Desire

I read a book a while back by John Eldredge, entitled Desire. It's a great book, one that I would recommend to anyone. It was about reawakening our hearts to our desires and how the effects of sin in this world have caused us to either shut down our recognition of desire altogether or to misinterpret our desires and thus see to fill them with the things of this world.

It got me to thinking about how this was true in my own life. How I have followed after so many false loves in search of fulfilling some nameless need that seemed to never be satisfied.

As I looked more closely at the heart of my desires I saw that each "false" or sinful thing I persued was really all rooted back to one thing.....trying to fill this void or trying to numb the pain of it.

The namless "thing" inside of me was like a vacum. The more I tried to fill it, the bigger it became. I alternated between feeble attempts to satiate it, and supress it. I settled into a self medictaing cycle of numbing the ache. I found a few avenues that fed it just enough to release the pressure, and then I deadened myself to the pain of the remaining emptiness. Essentially, I was slowly, progressively killing my heart. I've spent more than 2/3 of my life trying to to feel. The pain of the broken world we live in is often times so hard to bare that all of us at one time or another attempt to lessen the blow.

The more I traced it back, the closer I got to the source. Through the process of elimination, I discovered that the hole I was trying to fill was a God shaped hole. We are all born with it, and because we all live in a sinful world, we are all born disconnected from the one thing that can fill it.....close intimate connection to God. You see, when Adam and Evev were ousted from the garden, they weren't just removd from Eden. Their sin had severed the tie that bound them in relationship to God. It is the spirit's very life line. Like a computer can't function properly when it's disconnected from the internet, neither can our hearts. Sure, their are some base functions that can still be performed, but nothing close to the information and connectedness that "logging on" initiates.

What my heart was missing was intimacy. We were born for a deep, close, intimate relationship to God. Just because sin happened and we got "unplugged" doesn't mean that our hearts have forgotten what they were made for.

So why, if this need is coded into our very DNA, do we wander so aimlessly in search of something false to meet it?

To get the answer I knew I'd have to go back to the beginning. Like any story, if you start in the middle, you risk being lost the rest of the way. Genesis is the beginning for mankind, but the beginning of this particular dilemma goes way back before we ever came onto the scene.

Intimacy means to be joined, knit together with someone in our very soul. The first place that we find intimacy is within the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 3 in 1.
We all desire this closeness. To be known, appreciated, and really truely seen by another, and loved by them for the things they find there. Wha is it about being totally continuosly discovered by another that evokes such powerful feelings of fear and ecstacy alike? It's the connection you see between two people in love, to people bound in real friendship. This intimacy is spiritual intimacy, it goes way beyond the surface to the depths of the core of who we are.
It is because of this spiritual intimacy shared between the Trinity that we were given a physical representaion of this in the form of physical intimacy. God gave us a picture when He created sex. It is the at of joining, knitting together two bodies. Becoming one flesh within the holy union of marriage. (My how we have perverted this beautiful gift. The one thing on this earth given to us to show us a shadow of the closeness of the Trinity, and we have defiled it to the point of being almost unrecognizable).
We are familiar with these two forms of intimacy. At some point in our lives we will likely experience both. But what if there is more to them tha what we are seeing? What if every desire we have ever had or ever will have can be traced back to this one thing?

Intimacy by definition requires pure holy and righteous honesty and truth. You can neither be discovered and charted nor travel to the deep recesses of another if either person is carrying even a pocketfull of deception.
It may be small in your hand, but a lie is a dense thing, and it spreads it weightiness throughout the soul. It is a perishable substance in an imperishable realm and with it you can not pass through the walls of the heart. The masks we erect to conceal ourselves must be removed and set aside for both parties to enter into the holy room of unity.

If intimacy is pure truth then it is not of te devil and it is somethin that is unattainable for satan, and therefore unattainable for anyone wo bares any residue from him and his lies.

I imagine that intimacy is something that secretly satan must miss and therefore envy and begrudge us. Not that he misses the close connection to God, but the spiritual power supply that comes with being filled with the Spirit of God. If God is the power source then he Holy Spirit is the cord that connects us, and satan lost that access a long time ago. He traded intimacy for her souless imposters: dominance and narcissism.

