Desires
A whole range of words – desire, longing, greed, craving, and lust – expresses man’s inner striving for an objective, which may be a person, a thing or an experience.
Desire: anything that attracts you. Appetite: any strong desire we have to fill a specific need. The heart wants what the heart wants.
Paul sees desire as the power of the flesh that has turned from God and seeks gratification. It urges man to activity. It expresses the deeply rooted tendency in man to find the focus of his life in himself, to trust himself and to love himself more than others.
The desirer determine and enslave a man: Ephesians 4:22, Romans 1:24.
God’s answer to desire is the Holy Spirit. The man who walks by the Spirit has power to resist desire (Galatians 5:16, Romans 8:9ff) because the Spirit replaces desire as the determining power in his life. (Ephesians 4:23)
Desire is used in a positive sense in Isaiah 58:2, yearning for the righteousness of God.
Used in a good sense: Matthew 13:17, Luke 15:16, Philippians 1:23, 1Thessalonians 2:17, Hebrews 6:11.
Used in a bad sense: Matthew 5:28 refers to sexual desire or lust. Mark 4:19 refers to desire for possessions.
Evil desires and deeds flow from the heart.
Driving power in a man’s life: Galatians 5:16, Ephesians 2:3 and 4:22.
Desires can find their expression in every direction – sex, material enjoyment, coveting (Romans 1:24, 1 Timothy 6:9, Titus 3:3, Galatians 5:16-21).
Desires determine and enslave a man when the heart comes under their control. Romans 1:24 says that God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts. They worshipped and served created things.
Originates from the world (1 John 2:16), ultimately from Satan (John 8:44).
Abstain from sinful desires that wage war against your soul: 1 Peter 2:11, 2 Peter 2:10
If you didn’t have desires you wouldn’t be tempted: James 1:14,15.
Desire within a man is lying in wait so that at the right moment, he may yield his will to it and become subject to it.
