Adapting to Change by Putting First Things First

Daily writing promptHow have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?View all responses

Put first things first. Desires can be changed. Desires are not a track that people are compelled to follow. It’s a fact that people can and do recover from captivity to various kinds of cravings.

Life goes much better when you determine and control your desires instead of letting them manipulate and define you. If you cling to your compulsions, they will cling to you, and you will believe the lie that says you can never be free from them.

The belief that desires can’t be changed causes people to surrender to and be motivated and controlled by their cravings rather than by their conscience and their rationality. It creates continual captivity to cravings.

Every time you give in to a manipulating compulsion, get up and increase your resistance! If you give controlling your desires a day off, they will quickly knock you off course and retake control of you. Never stop resisting and renouncing the cravings that are controlling you holding you captive.

You’re not your cravings. They have no right to define you. You are so much more than your compulsive desires! Live beyond them!

Celebrating cravings and compulsions keeps people forever in their captivity, however, the concept of recovery from cravings and compulsions gives people hope and leads the way to freedom.

The recovery movement that was popularized by a focus on recovery from a compulsion to drink and/or abuse drugs developed 12 steps that when diligently and persistently applied, effectively work to change human desires. It has proven that human desires and compulsions are not set in stone but can be changed.

True love intensely desires to hear God’s voice and to be led by His Spirit. “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.” (1 Corinthians 14:1.)

People who daily read the Bible with an open, honest, and humble heart soon discover that it changes their desires and molds them from within. Try it for yourself. Read the New Testament for at least 5 minutes every day for 21 days (without missing a day) and you will be amazed at what happens inside of you.

The Bible says that humans have the ability to control our desires. We don’t have to be their slaves. “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.” (Colossians 3:5.)

Jesus said that you need to make your greatest desire be a deep hunger to be daily governed by God and His righteousness (His moral purity). (See Matthew 6:33.) People who create an ongoing hunger and thirst for righteousness within them will be blessed and filled with a sense of wellbeing. Make the kingdom of God and His righteous your first and overriding desire.

If you want better desires, you have the ability to reset them. Seek first the kingdom of God and healing change will come.

If your friends made a list of the people that they know who are desperately hungry and thirsty for more of Jesus, would you be on their list? Get addicted to the risen Jesus! He’s the only addiction that can truly set you free.

The most powerful source of recovery from controlling cravings and compulsions is the living, resurrected Jesus Christ. Make it your desire to pursue an ever-deepening relationship with Him with all your heart. I believe that there are more effective ways for Christians to gather around the risen Jesus than the traditional church model.

Let Christ “dwell in your heart” and experience “love that surpasses knowledge.” Daily live “through His Spirit in your inner being.” Be “rooted and established in love” and “have power together with all the Lord’s holy people.” (See Ephesians 3:14-21.)

Jesus is the only human being that will ever be one with God. The rest of will never be part of the godhead. We are called to surrender to our will to God and be forever connected with Him heart-to-heart. I feel that heart-connection every day.

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