It’s Okay If You Don’t Feel You’ve Made It with Your Desire of God | Content Ambition
It's okay to feel like you haven't fully desired God; true fulfillment comes from seeking him continually and understanding that our journey is a blend of contentment and ambition.
We all want to "make it." From early on, we are taught how to work toward something. As babies, we go from crawling to walking to running. As elementary students, we go from learning our ABCs to piecing together words. As high school students, we work to have good grades to graduate. As athletes, we work from practicing to winning games to winning championships. As musicians, we go from learning the names of the keys on the piano or the chords of a guitar to stringing them together. In college, we work toward another graduation to get the credentials to make enough money. We work to make enough money to get the house, the car, the vacations, the limited edition Luke Skywalker Return of the Jedi lightsaber. As writers, we think we will make it when we go from a blog to publishing our first book.
I could go on and on, but the core is there - we all want to "make it."
Kevin Durant, professional basketball player, epitomizes this in a quote after winning his first championship. He had been ridiculed for years about not being able to lead a team to a championship, so he joined the 73-win Golden State Warriors and helped put them over the top. He said, "After winning that championship (last season), I learned that much hadn't changed. I thought it would fill a certain [void]. It didn't. That's when I realized in the offseason that the only thing that matters is this game and how much work you put into it. Everything else off the court, social media, perception, isn't important. What people say, how they view you, it's not important."
Here's the weird thing - if you think you have "made it" in desiring God, if you think you have hit your fill in God, then you may have a slightly cauterized heart. Because the love of God is an unsearchable, insurmountable height that we cannot reach. We limit God's love if we think we have our fill of Him.
We need contentment in Christ. But we need to realize that we have never "made it." Anselm shows that God "made it" for us, and He continues to make it for us. It is only when we see our Lord that we will have finally "made it."
O Lord my God.
Teach my heart this day
where and how to find you.
You have made me and re-made me,
and you have bestowed on me
all the good things I possess,
and still I do not know you.
I have not yet done
that for which I was made.
Teach me to seek you,
for I cannot seek you
unless you teach me,
or find you
unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire;
let me desire you in my seeking.
Let me find you by loving you;
let me love you when I find you.
—Anselm
I'm saying this because it's okay if you feel like you never desire God in the exact manner you want to. Paul says he has to die daily. He fails to do the things he wants to do and does the things he doesn't want to do.
We toil and work with the power He has in us (Col. 1:28). We want to fill and be filled. We pray that He powerfully works within us. It is a wrestling match that keeps going on and on.
I know because there are often times when I feel my desire for God continues to fall short.
It is okay if you do not feel like you have "made it" yet. Why?
God Himself knows that you will not feel like this until you see Him in all His glory, so He sent us the guarantor - Himself through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we are God's children (Rom. 8:16). He helps us when we don't know what to say and can only groan (8:26).
There are times when we may feel like our heart and flesh are failing us, and we are getting swallowed up by death, but in Christ, our spirit and the Holy Spirit work in tandem to remind us of the truth. He puts the flames of God's love back on the hearth of our hearts.
It's okay if you don't feel like you have made it with your desire of God. He doesn't expect you to. He instead desires for you to depend on Him for your desire (Ps. 37:4). He is the one who teaches, remakes, and gives us what we need to possess.
It is this paradox that Anselm hits on that meant a lot to me.
Let me seek you in my desire;
let me desire you in my seeking.
Anselm wants to seek God in his desires. He wants God to be the object of his desire. Yet, he also wants to desire Him in his seeking. He wants to want Him as he aims to seek and find Him.
Our desiring of God is a present pursuit. It is present because our desire of God can be in us as we seek Him. Yet, it is also a pursuit for us to seek God as our desire. It is a content ambition. It is contentment in ambition and ambition for contentment.
In other words, we can be content in God now but we also seek contentment in Him. It's a present pursuit. It's something you already have and yet continue to seek having as well.
Don't be discouraged if you feel you haven't made it in your desiring of God. It is not a simple transaction where you have it, but it is a rich tapestry of contentment and ambition.