Are Your Desires Impossible to Fulfill?

Do you have a dream, a goal, or a desire that you feel like is just too impossible to be fulfilled? Have you stopped to consider that God may not intend for that thing to ever come to fruition for you? 

There is nothing wrong with merely wanting something. It is only wrong to want something so badly that we would do anything to get it, be sick with unhappiness without it, or be so occupied with it that we push God out of our lives. This is what greed is. It is often entrapping. 

Consider this fable involving a greedy fox and a vineyard of grapes: 

There was a fox who so wanted the grapes that his mouth watered just to look at them. Indeed, his whole life focused on sating his hunger for them. So he walked round and round the vineyard wall looking for a way in. Finally, his search was rewarded when he spied a hole under some brush at the base of the wall. The hole, though, was just small enough that he could not squeeze through.

But the fox really wanted those grapes! So he fasted for three days until he was lean enough to wriggle through. Joyously, he ate grapes until he could eat no more. Gorged with success, he set out to leave the vineyard, but he was now too fat to crawl through the hole! He had to fast again until he was lean enough to leave. 

Poor fox, he was caught in the endless cycle of greed!

We all have at least a bit of this in us. Some eat as though food were going out of style. Some spend their lives accumulating so much money for their families that they never have time to enjoy it. Some spend money as though if we kept it, it would wear out our pockets. Instead, we end up having to deal with a mountainous credit card debt and with it virtual slavery to a bank or finance company. Greed entraps us all differently, but its effect can be consuming and detrimental – ultimately taking us away from our purpose to build God’s kingdom. 

As 2023 is underway now, I would urge you to consider what goals and intentions you have set for yourself. Are you consumed by greed as you chase after impossible-to-be-filled desires? Or are you seeking to live a generous life by learning to become a good steward of your resources? 

I’d say for me this is a cyclical battle; the kind I need to daily reevaluate. It is human nature to put one’s own desires first. It is radical, holy (meaning set apart), and uncomfortable to put aside our own desires and run after God’s desire to redeem the world and our hearts. 

The good news is that as a sinner saved by grace, you have the almighty power of the Holy Spirit within you. This year, why do you make it your goal to get to know the God-given power within you and how to apply it to your finances? 

Next week, I’d like to share with you a few ways in which you can fight against the greed that often creeps into our hearts. 

Until then, 
Katie Fiola Jones