Your desires and pleasures reveal what your heart truly treasures. Is your heart gripped by selfish pursuits? Or do you consider everything to be nothing compared to knowing Jesus? Recognize the grip sin has on your heart, and seek the pleasure of your Savior above all!
Hi, I’m Joni, and I am a pushover when it comes to pleasure.
Proof of that is, one of my caregivers brought over a bakery box of 12 cheese danish pastries, fresh out of the oven. Now, I really have been trying hard to drop the weight I gained during COVID. But when she opened that box, and I breathed in that warm aroma of cheese pastry fresh from the oven, all self-control went out the window. After I chowed down a whole danish, I said to Ken Tada, “Hide this box; I don’t want to see it again; I don’t care where you put it; don’t let me know where you stash it, please!” And that night when my head hit the pillow, there I was, bemoaning the fact that I was such a pushover when it came to the pleasure of hot baked pastries. I’m sure you know what I mean.
And I felt particularly bad because I had just asked the Lord Jesus to help me say “no” to sweets. You know, the kind that we kept around the house during COVID. I said to the Holy Spirit, “Jesus, please help me here. I need to wean myself away from carbs. And I’m going to look at it as a kind of fast. Because I would really rather choose you over cheese danish any time.” And I meant that prayer! Like, duh, of course, Jesus is worth more to me than a piece of pastry, right? Well, certainly not that day with that box of pastries when it showed up! I failed to prize my Savior above dessert. Like, that’s crazy! I mean, I thought my heart would hold onto Jesus, but, at least that time, my appetite for sweet things called the shots. And you know what, my failure was not only embarrassing, it was humiliating.
My friend Jon Bloom sheds some light here. He writes: “Pleasures never lie; that is, pleasure is the whistleblower of the heart. What we naturally delight in is our heart's way of telling us what we truly treasure.…our lips can lie about what we love, but our pleasures [will] never lie. What we truly love always ends up working its way out of the unseen heart and into the plain view of what we say and don't say, what we do and don't do, [what we eat and don’t eat.]” Jon Bloom calls this “a merciful devastation.” You know, just like I was devastated when I blew it, choosing cream cheese and fluff pastry over my Jesus. Shame on me! And yeah, sure, I was devastated; but it was a merciful devastation. I needed to be humiliated; I far, far underestimated the strength of my appetites. That devastation was also merciful because now I have a handle on how strong a grip sin and selfishness has on my heart. It does. And I need to know it. I need to know my desperate need so that I might truly seek the greater, the more splendid pleasure of my Lord and Savior.
This whole incident with those pastries – it’s an echo of Philippians 3:8, where Paul says, “I consider everything to be nothing compared to knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. To know him is worth much more than anything else.” Aw, man, I want my everything to be nothing. I want to live like loving him is worth more than anything else. If our focus is captivated by the pursuit of a pile of dough filled with sugar, our soul will have those same low, selfish pursuits. But if our focus is gripped by the beauties of Jesus, our soul will be great. So, thank you, Jon Bloom – he’s a good friend who writes for Desiring God Ministries. And the next time? I’m not gonna be so confident in my ability to say no to cheese danish. Next time, one look at a cheese danish will send me in the opposite direction and pleading, “Oh, Jesus, please rule my heart.”
© Joni and Friends