Notes, Quotes and Thoughts from “And He Shouted All the More” — the May 21, 2018 podcast by Rob Bell.
Not long I was talking to a friend of mine about desires. Specifically, what is the desire of your heart for life, for ministry, for work? What is inside you that really gets you passionate, that gives you fire and motivation? I said that often times, many people think of having a desire is a negative — yet, if you follow Christ, there are promises that say, “if we delight in Him, that he will give us the desires of our heart” (Psalm 37:4). Having a desire is not a selfish thing; often it’s something that is inside of us — almost a part of our DNA, so to speak. In the movie Sister Act II, Sister Mary Clarence is talking about singing and how she loves to sing, and says, “you know what, if you wake up every morning and all you can think about is singing, then you are supposed to be a singer.” It’s like the desires of our heart are what fills us with passion and joy and cause us to come alive. So when we are trusting God, seeking Him, living each day with a focus toward love, goodness, righteousness, giving, etc., those desires will quickly become evident and I think, fulfilled. That’s the hope anyway!
I was listening to Rob Bell’s “Robcast” and came across the May 21st episode, “And He Shouted All the More.” In Luke 18, we see the story of a blind man who desperately wanted healing, and despite the disciples pushing him aside, he shouted even louder to get Jesus’ attention. Jesus’ disciples were so caught up in crowd control and leading him through town to get to the next destination, that they lost sight of who Jesus was. The closet people to Jesus tried to ignore the man, thinking that Jesus would not be interested. They told the man to be quiet. Bell says, “They have so lost the plot that they — while in the name of LEADING the way for Jesus — have actually lost THE WAY of Jesus.” But this guy knew. He didn’t say, “Jesus of Nazareth.” He shouted, “Jesus, Son of David.” He knew he wasn’t just a rabbi from Nazareth. As Bell says, “When the man shouts out, ‘Son of David’ — that’s a loaded term. He was saying, Jesus, I believe you are the anticipated one. That there is something historic happening here about the divine and the human. That our people have not been abandoned; we have been held close by the divine the whole time. Even now the divine is moving to reconcile and renew and restore. And there is something happening through you [Jesus] that is all about all of humanity being healed and restored.”
At this point in the story, Jesus stops. His heart for those who needed healing and hope was always at the forefront. He asks the man, What do you want me to do for you (18:41)?” Isn’t that interesting? Jesus knew what the man needed. But he asks him a question so that he can put to words, and say it out loud, the deepest desire of his being. Bell makes the point here that Jesus did not make any suggestions or impose what He thought should be done for the man. He just asked him to say what was already burning in his heart. Those are the desires that are so hard to ask because they sound impossible, improbable, illogical, or unreachable. This guy was blind. His deepest desire was impossible… he wanted to see. Bell said, it was like Jesus was saying, “What is in you? What do you want? Tell me. It’s not, here’s what I have for you, it’s what is already in you. Let’s listen to that. It’s the deepest discovery about what is truest within you.” He says, “So the path for you and I will not be reading off of someone else’s script, it will be discovering our own script. You and you being fully alive — not being a counterfeit version of your brother, some B-grade version of what your parents, your boss or anyone else wants you to be. The path will be the deepest discovery of your truest life and self.” The man responds to Jesus and gives voice to his desire by stating simply, “Lord, I want to see.”
