Powerful! What the Heart Wants

Prayer and the Heart’s Desires

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James 4 and the Brokenness of Human Desire

It is really a serious privilege for me to be here. We've known about the ministry here for some time and I've been able to visit a few times and connect with the Apologia guys on the show, but I've never actually been able to connect with this congregation.

So this is actually pretty exciting for me, and I'm really glad to be here. I wanted to spend some time talking about the subject of prayer today. So I'm starting in James chapter 4. I'll read the text and then I'm going to go off on a different subject for a little while and then finally bring it back to the subject of prayer.

So this hopefully all holds together. Don't get too alarmed if it looks like I forgot what I'm talking about. So James chapter 4 looking at verses 1 through 3. Where do wars and fights come from among you?

Do they not come for your desire for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and you do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war yet you do not have because you do not ask.

You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures. So I'm thinking about this. James is pointing out here the way that we are ripped apart people. We're torn apart people.

We are wanting one thing and the thing that we want we never get. We're torn apart. And I'm reminded of a quote comes from the letters of Emily Dickinson. She once said, she said, the heart wants what the heart wants.

The heart wants what the heart wants. And that quote was picked up much later when Woody Allen, the filmmaker was attempting to justify the affair that he was having with the adopted daughter of the woman that he was living with.

So he's living with one woman and is having a thing with her daughter, her adopted daughter on the side. And when confronted on it, his explanation was, look, the heart wants what the heart wants. Just kind of shrug the shoulders.

The heart wants what the heart wants. What can I say? That's just kind of how I felt at the time. There's what your heart desires and there's just nothing you can do about it. Your heart has these desires and what can you do about it?

Somebody else thinks you're perverted because of what you want and you're in the middle of a 10-year relationship with one woman. You began having a secret affair with her adopted teenage daughter. Well, sorry, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

If that's what he felt in his heart, how can you argue with that? How can he be blamed if that's where his heart was? And if you think about that quote for a moment, on one hand, it's just saying the obvious.

The heart wants what the heart wants. There's this thing you want. What do you know? That's the thing that you want. But then if you think about it a little bit longer, you realize it's actually really, really twisted and hopeless.

On the one hand, it could just be a very mundane thing. What do you want? I want bacon. Well, that's interesting. That's the thing that your heart wants. That's what you're interested in. Who does not want a little bit of bacon?

But then we find that our heart wanders into some pretty perverted places as well. We can want some pretty sick things. And if the verdict is, look, if you want it, that's just what you want. There's really nothing you can do about it.

Well, then if that's the case, we're in a pretty hopeless predicament. If you are trapped in the prison of your sick desires, and that's something you can never get out of, then that's a pretty grim future that's in front of all of us.

So it's a horrifying statement, because if the heart is merely the sum of its own desires, then to borrow a phrase from Paul, surely we are to be pitied more than all. Right? We are in a pretty bad state.

We're to be pitied because our hearts are wicked. Jeremiah 17 .9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Mark 7 .12, for out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.

So if you're stuck with whatever your heart wants, and this is what scripture says is in our hearts, then we're in a bad state. But instead of being horrified at the reality of what our hearts are capable, instead of being terrified by the thought of being enslaved to a wicked heart, we find ourselves in a world that is casually giving in to the enslavement of the desires of the fallen heart.

Right? We're living in a world that is telling us whatever your heart wants, well, that's what you must be to be your authentic and true self. We live in a world increasingly given to sexual perversion, divorce, adultery, sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, and all are defended along the lines of but this is how I feel.

Right? You can't argue with me if this is where my heart is. This is just what I am. It's who I am. You can't argue with that. As if that just settles the whole question, right? And instead of being horrified by these desires and crying out for deliverance, our world is increasingly shrugging its shoulders and giving in to them because it's what the heart wants.

It has become a viable excuse, right? I don't love my wife anymore. I suddenly fell in love with my secretary. I suddenly found out that I had a desire for sixth grade boys. And we're supposed to say this is just who I am.

Shrug.

The heart wants what the heart wants. We're like the four-year-old child who seems to think that to say, but I want that is an irrefutable argument for why it must be so. Right? Your son wants the dump truck that another kid is playing with and throws a temper tantrum.

He thinks that the fact that he has this desire in his heart means that instantly all of creation must hop to and fulfill his desire. But I want it. As if that's some sort of law that we all have to give in to.

A friend of mine, I remember growing up, a friend of my mom used to say, well, want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first. Want in one hand, spit in the other, see which one fills up first.

