What the Heart Wants

Part 1 of Reordering the Heart—A Lenten Series

Caring for children is exhausting under the best of circumstances. Doing so while pregnant, largely alone, weighs on both body and soul.

Mary Bowles was married, but her husband Samuel had been away for an extended time. His health had been failing, and he traveled to Europe seeking treatment.

Mary wanted her husband home. Now. And she faulted herself for feeling this way. After all, he was ill. She should be more understanding. But neither prayer nor logic could rein in the intensity of her longing.

That’s why her friend Emily Dickinson wrote, “The heart wants what it wants.” That’s what the heart does. It wants. It desires. And desire is how love first shows itself.

Love is life’s animating force. As theologian James K. A. Smith observes, desire is “the wellspring from which our actions and behavior flow.” The heart is hardwired to seek what will give us a full-hearted life—a life marked by meaning and significance, purpose and joy. We build our lives around what we love most. We devote our time, energy, and resources to it.

In other words, the heart cannot help but long for a highest good.

Having desires is not the problem. Our challenge is that we do not begin life knowing what truly deserves our deepest love.

We learn what to love. Slowly, subtly, almost without noticing. As if by osmosis, we absorb a story from our cultural surroundings about what matters most, what the good life looks like, and how to attain it.

We live inside that story. Through ordinary, daily practices—shopping, scrolling, working, streaming—our desires are shaped and directed. Most of the time, this formation happens beneath the surface of awareness. We simply find ourselves wanting what our world has taught us to want.

This is the spiritual condition of a secular age. We do not stop desiring God. Rather, we are formed within a story that teaches us—patiently and persuasively—to look elsewhere for fulfillment.

We learn to treat finite goods as if they were ultimate, and to expect from them what only God can give. Temptation, then, is not primarily a failure of willpower or discipline. It is the result of living inside a vision of the good life that misdirects our love.

Christians have long named this restlessness for what it is. As Augustine famously prayed, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

And yet again and again, finite things present themselves as if they could satisfy our infinite longing. They promise enduring significance, security, and fulfillment—but cannot finally deliver. Temptation is not about the wanting as such, but about where our wanting is aimed and what we expect it to give us.

We often think of temptation as a failure of self-control—about appetite, excess, and impulse. Sometimes it is. But deeper down, temptation is misdirected desire: wanting the right things in the wrong way, or wanting lesser things as if they were ultimate.

Iona

That’s why the Church gives us the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness at the beginning of Lent. Not as a lesson in heroic self-discipline, but as a revelation of what temptation actually is.

Jesus enters the wilderness hungry, exhausted, and alone, immediately after hearing that he is God’s beloved Son. Satan does not tempt him to desire evil things. He tempts him to take good and necessary desires and fulfill them on his own terms, apart from trust in God. Bread without dependence. Security without surrender. Authority without obedience.

C. S. Lewis once named this condition with unsettling clarity:

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (The Weight of Glory)

We perhaps unwittingly elevate something less than God to a place in our lives that only God can truly occupy.

Reflection and Prayer

1. What do you find yourself longing for most deeply right now? What do you hope it will give you?

2. In what ways do your daily habits quietly shape what you want or value most?

3. Have you ever pursued something you believed would finally satisfy you, only to discover it could not carry the weight you placed on it? What did you learn?

4. As Lent begins, where might God be inviting you to reconsider what deserves your deepest love?

Gracious God, you know the desires that shape our lives: Gather our scattered longings and turn them toward yourself, that, seeking you above all things, we may find the fullness of life you promise; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Going Deeper

My book A Full-Hearted Life offers a deeper dive into how to order our lives around our love for Jesus. Grab a copy for personal reflection or to use with your book study group.

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That’s it for this. We’ll be back next week with Part 2 of Reordering the Heart. Until then, be well and God bless.

Jake

P. S. Let me hear your thoughts and insights and questions. And while you’re at it, share The Woodlands with spiritually curious friends for some rich conversation.