Proverbs 11.23
“The desire of the righteous ends only in good; the expectation of the wicked in wrath.”
God wants you to have a vision for your life and work. He wants you to have desires for things you want to do and dreams for things you want to achieve. But he wants you to have the right desires.
As this proverbs says, righteous people have desires that produce good things, whereas wicked people have desires that produce wrath.
Psalm 37.4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” The message is that when you live a life that is pleasing to God, he will give you the “desires of your heart.” Note that it is the desires that God gives you, not necessarily (or immediately) the object of your desires.
When Christ is Lord of your life, your heart is transformed and your desires change. The transforming presence of the Holy Spirit in your life reshapes what you want to do and redirects what you want accomplish. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Cor 5.17)
However, as every Christian knows, there is a catch to this. While it is wonderfully true that Jesus redeems us and makes us new, it is also true that we still have our old sin nature, and the old nature has desires that are contrary to God’s character and kingdom. For the followers of Christ, every day is a battle between the good desires of the new nature and the bad desires of the old nature.
Paul states it very directly in Galatians 5: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
The inner conflict that we experience is the battle between the desires of the Spirit and the desires of the flesh. The Greek word for “desire” in Galatians 5 is epithumia, and with regard to the sin nature it means a distorted or mis-directed passion. We have passions, desires, and impulses that seek to lead us in the wrong direction and tempt us to say/do things that are not in alignment with God’s character.
I Peter 2.11 gives this command to believers: “Abstain from the passions (epithumia) of the flesh that wage war against your soul.”
This is the discipline-driven principle that is the focus of the book of Proverbs. Will you trust God, do the disciplined work of musar, and gain wisdom — or will you be foolish, defiant, reject God’s standard, and act selfishly?
You make the decision about which desire you will cultivate and pursue in your life.