I think the point was you're going to end up with a handful of spit. But that's no longer how the world responds, right? Nobody comes with that answer anymore. And we're now at this strange point in our culture where someone can feel like a different gender or a different race.

And somehow that feeling is supposed to be respected as an ontological reality. You're supposed to, because I feel this way, you all have to treat me as if that is now a reality. And we should not act like this is some sort of shift ushered in, you know, by the last presidential administration.

For over 40 years, America has held that if a woman does not feel like being a mother, then she may execute the baby whose life may have confined her desires within the restrictive realities of biology.

But I don't want to be pregnant. Sure, this pregnancy is the natural and predictable result of the sexual relationship. But I don't care because I don't want a baby right now. I don't want to suddenly have my life upended by suddenly being given the responsibilities of a mom.

I don't want to lose my education, my career, my current lifestyle. I don't want that. And the heart wants what the heart wants. And it's really telling if you think about it, that of all the different slogans that could have been used to brand the pro-abortion movement, that the phrase that stuck was pro-choice.

A woman's right to choose. It is foundational to their faith that the world must conform to whatever our wants are, our desires are. I should be able to say, this is what I want. And everybody has to hop to to make that the reality.

And here's the thing.

The World’s Catechism of Desire

You need to see that this is something that is very pointed and it is something that is intensifying. It's pointed and it's intensifying. Here's what I mean by that. It's pointed in that it's not any old desires.

It's not just any old desires that are the ones we all have to hop to to make happen. It is our sinful desires. Do you notice that? It's the more twisted desires. Those are the ones that we all have to suddenly stop and conform all of reality to give into.

So for instance, if I say that I believe that I need to be treated as if I was a woman, and therefore I have a right to shower in the girl's locker room, that you see how my desire is, that desire trumps the desires of the 800 women that don't want to shower with me, right?

So they have desires. They have wishes. I have desires. I have wishes. But we tend to take the more twisted, the more sinful, the more perverted desires and say, well, those are the authentic ones. Those are the ones that you have to conform to.

And all the other wishes and desires have to give in to that one. That's what I mean by it's pointed. We're actually, it's not a level playing field. We're not just saying whatever you feel. It's whatever you feel in your sicker side, whatever you feel in the darkest parts of your heart.

That's the real you. That's the authentic you. That's the you that needs to be expressed. There is no door out of the prison house of our sinful desires. That's what the world wants to tell us. And it's intensifying.

I said it's pointed. It's also intensifying. And by that, I mean the sinful desires of the unregenerate heart are now considered so fundamental to a person's identity that challenging these desires is considered to be hateful.

The American Psychiatric Association now condemns what's called conversion therapy. That is the attempt to help somebody deal with same-sex attraction to be faithful. They say that's conversion therapy.

And that has been identified as this horrible thing and is now outlawed in numerous states throughout our country. It is outlawed to attempt that kind of conversion therapy. It's not just that you must accept that some people want twisted things.

There's now an obligation to act on those desires. It's not just that they have these desires. It's that those desires have to be acted on. So for instance, a man with same-sex attraction who doesn't act on those desires is betraying his true self.

He's betraying himself if he doesn't act on them. To give in to the temptation is now an act of courage because his homosexual self is his authentic self. We have these desires and we're saying you have to embrace them.

You have to give in to them. To put that sin to death and to live faithfully before Christ is to fail. So to have an abortion is an act of courage. To have the baby and stay at home to be a mother, that's to fail.

That's to give up. That's to waste your life in some way. After all, if you're the sum total of your desires, then to deny these desires is to deny yourself. So you need to act on them to be authentic.

So let me give you a little bit of a catechism. You all go through your confession of faith at the beginning here. I want to give you my catechism for what I'm describing as the world's take on desire.

And that is, first, your sinful desires define the authentic you. The real you, the authentic you, is your sinful you. Your sinful desires can't be changed. Even if the whole world must change to accommodate them, those desires can't be changed.

Everything else has to change, but those desires must stay certain. Acting on these sinful desires is courageous and noble. And to not act on these desires is to betray your true self. We say now that self-expression is a virtue to the extent that self-control is actually a vice, right?

For you, you've got your sinful desires. For you to bring those out and live them out, that's a virtue. For you to master them, mortify them, put them to death, that's a vice. Self-control is a vice.

