1John 2:17 - The Wants of God

"And the world is passing by and its desires, but the [one] doing the want of God is remaining unto the age."

-Yes, what we need is out of this world.  And we need to get out of this world - because it is doomed.  It is in fact slated for destruction.  Its long-term prospects are not only not good, they are non-existent.  The world is passing by, it is on its way out, like an outdated coat, only worse, cuz it’s on the chopping block.  The world AND its desires.  But more properly, for now, because we are still IN this world, we need to become not OF this world.  The problem (for now) is not that I am in this world, but rather that I can tend towards being OF this world, which means that my desires are FOR this world and the things of this world.  But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Desires are not the problem.  They are not bad or wrong in the least.  It is the object of my desire which makes all the difference - and the world’s desires are all those things which are apart from God, the desires to find life and happiness apart from its Creator.  They do not honor Him as God or give thanks, living life with Him cast out of mind.  And that busride is a one-way ticket to h-e-double-toothpicks.

-Instead, the key to forever, the ticket off the destruction bus and onto the eternity bus, is doing the want of God.  Yes, that sounds funny, because we don’t really talk about wants in that way, and in the church we rarely talk much about the wants of God, what He wants.  In fact, the translators render the Greek word "theléma" here as they consistently do everywhere when the word is used in connection with the Lord - they always translate it as the "will" of God.  The WILL of God.  Gotta know His will and seek His will and do His will.  But what does that really mean anyway?  The will of God.  Do we ever use that phrase in normal conversation, to refer to mere mortals?  The will of dad?  The will of Joe?  The only reason the phrase "will of God" doesn’t sound funny to religious ears is that we’ve been desensitized to it.  We talk about it all the time in the church - but do we really know what it means?  The noun in the Greek is almost exclusively used in reference to God, and appears to come off as describing some objective unfeeling volitional choice. (or set of choices)  But when you look at the word, especially its verb form in the Greek, it describes wants or wishes (cf Matthew 1.19, 5.40, 7.12, 9.13, 12.38, 13.28, 14.5, 15.28 - and so on and so on throughout the Greek new testament).  Pretty much every time Scripture talks about the theléma of a human being, the word is translated as "want".  But practically every time it is the theléma of God, it gets translated as "will".  The will of God.  And doesn’t that tend to remove the subjective from the situation, as if the God Who made us in His image does not have wants?  I understand that there is generally a wide gulf between what I want and what the holy God of heaven wants, and no doubt the translators are trying to make that kind of interpretive distinction between the two, but to the unchurched Greek ear there is no difference whatsoever.  The whole effect of what we have done in the church I think has been to sort of sterilize our God and turn Him into more of this stern stoic victorian prude.  He doesn’t have feelings, or desires, or wants.  Well, maybe He hates sin.  And I guess He loves, but it’s that agape love, which is supposed to be a choice and not so much a feeling.  But so we tend not to think in terms of what God wants.  And we get hung up somewhat, trying to figure out "the will of God" when we have sort of unintentionally turned Him into a being who is largely unrelatable.  And we try to objectify life’s biggest choices in a way which devalues and diminishes so much of what makes us humans made in His image in the first place.  He is a God Who has wants, just like us.  He gave us the exact same capacity, to want.  And so, when it comes to life’s biggest choices and all the smaller ones, maybe the place to start is exactly where John is pointing us here.  The wants of God.  What does God want?  Ask Him THAT question - God, what do YOU want?  What do You want me to do in this situation?  What do You want me to do today?  Recognizing that He can and does want to give us the desires of our heart when we are delighting in Him (Psalm 37.4).

-And is this not the essence of the wonderful dance of worship? - It is not about a meeting or even a programmed portion of that but about a lifestyle of enjoying and celebrating and showing off God’s breathtaking goodness every moment of every day everywhere we go - about being in this place where He is first in our hearts (not just in our minds), where we want Him more than anything or anyone, and all the things of this world which He gives us to enjoy in a temporal sense are seen for what they really are, as being gifts from Him, as extensions of His intent to bless and shower His goodness on His people.  The desires of the world, the longing for and pursuit of life and happiness apart from Him - all that which ultimately leads away from Him ultimately leads to destruction.  It leaves us empty in the present, and leaves us doomed for eternity.  The world as we know it, the world full of brokenness and death and despair and life lived apart from the Creator is doomed.  Gotta get off, gotta get WAY off this crazy bus of idolatry and practical atheism (living my life as if there is no God with Whom I have to do, putting other things first in my heart).  Jesus is the Way off.  He’s our ticket...!