What to Do When Desire Comes Knocking by S'ambrosia Wasike
It’s true that God is good all the time, but that doesn’t mean that He’s going to display His goodness towards us in the same way all the time. One week He may send someone to anonymously slip an envelope of cash beneath your door at the very moment you’re in need of cash, but then the next week His blessing may come in the form of a job. He is anything but predictable, but He always to be trusted.
We may know this truth in our heads, but there are certain seasons in our lives (namely the season of singleness) where we feel that if God did something a certain way before, He should do it the same way again. Maybe you’ve seen the way God put two people together in a relationship and you want the same story for your life. Or maybe you had a relationship in the past that was a storybook romance… until it wasn’t, and you wish that God would just give you another one of those, but with a fairy tale ending this time.
The problem is, when we try to box God into doing things the same way, we become disillusioned when we discover that He doesn’t work that way.
Enter the “M” Word…
When God responds differently than we think He should, some people may raise their hands in defeat and give up, while others may resort to manipulation. Now, I know that word has a totally negative connotation, and none of us want to have that word associated with our behavior, but in reality that is what we do. We try to influence situations to work out to our exact specifications.
When I was in college a lot of my friends had met their boyfriends or husbands in campus ministries, so what did I do? I joined every campus ministry I could. Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I sat my happy little tail in one of the 24 campus ministries going on at my university. I figured that if I wanted God to bring me the Christian man I’d always dreamed about, I should put myself in the type of places where I knew I would find him.
It didn’t quite work out that way.
Instead, God sent me 8,000 miles away to Nairobi, Kenya, to find my husband Ray. Apparently, God had been working on putting us together since I was 14-years-old, when Ray’s uncle was invited to stay at our home during his first evangelistic mission to the States. It was through that connection that Ray and I eventually met 12 years later and discovered that we were not only incredibly compatible with one another, but that God had also given us eerily similar visions for our lives. Didn’t I say He’s unpredictable? I have seen the unpredictable providence of God numerous times in my life, but I think there’s an even better story in the Bible that highlights this point.
The Desires of David’s Heart
If anyone were to ask me who my favorite female character of the Bible is, I would have to say Abigail. She’s described as being intelligent and beautiful, and from her actions in 1 Samuel 25 we can also tell that she is wise and courageous. If anyone were to ask me who my favorite male character of the Bible is, I would have to say King David. He had a sincere relationship with God that made him the epitome of the ultimate worshipper. Ironically enough, there is one chapter in the Bible that features both of these characters in a beautiful love story.
Here’s the basic layout of what happened:
David encountered Abigail and felt attracted to her, but she was already married.
God intervened and removed Abigail’s wicked husband from the equation.
David was able to marry Abigail.
Sounds cool enough, right? God did his thing and made things work out for David and Abigail. Well, sadly enough, David’s story doesn’t end here. I want to look at another instance where David went about it the wrong way. This time we’re looking at the story of Bathsheba.
Here’s the basic layout of what happened:
David saw Bathsheba bathing on a roof and felt attracted to her.
David committed adultery with her and then devised a plan to have Bathsheba’s husband killed.
David was able to marry Bathsheba.
God had done it once for David, but then David took the matter into his own hands and ultimately ended up committing some pretty tragic sins. Like David, we may have the desire to make things happen our own way on our own time, but because we’re not fully relying on the wisdom and power of God, we end up committing sin along the way.
During my season of singleness I constantly struggled with trying to finish the story that God was writing for my life. There was one particular instance where a childhood friend of mine had expressed interest in me. Our mothers had been best friends since we were kids and we had always liked each other, but it wasn’t until that particular moment in time that we pursued the idea of a romantic relationship. I was totally certain that God was giving me that “boy next door” sort of love story, so I approached every aspect of the relationship in that manner. Whenever we would hit rough patches or an issue would surface that I knew was leading me into compromise, I would remind myself that we were meant to be together simply because this was our story. We were meant to have grown up together and then eventually fall in love. But that wasn’t God’s story for us. I was manipulating the situation.
After some time this man decided that he didn’t want to pursue a relationship with me anymore, and I fought him about it for a long time, which ultimately ended up getting me hurt in a pretty bad way. I had tied my emotions up so much in a fairy tale that I didn’t know what to do with myself when God said “No.” As it would happen though, Ray came into my life just a few months after I finally decided to let go of that relationship. It was all just a matter of a change in my desire.
God had done it once for David, but then David took the matter into his own hands and ultimately ended up committing some pretty tragic sins. Like David, we may have the desire to make things happen our own way on our own time, but because we’re not fully relying on the wisdom and power of God, we end up committing sin along the way.
Turning Your Desires Over to God
In both of David’s stories the initiating factor was desire. David felt a desire for Abigail as well as Bathsheba. Desire is also at the heart of our romantically based decisions. Whether it’s a desire to feel wanted, a desire to get married, or a desire to be admired by someone that you admire, every action from that point on comes as a result of an initial desire.
What’s most crucial is what you do with that desire. You can submit it to God and ask Him to be the keeper of your desire and to direct it in the way that it should go, or you can act on your desire, which as we’ve seen before, usually leads to manipulation. It’s so easy to fall into manipulative patterns, so it’s imperative that we daily submit our heart’s desires to the Lord, lest our hearts (which the Bible tells us are rotten through and through) start calling the shots and lead us directly into the arms of temptation.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
I know how it feels to get tired or anxious or frustrated when you’re waiting for God to fulfill His promises, but this is where trust comes in. You have to trust that the God who has provided for each of your needs on a daily basis and answered many of your prayers in miraculous ways is faithful to answer the desires of your heart. I know because He did it for me. I didn’t even know I desired someone like Ray, because he was nothing like the type of man that I had on my “list”, but God knew best, and His timing is always best. So as you wait to see the evidence of what He’s been doing behind the scenes, keep your heart steady by reminding yourself of all the times that He’s come through for you before. And I mean actually write them down.
God constantly told the Israelites in the Old Testament to repeat the story of the way He delivered them so that they would never forget and so that the memory of the miracle would sustain them when times got hard. God wouldn’t have delivered them to let them die in the wilderness. He would not forget them.
He hasn’t forgotten you either so don’t forget Him.
S'ambrosia Wasike is a missionary in Kitale, Kenya, where she and her husband have a nonprofit called The Joshua Blueprint. They partner with orphanages to teach children about worship and relationship with God through the arts.