desire on Seeking Approval

The desire to feel loved is the last illusion: let it go and you will be free

You follow your desires wherever they take you, and you approve of yourself so long as you are not obviously hurting anyone else. You figure that if the people around you seem to like you, you must be...

"What is it you’re looking for in this endless quest? Tranquillity. You think if only you can acquire enough worldly goods, enough recognition, enough eminence, you will be free, there’ll b...

But you take pleasure in the faces Of those who know they thirst.

As the deer pants for the water, so we need you, O God. However, we don’t always turn toward to you as we need. Instead of seeking you, we turn to cheap and easy solutions. Please show us that you alo...

The prevailing idea seems to be, that I come to God and ask Him for something that I want, and that I expect Him to give me that which I have asked. But this is a most dishonouring and degading concep...

Lord, only You are significant enough to deserve glory. So why do we desire glory for ourselves? Lord, to know You is to have eternal life. So why are we satisfied with worldly wisdom and living in th...

Holy God, we come to You confessing that we never have enough. We are never satisfied with what You have given us. We look at others with envy and we want more, even when our homes are overflowing wit...

There is an invisible pattern in the design of deprivation: deprivation draws out desire. Absence heightens it. And the more heightened the desire, the greater our satisfaction will ultimately be. It ...

In her book Invitation to Retreat, Ruth Haley Barton shares some of the many insights she has had since she began intentionally taking inattentional retreats to re-connect with God and her own desires...

Our God, you love us unconditionally and with great sacrifice, yet we reject your love in search of another love other desires. We have make harmful decisions while on this search rather than acceptin...

Father, we confess to boasting in success and security. We have denied you rather that desire you. We have cowered when we needed to be courageous. Jesus, we long to be people who follow you, no matte...

We are people of desire. We want things. We long for things. It is primal to our nature to yearn. As Saint Augustine reflected, “The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. . . . That is o...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we desire many things in life, but that we are not always prepared to receive the things that you long to provide—the things that you know we need. Help us, by your Ho...

The church fathers consistently acknowledged the beauty and goodness of desire (e.g., Augustine, above), but they were not naive to the potential for desire to be bent by sin. They knew that our longi...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we are unable to do all the work that you wish for us to do. We are held back by our own desires and our own apprehensions. We know that you make us bearers of your im...

Prayer of Adoration Great God our Father: You are good and You are strong. You are faithful and true, and You won’t tempt or lie to us. In a world that appeals to our sinful cravings and dominated b...

In one of the classic scenes from Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist, the misfortunate young orphan, Oliver, is stuck in a workhouse, laboring for long hours and getting barely enough gruel to keep h...

Part of the suspicion of desire undoubtedly has to do precisely with the fact that it threatens a rational, controlled, and protected understanding of a mature human being.

What do you want? That’s the question. It is the first, last, and most fundamental question of Christian discipleship….Will you come and follow me? Is anther version of, “What do you Want?”

Gracious God, we desire to follow when you call. We long to live according to the ways of Jesus, yet we find ourselves stumbling. Forgive us for the times we have ignored your call to follow you in th...

Desire alone, divorced from the will, ruins peoples’ lives time after time. In our public life and even among leaders of our denominations or church organizations, time after time we see a desire that...

After twenty years of listening to the yearnings of people’s hearts [as a counselor], I am convinced that all human beings have an inborn desire for God.

Pastor: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. People: Amen. Pastor: We praise the One who extends the invitation: People: Come, all you who are thi...

O Lord our God, grant us grace to desire you with our whole heart, that so desiring we may seek and find you; and so finding you we may love you; and loving you we may hate those sins from which you h...

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think I am following your...

In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is continual prayer.

Let us love the Lord God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. Let us love Him with all our understanding, powers, and fortitude. Let us offer to Him our every effort, ...

We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves; we desire to live an imaginary life in the minds of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine.

G. K. Chesterton was on cue when he suggested that a man knocking on the door of a brothel is in fact looking for God.