Desire and calling

Show me a person who has lost his or her sense of desire, and I'll show you someone who doesn't know what their calling is.

You find your calling through your deepest desires.

There are those who would advise us not to do this, because it could lead to sin or some form of ruin. Their assumption is that all desire, or the vast majority of it, is fleshly and self-centered and must be avoided. Yet, this is not a New Covenant view of desire ... because it's not a New Covenant view of the believer's heart.

With our new heart, given by God when we said 'yes' to Jesus, comes a reservoir of good and noble desires. Find those desires and you'll find your calling.

As you trace desire throughout your life, from childhood to today, what are the recurring themes?

• What have you loved doing and do well?
• What do you find yourself compelled to bring in any given situation?

Our giftedness tends to go beyond mere competency or training, as we find that there is something spiritual occuring that is both us, and beyond us in its working. It is the outflow of the Holy Spirit in us, working as us.
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Gary Barkalow, formerly of Ransomed Heart ministries, has recently launched a full-time mission to help others discover their calling. I've experienced his teaching and found nothing else like it in depth and scope. Here's a link to Gary's site: The Noble Heart

Update on Wednesday, December 3, 2008 at 11:05AM by Jim Robbins

I don't want to have a derivative life: No mimicry of other's personal aspirations; no living from someone else's script. A vicarious life is a borrowed life. I want to offer the weight of my own heart and the artistry that proceeds from there in ways that are not driven by sales outcomes, market expectations, or religious sub-cultures. I must be me. That is the nature of incarnation - the self-revelation of God through a Body of bodies who can only represent him faithfully if they are themselves.

As the Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins once said, "What I do is me: For that, I came." As Gary Barkalow of The Noble Heart asks us, "What is in you that is so unique, that if you don't live with it, the Kingdom of God will live without it?"

Desire and the good heart

What the church calls obedience is often the destruction of desire itself.

There is the injurious assumption that in order to take up your cross you must usually deny what you most deeply want: “Just do what God (or the church) wants you to do, whether you want to or not—always and without question.” Now, of course obedience is critical and God warrants our highest allegiance. Obedience does demonstrate our love for God. And, there are times when what we desire is not in God’s best interest for us or others. Yet notice the assumption behind the obedience–that–rejects–desire approach: “God wants your dutiful, robotic obedience. Love is solely an obligated and compelled compliance. The deep longings of your heart are not important to him. Just obey.” 
(from Recover Your Good Heart)

For too long, we've been suspicious of all desire, not recognizing that there is one source, at least from which good and noble desires spring ... our new heart.  Within this new spiritual center of our personality, given by God when we said 'yes' to Jesus, there is a reservoir of true and good desire.  It remains largely untapped in the majority of Christians.

What have you done with your desires, noble friend?  Buried them?  Dismissed them?

What has been the church's message to you about your desires?

New podcast-"A Life of Desire"

"A life of desire"  11/12/08  

Is desire a snare to be avoided or the instrument through which God leads us into our very identity and calling? Jim talks about what the Church has done with desire and what God is really inviting us into.

C.S. Lewis said,  "Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists."