Desire, Plans, and Purpose

I was having a conversation with someone a few days before the end of the year. They had a sense of excitement that somehow this coming year would be better than the past several years. Their enthusiasm was genuine, but I didn’t hear anything in the conversation that would translate this renewed anticipation of a better year to come into a reality.

What are your plans for 2015? This is not the same question as asking what your goals or resolutions are for the coming year. Those have more to do with desire than action. Desire is a great start. We need more DESIRE – a longing to experience something or to realize something in our lives. “The desire of good people ends only in good…” (Proverbs 11:23) Unfortunately, many swap desire for addiction - a strong and harmful need to regularly have something or do something. These come in all shapes and sizes and become poor substitutes for real desire. We think desire is too hard, too disappointing, leading only to failed expectations. So, we don’t often let ourselves go there. But, without the spark of desire, passion, longing we won’t ever get to those places in our lives that we glimpse from time to time and hope someday to be. Before you can make plans, you have to start with desire. It will take some time and work to unearth and define your desires. There are many distractions that keep our your true desires hidden – wanting what others have, trying to live up to outside expectations, past failures, not believing your are deserving of your desires, distrust that your desires are good – to name a few. When you push past these and others that will most certainly rear their heads on this journey of discovery, you will discover those things that most deeply move you, the realization of which will most deeply satisfy you.

Having clarity around desire leads us to the next step in the journey, a PLAN. People often move right to goals. The consequence of this misstep turns our desires into wishes. Wanting to be somewhere without a plan on how to get there is simply wishing upon a star. For our desires to become realities we must have more than good intentions. Renewed (annual) desire to experience change in itself is impotent. Desire is realized when behaviors are changed. If we want our experience to be different, our actions have to be different. Starting with a clear sense of our desires for the coming season, we ask ourselves what actions and behaviors must change to transform our current reality to our desired future reality. It’s usually at this point when our countenance drops as we begin to lament the external obstacles that would render this process a failure. But, these new actions and behaviors have to be solely about us. There are always things we can do, that are within our power to change, that will alter our realities going forward. Another misconception that will attempt to sabotage this journey is the lie that you don’t have enough resources to change your actions and behaviors. Life is too busy, money is to scarce and help is not available. I wonder what the noble woman described in Proverbs 31 might say about that? She was clearly a person full of desire who took responsibility for her actions and behaviors in order to see those desires become realities.

There seems to be one additional factor that we should consider in this transformation equation. Action that is not imbued with PURPOSE is merely activity. There is certainly no shortage of activity in our world. But, it is activity connected to purpose that creates the personal and societal transformations that our hearts most deeply desire. Mark Twain once said: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” Purpose is tricky; there is not simple pathway to its discovery. It starts, though, with a sense that there is something bigger than us and that if our plans are only based on what is best and right for us they will be lacking. “Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is God's purpose that prevails.” Proverbs 19:21

Desire aligned with purpose that ignites a plan for changed behaviors and actions will most certainly create a transformed future.

“May God give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed.” Psalms 20:4