Venturing to Inner Desire

“Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in a mother’s womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything.”

~Ecclesiastes 11:5 (NRSV)

A mystery is whispered through the genome of time and it is heard silently within the soul of every living being, though many millions ignore it. This mystery is, of course, entwined in enigma and is, in very nature, the Lord—with us; within us; the intriguing inner desire that corresponds with truth.

Knowledge of the untenable inscrutability of God is most acutely known by the fact of how little we know even of ourselves.

We have evidence of this mystery in the longing that precedes our soul’s continual unease. Smothering the inner desire that can only be sated by God is a plethora of worldly and fleshly desires that overlay and conquer that sense-of-Spirit within, if we’ll allow them to.

And, as a matter of course, we do.

War of the Worlds

The battle of desires is a silent war raging within the anatomical region that is in and through one human being. Torrents of gunfire blast intermittently and relentlessly from cradle to grave and either frustration grinds or patience is built—yet, neither is the final answer.

A Sentinel stands there ready to defend, but we do not commonly defer to this Mighty Defender. We try our own way.

We beat our outer desire the best way we can, without the Sentinel, our God, but forlornly our endeavours fail, because we have not sought to venture into and meet the inner desire—that cherished destiny the Lord, our God, has wired into our psyches from the beginning. We need to seek re-connection to that.

Part of our problem is the inner desire is mysteriously hidden from everyday view; we only venture there by faith and it is a difficult journey because we must negate prevailing desire with an ennobled, quieter one.

But, what is not easy is still possible.

Hope’s Revived in the Achievement of Inner Desire

All manner of sinful desire perplex the goals of the would-be faithful. Yet, this considers the effect of being controlled over the state of wresting control.

Where the outer desire controls us, the inner desire—once harnessed; and it is not easy—facilitates control. The outer desire is a burden on our flesh; the inner desire is plentiful fuel for power to redirect one human being toward his or her goal: the achievement of the momentary will of God.

The inner desire does not fight with the outer desire; it simply operates differently, bypassing it. It has fallen out of love with the world and what its eyes and ears have been typically given to.

We must know by now, the things we must accept (spiritual things) and the things we must reject (worldly things that control us from the outside).

The Way There

Faith is a thing dripping with action-oriented diligence and prudence; all manner of blessed virtue toward the enactment of action, even without assurance of the promised vision.

Yet, on faith we must depend.

Diligence is the role of faith as it esteems common progress toward the inner desire; that which has sought God so fundamentally that the outer desire has been ripped clean away and does, though it remains, no longer wrangle with the flesh.

The harnessing of inner desire is a situational achievement; the blessing of God.

The way there to the inner desire is, firstly, the motive of love to know God and, secondly, it’s the habit of continually re-entering the very soul of the mysterious God existing within each one of us via prayer. The way there is first, interest, and second, practice.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.