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.