“I want this one...no, this one...can I have both of them? Oh, wait, I really like this one, too!”

Have you ever been shopping with an excited, yet indecisive child? You know the one. Whether an average trip to the store, a special trip to spend money they’ve saved, or a visit to a souvenir shop the last day of vacation, wherever it may be, they hold up the works by wanting everything they see! They grab one thing and tuck it under their arm, freeing their hands for another item. They use the other hand to pick up something else, and pause to give consideration to each attention grabbing “thing” that they’ve grabbed to filled their hands.

Maybe a better question is this – How many times have we been like that indecisive child — desperately hold onto things, grasping them so tightly with our white knuckled fist, that we lose sight of the first thing that caught our eye, the other things we've not yet discovered, or forgotten what we truly desired in the first place? Sometimes we can want something so badly, we don’t even grasp the motivation behind the wanting?

God gives us each passions and desires He wants us to wholeheartedly pursue. However, we find ourselves in trouble when those desires become idols, and we elevate them to a status higher than the desires God wants for our lives.

We must release the things we want in order to receive the things He wants to give us.