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!"
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    Yours in Christ,
    Paul N. F.