Wants and Hopes

I recently had a friend ask me what it is that I want. In the sense of, if I could paint a picture that is my life, how I want it at this moment, what would that look like. I failed to the think about the question with sufficient depth (a common occurrence), and I answered the question in a dishonest way. Not dishonest in the sense that I was lying, but dishonest in a sense that I was forgetting who God is and what it is He does and why He does what He does, and I wasn't true to God and who I am to Him in my response.

You see, I rattled off some things that I thought would be great in a perfect world, what I thought would be great for me in the future, things that I hope for in this short life. But, she didn't ask what I hoped for, she asked what I wanted. There is a vast difference I think. A want or a desire is attainable to right now, while a hope is something looked forward to at some future point.

When I confuse my hopes and my desires, I am rejecting the plan that God has laid out. When I think that a hope for a wife and a family is good because God said it's not good for man to be alone, then I have distorted the vision that God has given me. God has already told me what I should put my hope in. My hope is Jesus Christ. My hope is not a family, not a wife or a child, nor a house or job. My hope is Jesus Christ... I hope that He continues to not withhold His mercy and His grace from me, I hope that He is looking out for my ultimate good, I hope that He is granting me provision every minute of every day, I hope that He will return and make this sad and painful world right one day, I hope to spend eternity in His presence and learning about Him and loving Him more and more every moment of this infinite life.

Hope in its truest sense, goes hand-in-hand with trust. I hope in these things because I trust what God has told me and what He has showed me. So why do I put desires in the place of hopes? I do this because I don't trust God, I don't know in my heart that He'll follow through even though He always has thus far, and I don't believe that someone like me is truly lovable by a perfect and infinite Being.

So what are wants and desires in light of hope? The psalmist says that God gives us the desires of our hearts. I don't understand this to mean that because I want something God will give it to me, even in the sense that the desire is good. I don't believe this to be what is being said. I think He is saying that as we understand God more and in a deeper sense, He will create within us desires that are of Him. Our desires become godly.

If this is the case, that our desires become godly, a true definition of a desire is not an object. It cannot be a person or an achievement. God doesn't command to achieve anything or attain to anything, and He doesn't promise us anything tangible. A true definition of desire is an emotion or passion that moves us to action. This is the type of answer that I should have given when the question was posed to me.

So here is my answer rethought to anyone who cares...
I want to love God.
I want to love people.
I want my heart to break when a friend hurts.
I want to serve people.
I want to hold other people's babies (because I have none of my own)
I want to impact someone in a way that exalts Christ.
I want to learn.
I want to learn more about the depth of my God and how He works and the way He thinks and loves.
I want to learn more about the plights of international cultures that are not born into the privilege and comfort that I was, so that compassion boils within me until I do something.
I want to learn more about the communities of these same cultures that I can understand how very poor people do and love so much more than I do with seemingly so much less to offer.
I want to read more... More Bible, more classic fiction, more world history, more biographies, more about coffee.
I want to write more... more than just a blog.
I want to know my friends so well that I can always guess what they're thinking, but I would never let them know I know.
I want to be silent.
I want to eat and drink foods that I've never had before and I want to do them while immersed in the culture from where they originated.
I want to pray. To pray for friends that I know and brothers and sisters that I don't know. I want to pray big and I want to pray small.
I want to live every day of the 29 or 95 years that this great God has granted me on earth.
I just want to live and hope that the way that I do it glorifies God.