Self-expression is a virtue. So that's the world we live in, and that's the message that we're being taught. How do we live as Christians faithfully in a world like that? A world that is trying to tell you, you are held prisoners in the cage of your sinful desires, and you cannot escape them.

That's the world's message. How do we live in that? Well, first, we need to notice that this catechism is carefully aimed at undermining the gospel, okay? This is really, really, in a very pointed way, going after the Christian gospel.

The world wants you to say, your identity is all wrapped up with your sinful desires, and that you will grow in authenticity and becoming a more real person as you give yourself to them, right? You'll grow in authenticity as you give yourself to your sin.

But here's what Christ says. Christ says, whoever desires to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Luke 9, 24. Christ comes in and says, this prison house that you're stuck in, that thing, if you want to have a real life, if you want to have a true life, you can let that self die.

That self can die, and in the death of that self, you'll find a real life, a true life given back to you. So the world, in trying to tell you that you must live in this house, this prison house, they're trying to keep you from the gospel when they do that.

Christ says, come and die with me, lose your life, let go of your sinful desires, join me on the cross and die with me, and find a far greater fulfillment than what you in your sins can possibly fathom.

All right, there is a far greater life waiting outside of this prison house. This is Paul's boast in Galatians 2 .20. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live. No longer I. That authentic self that the world wants me to embrace, that one is gone.

He died, died on the cross. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, Galatians 2 .20.

You see how the gospel runs completely counter to the world's catechism. So we need to remind ourselves daily of the truth of the gospel, and second, we need to learn to live this truth out. The world says that we're defined by our sinful desires, but scripture says, Galatians 5 .24, those who are in Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Those passions, those desires are crucified on the cross. They're not your prison house anymore. That's the great witness that the church has in this world. We proclaim and live out the truth that Christ Jesus died and rose again to free us from the prison house of our broken desires.

But here's the problem. Here's the problem. That's the reality we live in, but oftentimes, despite being born-again Christians, despite believing everything I just said, despite all of that, we feel like the world sometimes has a point.

Do you know what I mean? Sometimes you feel like, I know I believe by faith I'm freed from this prison house, but I keep finding myself inside of its walls. I keep finding myself trapped there. We find ourselves in the prison house of our own desires, and Paul describes this battle that we fight.

Galatians 5, he says, I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

He says you have the Spirit in you, and the Spirit is teaching you and guiding you to live for Christ, but what you find is you still have flesh in your life that continues to fight against the Spirit, and your mind, your heart are renewed by the gospel, I want that, and then you keep finding yourself doing this.

Even though the door to your cage is open, you find yourself lingering inside its walls far too often. We still wrestle with our sinful wants. So it says here that,.

Excuse me, skipping pages,.

So our witness to the world then is not the witness of an otherworldly existence. The moment you got saved, you don't suddenly transcend all of creation and float above it all. We still find ourselves doing stupid things.

We don't hover two feet off the ground. Our witness is that of men and women who remain in the flesh, but who daily get the victory over the flesh by the power of the Spirit. So earlier I quoted Jesus saying that we should find our lives by losing them, but hear that quote again with a little more context.

This is Luke 9, 23 through 24. Then he said to them, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Okay, Christ makes it clear that it is a daily discipline. You must take up your cross daily to put these things to death. It's a daily discipline lived out in the lives of the saints.

And I'm convinced that one of the most important places for this to take place, for this battle to take place is in your prayer life. Your prayer life is where you step out of that cage. Your prayer life is where you put these things that constantly get the victory over you.

That's where you put those things to death. Your prayer life is where you fix your broken wants because that's the thing that gets us, right? Do you ever find yourself just really frustrated with how your wants, your desires, the things that you want keep creeping off into places that you don't want them to go?

And it's such a paradox because you find yourself, as Paul describes, wanting what you don't want and not wanting what you want, which makes you feel all messed up because our desires are broken. But I want to argue that your prayer life is where you can go to fix this.

Your prayer life is what God gave you to put this to death and to get healing here. So perhaps it feels abrupt to suddenly transition to prayer, but you have to think about this. I have argued that the world has based its assault on the church by arguing that we're prisoners of our desires.

You're held captive by your desires. But I want to say that prayer is God's greatest means of converting your sinful desires into godly desires. Prayer frees us from what the world claims cages us. Prayer is what frees us from that.

How so? Well, consider a few passages that describe what the life of desire for a Christian is supposed to be like. I want to give you a few just random passages about how our desires are supposed to work with what God wants.

