It was when she was at the peak of her fame and fortune with 146 tournament victories behind her, married to tennis player John Lloyd that Chris Evert-Lloyd commented: “We get into a rut. We play tennis, we go to a movie we watch TV, but I keep saying, ‘John, there has to be more.'”
Sometimes we are best served when we do not get our desires. Sometimes receiving our desires is a detriment to our spiritual condition.
Tim Keller has rightly commented about this reality:
Most people, if they have really learned how to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we have grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in reality. [Counterfeit Gods]
Perhaps recognizing the same kind of tendency in the hearts of his people, the psalmist wrote 3000 years ago: “One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple” (Ps. 27:4).
In other words, one thing is worthy of our affections and desires: to live in the presence of God every single day of our lives — to live to contemplate on His glory and to meditate on all that He is.
There is a desire that is not deceptive and will never disappoint.
His name is God.
Words of Grace 