SERMON SCREENSHOTS & KEY POINTS

Our wants are tricky things. They’re always up to something. They’re often clever and deceptive. We want to eat healthy. We also want junk food. We want to give our money away to help people. We also want to hoard it to be ready for those emergencies. We want to love people well. But we also want to do it so that they’ll thank us, or notice us, or do something for us. We want to know God and serve him and show his love to others; and we also want to slump into spiritual passivity and comfort, sometimes using grace as an excuse. Oftentimes, we slowly convince ourselves that our wants are actually needs, driving a wedge between us and contentment. We live in a war of wants. Like a pocketful of old tangled earbuds, our jumbled wants can make life confusing to live. And we haven’t even yet considered the life of faith.

What does God want? What does he desire from us? And if the Holy Spirit dwells within us believers, shouldn’t we be asking what he wants? And how does what the Holy Spirit wants to relate to our own wants? In Galatians, Paul frames our discipleship to Jesus in terms of life in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is forming Christ in us, and so what should it look like when our desires and the Spirit’s desires meet? Simply,

What does the Holy Spirit want with our wants?

First, the Spirit wants us to walk with him (5:16). Walking in a Hebrew worldview is about closeness and intimacy with God. Many Old Testament saints are described as having walked with God. Even when we go on walks, the presumption is that you share an existing relationship with that person and desire to further or grow in that relationship. So, when Paul says, “Walk by the Spirit,” he’s saying, “Grow in your relationship with the Holy Spirit. Spend time there. Set aside space. Linger there. Ask the Spirit what he wants from you. Ask him to guide you. Ask him to teach you. Ask him to speak to you from Scripture and from others. Thank him. Delight in his presence. Listen to what he might be saying. Voice your pains to him. Surrender to him. Do it out loud. In the shower, at the red light, on your actual walks. Beg him to stir love in you. 

Secondly, the Spirit wants us to reject the flesh’s wants. Paul says, “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh” (5:17). The Holy Spirit has moved us from the slavery world into the freedom world. And he longs for us to live in this freedom by love, not law. So, to rightly walk by the Spirit, we need to recognize and then resist the desires of the flesh. Thus, when we act so that people are more impressed with us than Jesus… When we blame our friends rather than take responsibility… When we dwell on how to get even… When we can’t learn because we think you already know… When you keep score with your wife… When you bring up your husband’s old sins in order to shame him… When greed is your primary money principle… When lust is piloting the ship of your sexuality… When you talk about justice, but only as a disguise for vengeance… When your pride drains you of empathy… When we do these kinds of things, we are giving in to the desires of the flesh. And the Spirit wants us to see that there is no life in these things. They are a dead end. He wants us to recognize them, despise them, and turn from them. 

Third, the Spirit wants to change our wants over time. If we’re walking by the Spirit in 5:16 (which is about intimacy and closeness), and we’re rejecting the desires of the flesh in 5:17, and then 5:18 says that this walking and rejecting is going somewhere (the Spirit is leading us), the assumption between all of these is that something is happening to our own desires over time. The Holy Spirit is doing some deep, foundational renovation in the house of our wants so that our own desires begin to fit more hand-in-glove with what the Spirit himself desires. When we are moved from the world of slavery into the world of freedom, it changes who we are at the most fundamental and eternal level. But sometimes, our wants and desires drag behind because of the brokenness that surrounds us. And Paul is saying that “walking in the Spirit” is the long-con on our distracted desires. And this takes time. Maturity means wanting new things. Growth means learning to want the right things. Being led by the Spirit means he’s shaping our wants over time. 

This is true, but needs qualification. Often the Spirit changes our wants by getting to the deeper want behind the surface want. CS Lewis writes that God has not created a desire for which he also has not created a corresponding divine fulfillment. Meaning God made us desirous creatures. Having wants is not evil. The problem, however, is that we’ve all wrongly acted on those God-given desires. Lust is the surface desire, and intimacy is the deeper desire. Greed is the surface desire, and security is likely the deeper desire. Anger is the surface desire, and self-control or responsibility is probably the deeper desire. So, what Lewis is saying and what Paul is nudging at is that the Spirit knows that fleshly, surface desires are temporal and don’t help form Christ in us. The desires of the flesh are momentary and can’t change us. However, the true fulfillment of our longings is Christ himself. And the Spirit is leading us that way. He is our Guide. It’s not enough for him to bring us into the world of freedom. He also wants us to live by the way of freedom – by love. And to do that, he digs up under the surface wants to remind us of the deeper wants.

The clearest snapshot of these things is our Lord Jesus himself. The Gospel accounts portray Jesus as being perfectly led by the Spirit. Even though he was without sin, he lived in a world drowning in sin. In the shadow of the cross, the night he was arrested in the Garden, Jesus prayed, “Father, not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus is saying that his most reflex want is to not go through with it because of how heavy and how painful it will be. Jesus was speaking out of the emotionality and the intensity of the moment. He understands our struggle. But Jesus also knew that there were deeper truths than the moment. He knew that there were deeper glories than his latest want. He knew that there was deeper love that would endure pain, and conquer sin and death. And so, yielded to God the Father and God the Spirit, Jesus went to the cross. And in doing so, he unraveled the worldly power that binds us. And now, he has given us his Spirit, to now live out the love and grace of the gospel. The cross and resurrection prove that death is no longer our inheritance. He has welcomed us into new life. A life where the flesh doesn’t win. Where we are free from the law. Where the Spirit wants to renovate our wants. Where he is slowly but surely forming Christ in us. And the Spirit’s invitation is simple, “Let’s take a walk.”

*We are a church located in Greenville, South Carolina. Our vision is to see God transform us into a community of grace passionately pursuing life and mission with Jesus.