Many of us feel obligated and bound because we have a wrong view of what desire is. Many of us have been taught that our desires might be self-serving and need to be aimed at the good of the community, of your family, of your friends, of your religion, etc. so you should put them aside and do _____. Others associate desires with experiencing joy. Sometimes we ask ourselves, What does God want me to do? After all, as Bell says, many of us have been taught that “It’s not what I want, it’s what God wants.” But then he says, “How could your true joy be anything other than those two things being the same thing? If your deepest joy – lasting sustained joy – could be found somewhere other than the highest divine ideals and path for your life, then that wouldn’t be true joy. They have to be the same thing!” I love this. True joy is our deepest desires which are aligned with His ideals and path! For many people, Bell says, “Desire becomes synonymous with selfish.” It’s like when we look at the world and say, well, what about all the people who don’t have this or can’t do that?” I love how he states this: “If you listen to your deepest desire and follow it to where it takes you, how is you fully alive not the best possible gift you can give the world? How will that joy not overflow? If it is just about you, your pleasure and indulgence, then you will always end up in boredom and that isn’t true desire. Let’s rid ourselves of the immature notion that somehow desires are either opposed to the Divine or are selfish and opposed to the flourishing of others. Think about all the people who have moved you the most — people who have done things, said things, cared for you, created works of art, who have most moved you. People like this don’t say it was a duty, but an honor and a pleasure. They had a sense that there was a better way to do it … so they went after it. Your greatest gift is you fully alive… and you start with the question, what is in there? What do I want? Desire is the engine. Get tuned in to desire and you will find clarity and direction like never before. Generally our problem is NOT that our desires are too GREAT, but too SMALL. We settle for cheap imitation desires. We associate desires with hangups and addictions. Those are fake desires. If the battle is just me and my willpower against the desire… that’s brutal. This is why we have to go FURTHER into our desires. At that moment we might say, this is what I want; but then we have to ask ourselves – is there anything that we want MORE? So you focus on THAT. You put THAT in front of you. You let your desire for something greater overtake the smaller desire. You let the bigger push out the smaller. The answer isn’t stifling desire, or repressing desire or ignoring desire, or denying desire, or shutting it off like a valve. No, the answer is to go even deeper into your desires. You get a vision for the kind of person you want to be and go after that and so give yourself to that desire.” Gosh, that is so powerful to think about! It’s so easy to rest on the surface and be satisfied with those grade desires and never push beneath and dig down to discover those things that drive us — really drive us.
There is a clarifying power to desire. Bell says that “many of the resentments that we carry around are because we said yes to something or because we let someone else determine it for us because we haven’t done the work of figuring out who we are and what we want here. Boundaries flow from desire. So, the sooner you can determine what you want, the sooner you know how to say no and how to respond to the endless ways that the world around you can try and shape your path.” Wow. Talk about a clarifying and freeing statement! That is so powerful. “Desire is incredibly clarifying in toxic, soul-sucking relationships — with people who have no boundaries and who step all over you, who constantly push you and violate your psychic space.” He said that the key is to ask the question, What do you want me to do for you? Because that will bring everything out into the open.
So the story of the blind man ends with Jesus saying to the man, “What do you want?” And the man says, “I want to see.” The blind man gives voice to the deepest desire of his heart. Jesus looks at him and says, “You are healed. Right now. Your faith has healed you.” His desire translated to great faith which is what ultimately brought him his sight. As Bell said, “His desire was for something better. Something more. Something else. Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. He refuses to accept that this is just how it is. Desire is incredibly disruptive. Desire has a nuclear capacity to disrupt. It says, no, I will not settle. If you open up your heart and say, what do you want… it may take you into all sorts of places… Now to the one who is able to do immeasurably more than you can ask or imagine. How great is that!”
This part really resonated with me too. Bell says, “As you go further and further into who you are here to be … [you will discover] it will be that which is most familiar. It will be more and more you. It’s like when you discover your true self, and [you realize] that this is where I was headed all along… it’s like it’s both totally new and very old. It’s both unfamiliar and deeply familiar. It’s like that’s who I was here to be the whole time and I am just now discovering it. Christ comes to each of us and speaks to each of us in the stillness, in the quiet. When we are not being bombarded with a thousand other voices… Christ speaks to us. And he doesn’t say, why cant you be like her or take some notes from him. Christ comes to each of us and says, what do you want?”
Prayer for Clarity
“God, help me want so much more, so that I lose my desire for this thing that just keeps getting the best of me. My desires are often counterfeit. In wanting this thing that keeps letting me down, and filling me with shame, and failing to deliver, show me what it is that I want behind that thing. I keep falling prey to that substance, person, issue, craving, desire. I keep settling for the b-grade knockoff version. God, give me a vision for something I could want more, that would help me have a LARGER desire against a LESSER desire.”