The Root of Want

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are a reflection on Sunday’s message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/hear-a-message]

What do you want?

Right now, wherever you’re sitting or standing or crouching while you’re reading this, what do you want?

Maybe it’s a cup of coffee, a nap, a new car, a vacation, or a bigger paycheck. Or maybe your want is intangible, complex, or difficult to admit. Peace. Relationships. Healing. Love. Forgiveness.

We can all think of something we want.

In I Timothy 6, Paul writes specifically about how the love of money can become a problem. Yet, as Pastor Dirk pointed out, it’s only partly about the money itself--more importantly, it’s about the condition of our hearts and the root of our wanting. 

While many people have misread this passage to say that money is the root of evil, the true root of evil is the condition of the heart. There are ways of wanting things--coffee, vacations, paychecks, relationships, peace--that are not bad. God desires to give his children good gifts, and, in their proper context, all of these and more are very good gifts. Vacations can be fun, paychecks allow for different opportunities, relationships enrich our lives, peace allows us to experience life without anxiety. 

Yet if we want these good things for the wrong reasons, they can become bad things that ultimately lead to our own destruction. Paul reminds us of the danger of loving things we’re not supposed to, and more than that, of the value of contentment. The difference between want that is good and want that is bad is whether we can learn be content with or without it.

Contentment is not a quick fix, nor is it something we learn once and are set for the rest of our lives. Just as each stage of our lives brings us different joys and sorrows, opportunities and closed doors, each stage of life brings different ways to learn contentment. It may be learning to be content with fewer material goods than we’d like, or being content at a different school or job than we imagined, or being content with relationships that look different than we’d envisioned. 

It’s not that God expects us to never want anything--sometimes wanting things spurs us to good, healthy action. The difference is in how we approach what we want, and whether we can learn to be content whether we get what we want or not.

Whatever it is that you want right now, maybe it’s time to examine the reason you want it, the true root of the want, and to look at what the condition of your heart is in the midst of your wanting.

[Brianna DeWitt attends Encounter Church and lives, works, and writes in Grand Rapids, MI. You can see more of her musings on her personal blog at http://awritespot.wordpress.com and on Twitter at @bwitt722.]