memory of the sins comes back, don’t worry about it. Bring those thoughts “into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5 NKJV).
“But holy cow!” a young man said to me after he’d read Passion and Purity. “You gotta have sex!” Who says so? Thousands of Christians and others have lived out their lives without any sexual experience whatsoever. Chastity not only does no harm to one’s person, but strengthens one’s manhood or womanhood. It does not diminish and despoil, but actually ennobles character. The greater the restraint, the greater the power. Self-mastery, as someone has said, is the greatest virility.
Self-control is included in the list of fruits of the Spirit. Self-control. The Holy Spirit does not do all the controlling for us. He requires us to act. He helps us, but he expects us to cooperate. I believe that if we begin by the complete offering of ourselves in the particular willed action of oblation described in foregoing chapters, we thereby put ourselves under His authority and power. If we begin each day by an acknowledgment of our dependence upon Him, and our intention to obey Him, He will certainly help us. The Holy Spirit, who is the source of our life, then directs the course. Every discipline imposed in that course is for one purpose: “to bring us to our full glory,” and to make us “part of the permanent” that “cannot die” (1 Cor. 2:8 NEB; 1 John 2:17 Phillips).