<\/p>\n
I have always felt my desires intensely. \u00a0Growing up I knew instantly what I wanted to do or eat or watch or listen to. \u00a0And I had a very hard time enjoying or entering anything that wasn\u2019t what I wanted. \u00a0No one ever called me, \u201ceasy going\u201d. \u00a0Ever. \u00a0But they did call me passionate and I liked that. \u00a0I felt passionate was the best way, most exciting way, to live. People who weren\u2019t passionate were boring. \u00a0I found boring intolerable.<\/p>\n
During my college years I began to see my passion as a burden and I wanted less of it. \u00a0I clearly understood that if I didn\u2019t want things so intensely it wouldn\u2019t hurt so much, ache so much, when I didn\u2019t get what I wanted. \u00a0But I wasn\u2019t able to quiet or tame them. \u00a0I only knew how to feed my desires and thus settle them down for a while.<\/p>\n
Change began when I read through the book of Jeremiah. My Ryrie Bible tells me Jeremiah was \u201coften called the weeping prophet\u201d (Jer 9:1, 13:17) and this made sense to me since most of Jeremiah\u2019s writings are words of condemnation for the nation of Israel. \u00a0It is bad news over and over and I found it depressing to read, until I began to notice something about God. Despite the complete and thorough unfaithfulness of God\u2019s chosen people, He still wanted them. \u00a0Though they left Him for pitiful idols, He wanted them back. \u00a0He wanted them intensely and was not too proud to plead for their return (Jer 3:12-14, 19, 22). \u00a0There was one phrase in particular that came up repeatedly: \u201cI will be their God, and they shall be My people.\u201d (Jer 24:7, 30:22, 31:33). \u00a0In this phrase I began to hear the depth and the passion of God\u2019s desire\u2019s for relationship with a people of His own. And with this vision of God\u2019s passionate heart I heard an affirmation for my own passionate heart. I saw that He had put His heart in mine and that this was one way I was made in His image. This realization was such a balm to my soul for I had come to loath my own desires and the disappointments they brought me.<\/p>\n
A second realization was necessary for real change to happen in me and Jeremiah\u2019s words, once again, opened my eyes to what I had face:<\/p>\n
\u201cMy people have committed two sins; Jeremiah helped me understand in great detail where my heart and mind had veered away from God. \u00a0And I began to see that the things my desires were aimed at were not filling up my heart and that perhaps I did not know, after all, what I wanted.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have always felt my desires intensely. \u00a0Growing up I knew instantly what I wanted to do or eat or watch or listen to. \u00a0And I had a very hard time enjoying or entering anything that wasn\u2019t what I wanted. \u00a0No one ever called me, \u201ceasy going\u201d. \u00a0Ever. \u00a0But they did call me passionate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperricherfuller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperricherfuller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperricherfuller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperricherfuller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperricherfuller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/deeperricherfuller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperricherfuller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperricherfuller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperricherfuller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThey have forsaken me, the spring of living water,
\nand have dug their own cisterns,
\nbroken cisterns that cannot hold water<\/em>\u201d
\nJer 2:13<\/p>\n