Psalm 145, verse 19. He will fulfill the desires of those who fear Him. He will fulfill the desires of those who fear Him. John 14, verses 13 and 14. Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If you ask anything in my name, I will do it, okay? Whatever you ask, you ask in my name, I want to do that. John 15, seven and eight. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you.

By this, my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit. So you will be my disciples. You see, in each of those passages, God is describing a very different life than the one that I was describing earlier, where we feel all trapped and caged by our desires, wanting what we don't want and being all broken and conflicted on ourselves.

Here in scripture, He's saying,.

No, no, no.

When you're a Christian, you're supposed to walk before Him where you're wanting something and the Father is giving it to you, where the Father is blessing you and fulfilling your desires. He will fulfill the desires of those who fear Him, that's Psalm 145.

And in fact, those two John passages, I find it's really striking that it's not just that the Father is willing to give us our desires, but that the Father actually stakes that place, that moment as the place where He will be most glorified.

He staked, the Father stakes His glory on His ability to answer your prayers, to fulfill your desires. Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.

The Father is going to be glorified at that moment where you're asking and He is giving. You know this as parents and it's the strangest thing, you know that moment when Christmas morning, the sort of magic of Christmas morning suddenly shifted and you suddenly felt the intense joy of being able to give to your children the things that they want.

Kids, you don't believe that your parents have this. You don't necessarily know it, but you would not believe the incredible thrill of a parent, of a father being able to look at your kids and say, here, this is yours, all right?

Because I'm your dad, I'm gonna provide that for you. I'm gonna take care of that for you. I'm gonna make sure that that's there for you. I'm sure you don't feel it, but when you become a father, when you become a mother, you will feel the incredible thrill and sensation of being glorified by providing for your children, right?

By feeling this intense pleasure. And John says that that's what God has with us. He actually desires for us to live in a condition where our desires are the things that He is just freely granting, giving, giving, giving.

Instead of us being twisted, conflicted and caught in a cage, that Him providing our desires, that is the harmonious relationship that we're supposed to have with our Maker. So not only is the Father willing to answer our prayers, but He is glorified in doing so.

Now, here's the problem. The fear is when you start going to verses like this, and there are a number of other passages I can quote from Scripture that describe God's desire for us to say, I want that, and for Him to be able to give it to us, and for us to be able to have confidence when we ask Him for things, for Him to be providing.

There are a number of passages like that. And those are the passages that we get nervous that it's gonna turn into a name it and claim it, prosperity, gospel, televangelist message. In some way, it's gonna be twisted into the blab it and grab it kind of message.

And usually, you know, I start going through these passages, and in a little bit here, then I will have like on the screen, the giving page for apologia will come up. And I'll start telling that if you give to that, you'll be a millionaire.

And that's usually the way that kind of message goes. And so we get a little bit nervous when we hit those passages, and we tend to skip over them pretty quickly. Or even more difficult for us is we don't see how that could be the case.

Like the verse is pretty clear in what it promises. He will fulfill the desires of those who fear Him. It's pretty clear in what it's saying. But it's terrifying because we don't see that in our lives.

And it's a test of our faith. And we don't wanna have to mess with that. So we try to kind of step over those verses really quickly. So let's not make the qualifications then without first seeing what the text clearly says.

It says here that God is glorified by us asking for things from Him, and Him granting those requests. Whatever you ask, if you ask anything, ask what you desire, and He is going to fulfill it. It's some pretty strong promises there.

There's some strong promises there. And I know there are qualifications that need to be made. We need to explain some things. But don't let the qualifications undo the promise, all right? There's something there for us.

Now consider this 1 John 5 verses 14 and 15. Now this is the confidence that we have in Him. That if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.

All right, when we hit that passage, then do you notice that when you hit that one, you feel like you found the fine print, right? You're accustomed now that when you get those mailings in the... Every day you come home and you get those mailings in the mailbox that proclaim some, you've won a million dollars.

And you don't even bother with it because you know there's fine print in there somewhere that takes it away. And so you can just toss these things because you know it's not really promising what it looks like it's promising because there's always fine print.

And when we hit this, we feel like, oh, there's the fine print. It's the, if we ask according to His will, right? If you ask according to His will, there's the little escape clause so that you can't actually claim this verse, right?

You can't actually claim it because you have to ask it according to His will. And then it works out. So it's basically God has decreed everything that will come to pass.

You're going to pray.

Sometimes when you pray, you'll happen to mention one of the things that He's declared. And when that matches up, then what do you know, you're going to get it because, but He's going to do what He had foreordained.

