{"id":444,"date":"2010-07-22T11:58:34","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T16:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/?p=444"},"modified":"2010-07-22T11:58:34","modified_gmt":"2010-07-22T16:58:34","slug":"desire-sin-and-the-christian-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/2010\/07\/22\/desire-sin-and-the-christian-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Desire, Sin, and the Christian Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Taylor<\/a> <\/strong>is posting fifteen questions and answers excerpted from an excellent article by David Powlison, “I Am Motivated When I Feel Desire” (published in Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling and the Human Condition through the Lends of Scripture <\/em>(P and R Publishing, 2003). The last three will be posted in the next couple of days. Here are the questions, with links for the first twelve. Highly recommended:<\/p>\n

1. How does the New Testament commonly talk about what\u2019s wrong with people?<\/a>
\n2. Why do people do specific ungodly things?<\/a>
\n3. But what\u2019s wrong with wanting things that seem good?<\/a>
\n4. Why don\u2019t people see this as the problem?<\/a>
\n5. Is the phrase \u201clusts of the flesh\u201d useful in practical life and counseling?<\/a>
\n<\/strong>6. Does each person have one \u201croot sin\u201d?<\/a>
\n7. How can you tell if a desire is inordinate rather than natural?<\/a>
\n8. Is it even right to talk about the heart, since the Bible teaches that the heart is unknowable to anyone but God?<\/a> (1 Sam. 16:7<\/a>; Jer. 17:9<\/a>)<\/strong>
\n9. Doesn\u2019t the word lusts properly apply only to bodily appetites: the pleasures and comforts of sex, food, drink, rest, exercise, health?<\/a>
\n10. Can desires be habitual?<\/a>
\n11. What about fears? They seem as important in human motivation as cravings.<\/a>
\n12. Do people ever have conflicting motives?<\/a>
\n13. How does thinking about lusts relate to other ways of talking about sin, such as \u201csin nature,\u201d \u201cself,\u201d \u201cpride,\u201d \u201cautonomy,\u201d \u201cunbelief,\u201d and \u201cself-centeredness\u201d?
\n14. In counseling, do you just confront a person with his sinful cravings?
\n15. Can you change what you want?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Taylor is posting fifteen questions and answers excerpted from an excellent article by David Powlison, “I Am Motivated When I Feel Desire” (published in Seeing with New Eyes: Counseling…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}