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Sometimes I am in great danger of forgetting who I am and what it is like me to act. In fact, under the recent pressures in my life there have been times when I have almost forgotten who I really, and when that happens I feel like I am in a tailspin. I need people around me to remind me of who I am who know me and can see me through the eyes of heaven.
One of the things that came to me this morning is why lust (as we usually think of it) is so harmful. If Oswald Chamber's definition of lust is accurate – I must have it NOW – then some other ideas begin to make sense. Lust is not necessarily sexual in nature, although we usually associate it with that. There are many different kinds of lust but they all have the commonality of intense desire and the immediacy craving. Maybe the real problem with lust is that it acts just like an addition, and often it ends up as one. An addiction is an attempt to receive satisfaction for a legitimate desire through an alternative immediate pleasure that leaves one more empty and hungry than before. The pleasure is not really satisfying but only masks the emptiness and cravings while it is being experienced. But the consequential feelings of guilt, shame and worthlessness that follow an indulgence of an addiction intensifies the craving for real satisfaction. Since one is either ignorant of, or unwilling to admit the real object of their craving and the real source that could satisfy that hunger, they usually return to whatever alternative they have chosen to temporarily mask the pain by another indulgence only to deepen their hunger even more.
But it occurred to me that we may have painted lust with such a negative color that we have lost sight of the fact that it really is a counterfeit of a real “lust” that is the true craving our hearts were designed to thrive on. A counterfeit is absurd, even non-existent if it does not mimic something of value that is true. Jesus said to His disciples that He lusted to be with them at the Last Supper. Jesus embraced His lust to be with His friends at a very intimate level, which is really a description of “joy”. Since our hearts and brains are hard-wired to crave joy more than any other experience (according to even non-Christian brain researchers and scientists today), and joy is only found in healthy attachments of love-bonds, then the true original that lust counterfeits is the joy found in the intimacy of closely bonded relationships both with our families, our friends and most of all with God.
So it seems to me that we need to have and embrace a very intense feeling of healthy lust and need to learn how to indulge it at every opportunity that we can. But this true lust that Jesus indulged in was a passion to connect deeper and stronger and more permanently with the hearts and lives of others in the presence and with the love of God.
Maybe we spend so much time trying to avoid lust that we almost completely fail to immerse ourselves in the very thing that worldly lust counterfeits. But if we spend all of our energy and focus on avoiding the false without embracing the true, what have we gained but emptiness and loss; we not only do not “enjoy the pleasures of sin” for what little they have to offer, but we also miss out on the pleasures at the right hand of God forevermore. That is the legacy of false religion and especially legalism. It is a very negative-oriented focus of life that seeks to avoid all evil in a quest for supposed perfection. But perfection is not reached by eliminating evil. Life is not the absence of death; death is the absence of life. We cannot experience eternal life by trying to focus on the dangers of death and sin or trying to avoid them. I have been trying to do that for many years and have come up very empty and hungry and messed up.
I cannot get warm by trying to get rid of cold. Many times in my life I have tried to get warm at night by piling on more blankets only to lay shivering through a night of fitful sleep interrupted by awakenings from cold feet and legs. However, I know that if someone else sleeps close to me their heat will do much more to keep me warm than trying to avoid the cold with more and more blankets. (I usually use an electric blanket or mattress pad in lieu of another body to keep me warm.) To get warm enough to dispel the cold from my body I have to have a source of heat.
Likewise, most people realize that you cannot get rid of darkness and produce light by trying to just get rid of it. It is impossible to go into a dark room and push out the darkness in order to experience light. That is absurd! And yet we do not think it absurd at all to attempt to experience true life, abundant life, by trying to exterminate all of the problems and sins and faults in our life and in those around us. Many of us make a full-time career out of fault-finding and sin-fingering, both in ourselves and in those around us. But this usually leaves us more desperate and empty and hurting than before.
There really is only one source of life anywhere in the universe. We may accept this in theory, but we usually don't really accept it very seriously in our souls. What I, and all of us really crave and need most is a full-blown, unabashed addiction and obsession for that one Source of life. I know that sounds like so much religious jargon and empty talk, but that is because we have our wiring messed up and the lies inside of our heads dismiss this as simplistic and not worthy of our pursuit. But those lies are the seeds of death and will grow to snuff out all of our life if we do not indulge and encourage a lust for God with all the passion of our being. That is what my heart was designed for and craves the most even though I may not recognize it at all.
What this “lust” may look like and how it will be expressed will be unique and different for every person, but it will be harmonious with every other passionate lover tuning into God's heart. This is the lust that is not to be repented of. This is the real thing, the one indulgence that will satisfy every craving, large or small, that ever touches our mind, our heart and our emotions. God may use people around us to channel these expressions through, but the ultimate and only legitimate object of all our affections and cravings needs to be the real Source from which all satisfaction comes.
God, fill me with pure, unbridled lust for you, with passion that resonates with your heart, that quivers from your beauty, that rests in your intimate love.
