This is the third and final part in my series called “Attachments” … it’s best to read them in order. Click here to read the first one.
I have had a hard time getting back to blog writing after my Thanksgiving break, in large part, because I have been dealing with one of my own attachments: coffee. I mentioned a few weeks ago giving up my afternoon latte, which was my second coffee of the day. Well, I have since been trying to say goodbye to my morning cup as well. Boy, has that thrown me off. There have been days when I haven’t felt fully awake until two in the afternoon. And mornings where I wandered around my house lost and completely out of sink – all the while craving that cup of coffee. UGH! The experience has reminded me that one sign of addiction is the need for more of the substance to get the same fix. It doesn’t matter if it’s coffee or cocaine. The more we cling to something, anything, other than God, the less it feeds the hunger inside us. Isn’t that maddening?! The more we want it, crave it, count on it, the less we are satisfied by it.
Every week I meet with people whose attachments are backfiring on them. Though they seemed to work at one time, now they are causing harm. A lot of them know it, but still they won’t, they can’t, let go. How do we break free and find life in God?
Take delight in the Lord,
and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4
For the longest time I interpreted this verse to mean that if I simply worship and honor God enough, or first, then He would give me what I want. But as I’ve grown in my genuine enjoyment and worship of Him, I see how wrong I was. When David told us to “take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4), he wasn’t offering a method for getting what we want, it was a means of changing what we want. He was telling us that delighting in the Lord will align our hearts with His to such a depth that what He wants will become what we want. And that is the key to breaking attachments: seek God and the things He desires. Said another way: fall in love with God and marvel over His wonderful ideas and plans for humanity and all creation.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism instructs us:
The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.*
I move closer to living this out the more I know His character and His plans. As my understanding deepens, I am given great cause to delight in Him. And I think this is the path to delighting in the Lord: we have to believe that who He is and what He wants really is amazing and beautiful and a total blast. This happens over time as we come to know Him through His word and our experiences. Each day that we trust and seek Him can build on our knowledge of Him. Reflection on who He is, truly is, can and should lead us to delight. And this really does take time. You can not get to know God today or even this year. It takes many days and many years to put together a clear picture of Him as He is. Many days and years to see that He is beautiful, wondrous, clever, brilliant, creative, attentive, involved, relentless, silly, light-hearted, intense, severe, tender, awesome … and so much more.
*I may not have the wording precisely correct … I quoted it from memory.