“Whatever is our greatest desire is also the object of our worship.”
In the first installment of the Harry Potter series Harry finds a mirror in a room that’s called the Mirror of Erised. Erised is “desire” spelled backwards and the mirror’s function was to show you the thing that you desired the most. When Harry looked into the mirror he saw himself with his parents, but when he showed the mirror to his friend Ronald it showed to Ronald himself as a sports star.
I’ll bet if we all took a look in that mirror it would likely show something different for most of us. Some of us would be surprised, some may not, but we should all be familiar with our deepest desire. Why?
Because desire is the foundation of our worship.
What you desire the most is first place in your life. It’s what you want. It’s your highest priority. It’s the center of your universe. It informs your decisions and even controls you. When you truly desire something, when you truly want something, you’ll do anything you have to in order to acquire it. If success, money, another person, fame, etc… is what you desire most it will occupy first place in your life. It will demand your attention and your affection. It will be the object of your worship.
And though there are many things that we desire, and some of those are healthy things, none should be our greatest desire but God. When anything else becomes our greatest desire it becomes the object of our worship and there is none more worthy than God Almighty. Nothing else can satisfy. David so beautifully said in Psalm 73:25 (ESV)…
“Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.”
But why is it so important that we desire God and God alone?
Well, as I mentioned before there is none more worthy of our desire, of our worship but the Lord Almighty and anything else that takes his place will leave us longing for more. All else in which we would potentially place our desire is temporal. When you desire something and you get it, you naturally want more of it. The problem is that everything on this earth expires. These temporal things run out and have limits, but the Lord is eternal. He has no end and no beginning. Our desiring him, our worship of him will always leave us wanting more of him and there will always be more of him to find. He alone is worthy and he alone can eternally satisfy. He who knows no limitations.
Desiring God above all else is also important because our knowledge and our beliefs are both subservient to our desire. Here is what I mean. We may know something is wrong, we may believe something is wrong, and yet we still do it. Why? Because our desire has the ability to conquer our knowledge and our beliefs. It’s how great men of God sometimes fall so far morally. They know it’s sin, they even believe it’s sin, but in that moment they want something so bad that their desire trumps what they know and what they believe.
We all struggle to place our desire, our worship in the right place. In Romans 7:15 (ESV) Paul said this, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” He’s essentially saying, “I want to put God first, but I put other things first… why do I do that?!” Why do we want anything but God and what he has for us?
Maybe one of the most worshipful prayers in the scriptures is the beginning of David’s simple prayer in Psalm 23…
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”
If I may paraphrase… When the Lord is first, when he is the object of my worship, when he is my leader and my greatest desire I shall not want for anything else. All my desires for significance, security, joy, grace, prosperity, community and more will all be satisfied or rendered meaningless in the presence of my Savior. When we search to discover our greatest desire, the object of our worship, would we simply find the face of Jesus.