Intimacy invites humility, vulnerability and tenderness. It fills you utterly and completely like wax being poured into a mold, and it binds you to the other spirit by the flesh of the heart.
Dominance and narcissism, on the other hand, demand; they invite nothing. They force submission and slam the locks shut on all entrances into the souls inner most chamber. Narcissism cares nothing for seeking anything from it's target other than compliance. It force feeds you prideful lies about itself. It wants you to swallow down this pseudo-reality of it's granduer and then reflect it back to him like the wicked stepmother infront of the mirror.
These things do not fill you the way intimacy pours in and coats everything to completion.
Dominance and Narcisiism increase the size of the mold of a man, puffing him up bigger and bigger, but in return the hollow space with in becomes larger and larger like the expanding of a black hole. The puffing up and growing enables more domination and in turn more delusions of granduer, and the hollow space grows, consumming anything that it can find to feed on.

If the soul feeds on intimacy, is nurtured by it, the narcissism is in a ravenous state of affair, and like the angels of old, will soon have to turn to strange flesh to be satiated.

I believe that this very thing is the beginning of the beginning of our problems with our own desires. Before the fall in Eden, was the fall of satan and his angels, the first of creation to be severed from unity with God. The desire to fill the void, became the battle plan of those evil spirits bent on destroying God's beloved and elevating themselves as gods.

The fallen angels, starved and dehydrated from the severance of intimacy with God, scoured on hands and knees for any trace of moisture to quench their dry and bleeding thirst. Imagine what being immersed in the intimacy of God must be like. Swimming in the very spring of Living Water itself and having it flow thrugh every pour, every cell, every fiber of your being. Then imagine being cast down the the dessert. Sand and bazing, hazy heat coming up from the ground and down from the cruel stare of the sun.
Like a starfish calcifying in the mid-day sun, still close enough to the waters edge to see the waves lapping at the shore, but utterly incapable of moving even one centimeter closer to it.

I can almost see lucifer's humiliation and seethin rage radiating off of him as he fights the reality of the spiritual wasteland he has been banished to. His pride bites and tares at his fesh from the inside out at the defeat he has endured, and he lashes out at the pitiful excuse for an army that lay helpless and dry before him. They are no doubt just as thirsty and parched as he is, filled to the brim with a bleeding sorrow and emptiness where once the communion of the Trinity resided.

He also knows that unlike us, he will never be offered forgiveness. He will never find hope in a redemption. We are the chosen recipients of God's mercy and grace. No wonder he hates us so.

In his fit of rage lucifer strikes out at one of his fallen soldiers and fear rises up off of it like smoke from a fire pit. Breathing in, satan pauses. Savoring this new mysterious delight, never tasted before as fear had no womb in heaven. It's not fullness in the tangible sense, but it does permeate the insdes like smoke fills a room. There's no substance like what he knew before but it lines the insides of the hollow cavern tickling the walls like a phantom limb can almost convince the brain it's still there.
Sata knows that this stench of fear is only a mirage in a barren wasteland, but at the momnt it's the best he's got, and it will have to do.

This is a pantomyme of the original, the true intimacy created by God to feed and nourish and fill the inner chamber; the spiritual food that is good and pure and holy. satan now thirsts for intimacy with this imposter because it is all he is left with. And now he battles to convince us that it's all we are left with too.
This is the true identity of all those idols we try to fill ourselves with. We become intimate with th lie, the false, and we trade the solid and substantial for the smoke and mirrors.
When we zone out to tv; when we use sex outside of the context of marriage; when we deceive with false impressions; settle for a relationship that we know is not right; spend money, amassing material things; give creedance and time toidle nothingness; or turn to drugs or alcohol, we are engaging in intimacy with (fellowship/relationship) a false god. We are knitting ourselves to a lie, birthed and manifested by satan himself.

We have to begin to ask ourselves, "What am I joining myself to?" Ask God to show you. Follow the trail your desires lead you down, and don't be suprised if you find more than a few mirages along the way.