Drive and Desires - Sorting out the Mess

We returned from our 3k mile road trip and we were exhausted. However, I was also antsy to finish the audio book that consumed the last two days of our journey. Upon further reflection, I found it amusing that we listened to 3 audio books on our trip and all three of them had to do with desire, motives, and what fuels our choices, behaviors, etc... They are radically different from each other, from different genres, disciplines, and written with radically differing motives. Here is the list: Drive by Daniel Pink, Motive by Jonathan Kellerman, and Teach us to Want by Jen Pollock Michel.

It was two months ago when I started this post. The antsy feeling that I expressed about finishing the audio book after our road trip perfectly illustrates our wrestling with drives and desires. A good mystery book, as almost all Jonathan Kellerman work is, does it's job if it creates this insatiable, antsy, almost compulsive desire for resolution. We are conditioned to want the resolution and the more fiercely one wants the resolution, the better the book. The resolution of that story was good, but it was not great. I was glad that I finished it because that antsy feeling needed to go away so that I could put my full mental and emotional energy into work.

This is similar to the antsy feeling we nurture when we worry about stuff. All of us have things, projects, relationships, etc... that need resolution. We need - we desire - answers. This wrestling is natural and normal and our needs are real. However, we are far too likely to wrestling ourselves into worry instead of presenting our needs, questions, projects, relationships, etc...to God.

We are told to allow God access to all of us. We present our needs to God and because we know that God is able to sort out all of our drives and desires, we are able to be confident that we can refrain from worry. Our compulsion to fix things can be a sign that we are not living confidently in a conversational relationship with our Abba Father.

Reflect on Paul's exortation in Philippians 4:4-7: "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentle be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be make known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

Our worry (which is sin, by the way!) is no longer is necessary. God takes care of it all. It is also so interesting, perhaps it can be called a miracle-wonder, that after we release our questions and projects, asking God to take care of it, we see things sorted out. We are given great peace.