Tag Archives: faith

The 3 Ways Jesus Sifts Our Desires

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siftThis one might lose me a few followers.

Desires. Dreams. Prayers. Goals.

Whatever you want to call them, they are fire to Christians – powerful, vital, destructive when handled wrong. We must be careful with desires these days. There is such bad teaching out there about God and desires, so much energy mischanneled into pursuing your dreams without a thought as to God’s dreams, that we must handle the subject gingerly.

My testimony involves the sanctification of my desires. I found over the years that viewing God as annoyed, threatened, or dismissive of my desires did not bring me closer to him. Of course, nor did clinging to them ahead of his will and love. Neither view is flattering to God, nor entirely Biblical.

Jesus ran into a lot of deep desires in the course of his ministry. Healing, justice, provision, greatness, life. His responses to these pleadings contain surprises for everyone. He granted some, denied some, but most importantly there seemed to be a sifting. He didn’t always heal/feed/deliver immediately; he’d ask a question first, or deny a desire flat-out, in order to get at the heart of the person. Whatever the desire, Jesus was determined to sanctify it, to make it holy.

Interestingly, his denials seem to undergo three distinct tests: faith, paradox, or eternity.

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When God Arrives at the Last Minute

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Time winding down on God's answer?I honestly didn’t know where I’d be living in a week’s time.

My first teaching stint was coming to an end. The remote school lay surrounded by the trailer park they called teacher housing, on the very western edge of the Great Plains, right where they finally sweep upwards into the Montana Rockies – a glorious, meteorologically dramatic collision of alpine and prairie. As trying as the three years had been, I found (as we often do with such trials once they’ve finished) that I was going to miss the place.

Unfortunately, my job prospects were now as empty as those wind-swept prairies. Each interview that spring had led only to the familiar “You interviewed well, but we’re going in a different direction”.

Since I’d been busy organizing a senior trip (to Vegas, natch, after which I had to chaperone a student back to Montana by bus), the administration had given me two extra weeks in teacher housing. I had that long after returning (did I mention by bus?) to secure new living arrangements, which largely hinged upon figuring out my next teaching gig. Then I had to be out.

I could always return to my hometown. But it certainly wasn’t the way I’d hoped to end the year. And let’s just say that employment gaps on a resume are particularly deadly for teachers – especially when the choice schools get hundreds of applications and will invoke any and all reason to thin the pile.

With four days left in teacher housing, I was blind to the next step of my life.

Sometimes…well, a lot of the time…God’s plans for our lives look less like a blueprint and more like a Hollywood screenplay.

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