Wrong Desires Pervert Our Moral Judgments
By A. W. Tozer
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness:
for they shall be filled. --Matthew 5:6
Unsanctified desire will stop the growth of any Christian life and
conversely, purified desires will tend towards righteousness by a
kind of gentle moral gravitation.
In the moral world, right desires tend toward life and evil ones
toward death---that in essence is the scriptural teaching on this subject!
Whatever a man wants badly enough and persistently enough will
determine the man's character.
Wrong desire - perverts the moral judgment so that we are unable
to appraise the desired object at its real value.
However we try, still a thing looks morally better because we want
it. For that reason, our heart is often our worst counselor, for if it is
filled with desire, it may give us bad advice, pleading the purity of
something that is in itself anything but pure!
When our dominant desires are bad, the whole life is bad
as a consequence. When the desires are good, the life comes up
to the level of our desires, provided that we have within us the
enabling Spirit.
At the root of all true spiritual growth is a set of right and sanctified
desires. The whole Bible teaches that we can have whatever we
want badly enough if, it hardly need be said, our desire is
according to the will of God!
The desire after God and holiness is back of all real spirituality, and
when that desire becomes dominant in the life, nothing can prevent us
from having what we want. The longing cry of the God-hungry
soul can only be, "Oh, to be like Thee!"
Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F