Having been in vocational ministry my entire working life, I have seen men and women trying to love God wholeheartedly while shutting down their hearts by dismissing their desires. It never seems to work. How many unhappy, unfulfilled, dispassionate Christians struggling to love God have you encountered? The majority of their energy seems to be spent fighting personal sin and disappointment with a faltering sense of discipline and commitment. So many have made their pursuit of God solely a matter of their “will,” believing that desire is the enemy of intimacy with God. Encountering repeated failure, they work harder on strengthening their resolve and silencing the passions of their heart. But as Oswald Chamber says, “When we speak of a man having a weak will, we mean he is without any impelling passion, he is the creature of every dominating influence; with good people he is good, with bad people he is bad, not because he is a hypocrite, but because he has no ruling passion.” Desire or passion is not a deterrent to our walking with God and discovering our calling; it is the means to both.
A friend of mine went to a counselor as he realized that he had lived most of his adult life without passion and joy, even while holding “good” jobs and providing nice things for his family. He was tired of who he had become and so was his wife. One of the most liberating things the counselor said to him was, “You don’t have to live continually depressed and angry.” He had driven his desires underground, deadening his heart, and found himself directionless, angry, compromised, weak, and pervasively unhappy even though his life appeared well ordered and well lived. He had no ruling passion, becoming vulnerable to every persuasive force, and delighting in God or anything else, for that matter, seemed artificial.
