We don’t have to go very far into the biblical story to see our human condition correctly. It was in the perfect garden where our first parents walked with the perfect God, their creator and ours. God made all things good, and in his kindness, He gave all things to Adam and the Eve—except one thing. Perfect God, perfect garden full of God’s good and rich creation, and He offered it all to Adam and Eve—except. one. thing. Yet, they wanted what they wanted because they were convinced and believed that it would give them their best life.
Satan knows sin, and he has well-tested strategies to persuade us that what we want is not really that bad and that God is not really that good. We like to play judge of what is right and wrong, good and bad, for us and others.
From a biblical viewpoint, the battle for self-control is attached to a prominent theme of the human condition: I want what I want, and often I want it now. Too many of us have accepted the lie, “Just one more, then I will be satisfied.” The reality is, “one more” may satisfy temporarily, but it also feeds the desire for yet another “one more.” Ephesians 4:19 talks about a continual lust for more.
With each indulgence, we paradoxically feel less and less satisfied, while we are persuaded that the object of our desire is the only thing that can fill us.
When a created thing captures our heart, the world, our flesh, and the devil stand ready to tell us just how good it is, how much we need it, and just how much we deserve what we want.
When our passions and strong desires turn what we want into a demand, we will act according to the level of its value to us, and we will intellectually minimize the damage produced in the lives of others when we go after what we want. And strangely, we do this all before a God who is a generous giver of all good things.
We are worse than we think
Much of the counseling I do in my own heart and in the hearts of others is finding corrupt places where we are blind to our desires for self-rule. Where we are the better judge of right and wrong. Where we proclaim, “God is good all the time,” but where our true lack of trust in His goodness is exposed in those places where we sinfully grab for what we must have or what exists outside of what we believe He will give to us.
Sinful actions—from our low-burning bitterness and anger to our white hot lusts—arise from hearts that distort the truth of God and deceive us into believing that grabbing what we want is where our satisfaction will be found.
We are satisfied with too little
Our battle for self-control will never be won by our emotions or will, but by seeking, listening, and believing that we have an offer of something better than what we sinfully want and love.
In his book “A Quest for More,” Paul David Tripp wrote, “Sadly, we don’t have a problem with desiring too much, we have a problem with being satisfied with too little.”
Jesus fulfilled every promise and passed every test and requirement of God for us. He paid an unfathomable price when He left heaven to live among us, and that price included His death on a cross.
He did this, not only to save us to heaven, but also to rescue us from slavery to our sinful desires here and now. It is faith that saves us, and it is faith that will subdue our selfish and corrupt hearts. As we grow in our faith and act in trust of God, we act more like humans and less like animals who are slaves to their appetites and who battle for safety and control.
But our faith does not rest upon a promise that God will give us all that we desire, but upon a promise that God will give us what He knows is good for us.
He is the patient and loving God who mercifully calls us out of the darkness of our selfish desires.
When we draw close to Him, the Holy Spirit gives us the power to crucify our destructive passions and desires. This is not easy, but we have a Father who will walk with us and empower us as we seek to live in His grace and not in the pride and arrogance of self-sufficiency. In moving towards Him, we always receive more than what we hoped for and much more than we deserve.
Reach out
With a redemptive goal, God’s great love for us often works in the painful consequences of our sin and difficult circumstances to turn us away from darkness so that we find our satisfaction in Him.
If you are struggling with sin that is beating you or living in family relationships that are broken and falling apart or suffering with pain, depression, anxiety, or fear, please reach out. We worship a God who invites all those who are broken to come to Him. We all struggle against sin, but we don’t have to struggle alone.