This message was preached this Wendsday in Impact night. I hope you guys are blessed by it!
Bible verse: Genesis 37
Desire: A strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.
Desire comes down to where what you are thinking of wanting becomes what you need.
But how do you know that what you are wanting is what you need?
Many times our desire as Christians living out our lives is focused and centered by our lives. From your circumstances you begin to create and make list of things that you are wanting and needing. But many times what you need and what you are wanting completely contradict with each other when you see in the eyes of God. What you may want might not be what you need. In the other hand what you need might not be what you are wanting. We many times as Christians and followers of Christ think that what we are wanting is what we need because it is in the context or morally right. But most of the times what we want is the selfishness of our own desires that we are thinking to do it for God’s will. But in the other hand what God wants may not be even a glimpse of what you need.
Many times God does not work around our wants.
Most of the times God works His vision around our needs.
Joseph didn’t want to be sold by his brothers and be prisoned but he “needed” it to rule over Egypt to fulfill the vision he had.
Abraham didn’t want to sacrifice Isaac but he almost had to become father of faith.
God gives a vision, and from that we plan out what is going to happen in the list of 1, 2, and 3 and putting a case with God saying “this is what is best for me”
But God tells you “no that’s not what you need”
And he gives you something you did not even expect.
Joseph had a vision. He didn’t think that he will be prisioned, and take on trials and temptations.
The dream giver, the God who gave you your vision knows what the best to fulfill His vision. The vision that you have is supposed to please Him, not yourself. That is why what we want and what we need contradicts each other. God gave you a vision, to please Him and Him alone. The one, who created all things to please Him, knows how to please Himself. But when we say we are submitting to Him but what we want and what we need is solely based upon “me” then is only selfish desires.
God gives trials and tests, and the wanting of the Lord might not make sense and even bring pain, persecutions, but in return it is for our own good, to do what is pleasing to God.
What is here and created is for the pleasure of God that no longer should our want and what we think that we need matter because He is God and we are not. Because we are created for His pleasure, not the other way around, He knows what is pleasing to Him because we cannot grasp who He is, and what He wants. The creator knows what is pleasing to Him, rather than what we think is pleasing to Him.
The only reason why what I want may not be what I need, or vice versa, is because our want and our need is only based upon “I”. But God’s want and God’s need is based upon Him and you to ultimately please Him. As humans and even Christians, our sole desire is based upon “ME” and to ultimately fulfill what we think is the best for us and putting God somewhere in the story.
Even Jesus Submitted!
Matthew 26:39
39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
What He even Himself wanted is not what we needed. He himself laid down His life before God and completely submitting to Him to fulfill His vision for His pleasure.
When we say we completely surrender unto him we are laying down our desires. If we talk the talk but not walk the walk we no longer trust Him for His faithfulness and ultimately that He is God. He knows what He is doing to fufill His vision!
Isaiah 55: 8-9
V8. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
V9. For as the heavens are higher than earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Completely surrender your wants and needs to the one who fulfils everything sufficiently in your life. The vision that you have is given by the “giver” which is our God, that knows how to fufill the vision the He gives. Completely submit to Him, and let Him fulfill His vision in you, to please Him.
You might say it is so selfish of God.
But when you submit to Him to fulfill His vision, He will crown you and say to you good job my faithful servant! He will crown you for the work that HE has done! Our God is a sacrificial God, loving God, and God who unconditionally gives and crowns us for things that we do not deserve. He gives what He deserves to us.
Completely submit you want and your need to Him. Let Him work His vision in your life, to please Him. And when you completely submit to Him you will be the very witness of God’s work in this earth.
Are you willing to give complete submission to God of your want and your need?
1