And your prayer isn't changing anything. It's just that every now and then you manage to actually line up with something He said. And that's a hyper-Calvinist kind of position. And it really completely undermines what this text is trying to get us to do.

Notice how John began it. He says, now this is the confidence that we have in Him. This is the confidence that we have in Him. If you read that like the fine print that undermines the promise, what confidence have you been given?

Do you have any confidence because of this? We're not reading the text right if we take that as fine print that cancels out the promise. There is a qualification here. There's no doubt that there's a qualification here.

The Father hears us if we ask according to His will. So the promise is not a blank check. The promise is not a blank check. God is not our genie in a bottle, right? God is not the genie in a bottle with your prayer life being the way you kind of rub the bottle and then get to make demands of Him.

God is not a vending machine in the sky that we put a little prayer quarter in and then He has to give us whatever we've asked for. The promise is contingent on us being in submission to His will. It depends on us being in submission to His will.

But that qualification can't take away the first part of the verse which is this is our confidence. Somehow we're supposed to hear this promise and walk out with a deep, deep confidence in the way our desires and God's will will line up.

Somehow those have to come together in a way that gives us a deep confidence. So read that verse. The promise is a promise for confidence. Whatever we ask, a promise that we will be able to know that we're going to receive what we have asked for.

Okay, we're going to be able to know that we'll receive what we have asked for. You can't get around the fact that in these verses God describes a promise of seeing the desires of our heart being fulfilled by the will of God and this happening through a fervent prayer life.

Okay, somehow this works out so that our desires are fulfilled in the word of God and this comes out in a very fervent prayer life. So how can that work? How can that work without us falling into a health and wealth gospel or without us falling into a some sort of hyper-Calvinist, fatalistic determinism?

How can that work? Well, here's where I think we get messed up. If God promises that He will give us what we want, if God promises He's going to give you what you want, we need to remember that there are actually two variables here.

There are two variables and we frequently think that there's only one. There are two variables here. There's your desire, our desire, and there's God's will. There's what we want and what God has determined will happen.

In other words, in every prayer there are two things that are at stake. First, there's the thing that's being asked for and second, there's God's actual plan for that desire. There's the thing that I'm asking for and then there's God's plan for that thing.

There's two things that are at stake there. But the funny thing is, self-centered people that we are, we tend to think that the only variable is God's will, is God's determination. We take our desire as if it's this fixed thing.

My want is this fixed thing. I want that. And the only way what I want and what God is willing, the only way for those two things for them to line up is for God's will to conform to what I want. Isn't it funny that we see our own desires as the fixed thing and God's will is the thing that has to move to come to us to bring about the union of those two things.

We tend to think that when we come to God in prayer that we are coming to ask for the second thing to be moved. We're coming to ask for God, for his will to respond to our request. We're asking for his will to move.

But we don't tend to see that it is our desire, our want that is also on the table. Think of it this way. Have you ever heard of when people talk about spiritual warfare and they'll often use comparisons to modern military warfare and they'll connect different things.

So for instance, when you're in a personal evangelistic moment, right? You're sitting there talking to somebody, walking them through the gospel. Well, that's when you're in hand-to-hand combat, okay?

But then you can pray from a distance. You can pray for that evangelistic encounter. You can pray for that and that's like artillery, okay? And we think of artillery like the virtue of artillery is that it's this thing that you can fire from a distance and you can inflict damage on your enemy.

You can soften the enemy's position by raining artillery shells on them while you're still at a distance and you're kind of out of reach. You're in this safe position where you from a safe position can inflict damage on the enemy.

You can put them in a dangerous position even though you're at a distance. And we tend to think that prayer is like that. That in that moment of evangelism, that's hand-to-hand. But when you're in prayer, that's you at a distance.

That's you in a safe position kind of raining down something over there where you're not really vulnerable. You're not really at stake. That's not true. That's not true at all. When you're in prayer, you're at the front, right?

When you're in prayer, that's when you're getting messed with. When you're in prayer, that's when you're being worked on. That's when you are vulnerable to deep change, all right? And deep change in a good way.

Prayer brings you into a position of great danger. But it's a good kind of danger because it's the danger of being before a dangerous God, right? It's when it puts you in front of God and makes you vulnerable to His will in a very particular kind of way.

So prayer is not safe. You can't think of it as safe. Prayer is that moment where your will, your desire is put on the altar for God to move it. The best example I can think of this is the example that Jesus gave to us with His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.