I Want It Now!

I'm having another one of those moments of selfishness. You know them: the blind red rage that rises when something you want is denied you, followed up immediately by "Why? It's not fair?"

Stuart Scott in The Exemplary Husband notes that if a desire, want, or need rises to the forefront above obeying God, even if it is legitimate, we are to temporarily put it aside in favor of obeying God - or, as James says, "The anger of man does not work the righteousness of God" (James 1:20). To sin, even in pursuit of a legitimate goal or want, destroys the bottom line of pursuing anything: to glorify God.

Which is all fine in print, of course, but does nothing when I am in the throes of dealing with it.

But it occurs to me that it is in those times, perhaps above others, that God is working in us: enabling us to deny ourselves, to put aside the things that we want for the thing that He wants (at the bottom of it, of course, is His righteousness and His character that He wants to give us), to give witness to the world about the surpassing glory of God (i.e. we can sacrifice something that the world considers worthwhile for something else - what's up with that?), and to show that, in the end, we are truly dependent on Him for everything.

It is the truly strong person who can say, even it the pursuit of a legitimate goal or desire, "Not my will, but Thine be done, O Lord."