This week we continue our X-Ray Questions series, as we look at what makes you tick. You can read the other posts in this series by clicking here.
X-Ray Question:
(9) What makes you tick? What sun does your planet revolve around?
Where do you find your garden of delight? What lights up your world? What fountain of life, hope, and delight do you drink from? What food sustains your life? What really matters to you? What castle do you build in the clouds? What pipe dreams tantalize or terrify you? What do you organize your life around? Many gripping metaphors can express the question, “What are you really living for?”
To be ruled, say, by deep thirsts for intimacy, achievement, respect, health, or wealth does not define these as legitimate, unproblematic desires. They function perversely, placing ourselves at the center of the universe. We are meant to long supremely for the Lord himself, for the Giver, not his gifts. The absence of blessing – rejection, vanity, reviling, illness, poverty – often is the crucible in which we learn to love God for who He is. In our idolatry, we make gifts out to be supreme good, and make the Giver into the errand boy of our desires.
Understand
This weeks question is designed to help you answer the question: what are you really living for? The answer to that question will reveal our deepest most hidden idols. When we desire, as our end, things such as intimacy, achievement, respect, health, or wealth, we are seeking to place these things at the center of the universe instead of God. As creatures created by the one true God, we are meant to long for God Himself, not for the things that He can give us. When we long for the things He can give us, and seek to please Him only so He will give us what we want, we have turned the all powerful Creator of the universe, the One we should be worshipping, into our errand boy.
Repent
First, we should repent by realizing our desires can get in the way of our relationship with God.
Second, instead of desiring the things God can give us, we should desire God for who He is. He is the one that regenerated us, and provides us with everlasting life. He is the Creator of the universe, the reason we all exist, the reason we are able to eat, sleep, live, and breathe. Without His hand on our life, we would not have the things we have currently. God, not self, should be the one we live for. Pleasing Him should be the heartbeat of our lives.
However, in our sinfulness, living for God, not self, is a foreign concept, but because of the regeneration our hearts experience through Christ’s death, we are able to live for God alone. Through the death of His Son Jesus Christ, and our subsequent belief that His death paid the price for our sins, we are able to enjoy a relationship with God. Since we are able to commune with God, we should seek to worship Him and do the work that He would have us do, remembering we were not created for our glory, but for the glory of God.
Scripture
Here are a few passages from God’s word to meditate on this week, as you consider what makes you tick: Isa. 1:29-30; 50:10-11; Jer. 2:13; Matt. 4:4; 5:6; John 4:32-34; 6:25-69.
All X-Ray questions taken from David Powlison’s book Seeing with New Eyes.
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