Desire

When I played college tennis one of the members of the team would use a word to help inspire us to play better. He used to say that we needed "ganas", the word means desire. He would say "ganas, you must want it more than the other person."

Desire is universal, we all have desires. He was using to desire as a tool to help us want to win more than our opponent, and it worked for many of us. What about other things that we desire. What are our desires?

Jesus says that we must "seek first the kingdom." This is an issue of desire. Do we desire the kingdom of heaven? Probably, but we also desire other things as well. How do we deal with our desires and not let them get out of control?

I think that Jesus helps when he tells us to "seek first the kingdom." The order and magnitude of our desires matters. If we desire money first and more than anything else than we will seek money first. The same could be true about our sexuality, ego, status, cars, work etc...

It is fine to have other desires as long as they are not in the number one place in our lives or contrary to Jesus' teaching. The kingdom of God is to be in the first place. When Christ and his kingdom are first in our life then the rest of our life will begin to be ordered around Christ, his Word and his kingdom. Then the other desires (which will be present) will take their proper place. Any time that those other desire become first in our lives then they become idols or false gods. The first commandment is to have no other Gods beside me.

When we put Christ first then we experience that he truly is the way, the truth and the life and everything is added unto us. Another way to say that is that when Christ is first then the things that used to be so important aren't nearly as important as they once were and we are more content than ever.