What Is Your Deepest Desire?
Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash
On this Thanksgiving day, I'm finding myself most thankful for a God of pure love. This story is a window into one of the intentionally tender ways the Trinity has been weaving their love deeper into my soul.
I sat in a large beach house, surrounded by the other students at my first School of Spiritual Direction (SSD). Larry Crabb, our teacher, had just painted a stunning picture of the love between the Father and Son embodied in the Spirit fleshed out in a divine dance of love (see previous post A Dance Like No Other). As he shared that God created us to participate in their dance, I was captivated by the Trinity and drawn toward God in a more intimate way than ever before.
Occasionally, I read or hear something which causes an immediate shift in my soul. Like the disorderings within me begin to unwind themselves from their disintegrated ways of being and move toward integration. This was one of those moments. I found myself thirsty.
Larry opened his next session with a question. Sometimes one question has the power to unravel a lifetime of a manner of being in the world.
“What is our greatest need?” he asked.
“Love. Acceptance. Belonging,” we said.
“What is our deepest desire?” he asked.
“To be loved,” we unanimously responded.
With artistry, Larry proceeded to paint the picture of how we were designed by Love for a life of love. When we enter into the Trinitarian dance through faith in Jesus Christ, the Father pours His love into us, satisfying our need to be loved. As we allow, He will continually fill us to overflowing with His love, who resides in us through His Spirit. In Christ, we are fully, unconditionally loved, and as a result, released to pour the Father’s love back into Him and others. When He fills us with His love, our deepest desire transforms from being loved to loving others.”
REFLECTION TELLS THE STORY
If someone had a held up a mirror toward me, I would have looked something like a pig at a trough, thirstily drinking from God’s fountain of love and demanding the people in my life fill my cup of love as well. Needs and desires all curved inward. It had taken 37 years of living before I could see that my love did not always flow without a pull for something back from God and others. I could look so pure in my motives that no one but me would ever know that some of my acts of love were self-serving. My self-obsession was gently illuminated. Hello to a clearer vision of myself. Hello to a clearer vision of love.
Hello to brokenness.
I’d arrived at the SSD feeling quite good about myself and the way I loved. As Larry confessed to us the ways in which his love comes with strings, my own selfish ways of loving were exposed. I find this to be one of the ways the Holy Spirit likes to move—through unexpected side doors, cushioning the landing of an exposed and convicted heart through the withness of others who find themselves at the trough beside me.
Over time, my brokenness over my ways of loving with strings attached has given God access to release me to grow into the lover He created me to be—pouring His love into others for their sakes. And the verse about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself—I think I’m beginning to embody it.
I wonder what you might find in the mirror as you take a moment to pause in reflection. What would you say has been your deepest desire and how has that influenced your capacity to love?