Over the past few weeks, I have been in a place in my Christian walk where I do not have a desire for God as I know that I should. This is problematic because I was doing the work of God while running on empty. As you guys know this platform is built on transparency and this blog post will be no different. I was not spending time in the Word regularly, I have not really tarried in prayers in a while and I have not fasted in a few months now. You guys may be reading this and wondering why I did not do the things that I mentioned above. The simple answer to that question is because I did not want to. Well, my flesh does not want to and my spirit is fighting to find the desire so that I can continue running this race passionately. Another thing that makes this so scary is the fact that God has been opening doors for me to minister in various places and I never want to be that person who ministers on empty.
However, something I have began to notice in my life is that my flesh does not desire God but my spirit still desires God. This is weird to explain but I will try to explain it as best as I can. My flesh and my Spirit has been playing a game of tug of war. While I know that I should be reading my Bible, my flesh decides that It wants to watch Netflix instead and there is no desire to read my Bible. My flesh desires sleep when my spirit tells me it is time to pray. The spirit is indeed willing but the flesh is weak. Something I want to point out is that our flesh will always be in direct conflict with the spirit but it is over job to choose the spirit over the flesh.
Galatians 5:16 says “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” This verse allows me to see that the more I walk by the spirit, the more I will desire the things of the spirit. A lot of times our desire for the things of God do not increase because we have not trained our taste buds to have an appetite for the things of God. Let me try to simplify this a little further so that it can make a little more sense. A lot of times when an individual is comfortable with feasting on junk food, they discover that healthy meals are undesirable. (When I say individual I am talking about myself. I am individual and individual is me fam!) Well back to my original point, there was a time when I loved McDonalds. Their frappe’s were my absolute favorite and the fries gave me a taste of heaven on earth. However, the more I discovered that McDonalds was actually extremely unhealthy for me and I tasted something better, I stayed away. The more I stayed away from McDonalds, the more undesirable it became. McDonalds became extremely disgusting to me because I walked away from it. In the same way, things of the flesh becomes undesirable to us when we choose to walk away from it and we choose to taste righteousness and feast on the meal of the Word of God.
Another thing I am coming to learn about desire is I cannot desire God by my own power. The fact that there is a part of me that longs for God means that God is waiting on me to come to me to receive the desire for the things of God. Philippians 2:13 says “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” On our own we cannot desire God and we cannot please Him. In this season I have simply been going to God and allowing Him to see that I truly desire sleep more than I desire to pray, I desire Facetime calls more than I desire the Word, I desire food more than I desire to fast. As believers we need to be honest about our current desires and then give God permission to change those desires. I remember using John 6:44 when I did my introduction blog post at the beginning of the year but I want to show you something else in it this time. John 6:44 says “For no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them to me.” I simply want to allow you to see that if there is any part of you that even wants to get closer to God, this means that the Lord is already drawing you to Himself.
To conclude on this blog post, I want to share something I learned a while ago. I learned that sometimes desire must become a discipline before it becomes a delight. If you genuinely ask God for a desire for the things of God, He will definitely grant that to you but you need discipline to turn that desire into a delight. You may not automatically find joy in praying after you pray for 1 minute but if you discipline yourself to continue communicating with God then that discipline will eventually turn into a delight. An example of this can be seen in the natural as well. An individual might have a desire to lose weight but they might still hate the gym. However, the desire to lose weight allows them to make it a discipline to go to the gym regularly and eventually going to the gym becomes a delight. To increase your desire for God, discipline yourself to taste God for yourself daily! Spiritual disciplines may not start off as a desire but the more you stick to it, it will become a delight!