Desires

God wants us to be proactive. We can make observations and change the way we are working. “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.” (James 2:14-15). If we are wise, we can study our own desires and change our choices at the root of our choices - desires. Once we notice when we are enticed to sin, we can confront ourselves. We can avoid sin in our lives by changing the root of our sin, our desires. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6). The way to be fulfilled in life is to hunger and thirst after righteousness - to make righteousness the deep desire of our heart.

Don't wait for others to change. Change begins with you.

We are only in charge of our desires, we cannot make someone else want anything. We can influence others, but we can only change ourselves. When we change ourselves into who we want to be, it often changes how we relate to everything around us. As we live out a changed life, we will see the world around us change first by our perspective and then by our influence.

Don't go through life, grow through life.

We cannot stop the progression of time. As we move forward with our lives, we can choose to develop ourselves or simply get older. Growth is intentional; we will not grow if we don’t decide to make ourselves grow. We can decide we want to grow, but we won’t actually grow until we decide to put forth the hard work to make ourselves grow. Our growth is directly related to our efforts. At the same time, spiritual growth carries with it a component that we are not fully in control of as well. The movement of the Spirit is something that we cannot control and at times it may feel like we are putting forth the effort to grow and having little outcome. Our calling is to do the best we can with the resources we have while trusting and waiting on God to move in our lives.