What the Heart Begins to Want

Transformation does not announce itself.

It does not arrive with fanfare or a decisive moment you can point to later and say: there, that is when everything changed. It arrives the way spring arrives — imperceptibly at first, then undeniably, then everywhere. One morning you notice that what you used to reach for without thinking no longer has the same pull. One afternoon you find yourself wanting something you did not know you were allowed to want.

Step 6 is about that wanting. The new wanting. The wanting that only becomes possible once the Spirit has been given room.

Desire Reordered

The descent of Steps 1 through 4 revealed the disorder at the center of the old wanting. The behavior was reaching for something. The desire beneath it was worshipping something. The wound beneath the desire had taught the heart to look for life in places where life could not be found.

Step 5 brought that whole disordered interior into the Spirit's hospitality and surrendered it. And now Step 6 describes what begins to happen next — not immediately, not dramatically, but genuinely — as the Spirit does what only the Spirit can do.

The heart begins to want differently.

Not perfectly. Not completely. Not without the old desires still making their presence known from the cross where they hang. But differently. A new current begins to run beneath the familiar surface. New longings emerge that feel less like religious duty and more like genuine thirst.

Augustine named this with his characteristic precision: our heart is restless until it rests in Thee. The restlessness does not disappear in Step 6. But it begins to be aimed correctly — toward the One for whom it was always designed, rather than toward the substitutes it has been chasing.

The Difference Between Trying and Wanting

Most of us have spent years trying to want the right things. Telling ourselves we should want to pray more, read more, serve more, give more. Working up the discipline to do the things we believed a serious Christian ought to do, whether or not we actually wanted to do them.

That is not what Step 6 describes. Step 6 is not about trying harder to want God. It is about noticing — with genuine wonder and gratitude — that you are beginning to want him in a way you did not arrange and cannot take credit for.

Dallas Willard made a distinction that belongs here: the spiritual disciplines are not the goal of the Christian life. They are the means by which we place ourselves in the path of what only God can do. You cannot manufacture divine desire. But you can position yourself — through surrender, through sustained abiding, through the Spirit's hospitality in Step 5 — for the desire to emerge. And when it does, it bears none of the strain of self-generated effort. It simply is. A new thirst. A different pull. A heart that is beginning to want what it was made to want.

What to Look For

This is a step that requires attention rather than effort. The question is not: how can I make myself want God more? The question is: what am I beginning to want differently?

Where is the compulsive quality of the old desire softening? Where is the grip of the old pattern loosening — not because you have gripped it more tightly but because something else has become more interesting? What are you beginning to find genuinely satisfying that once felt like obligation?

These are the signs of convalescence. The appetite returning after illness. The sensation coming back to a limb that was numb. The heart beginning to move toward what it was made for — not because it was pushed, but because the Spirit is doing from the inside what no amount of external effort could ever accomplish from the outside.

Notice it. Name it. Receive it with the gratitude it deserves. It is not your achievement. It is his gift.

A Note on Life Groups

The Life Groups provide the kind of sustained, attentive community in which these emerging desires can be named, encouraged, and celebrated — rather than missed in the noise of ordinary life. What you might overlook alone becomes visible in community.

Learn more about Life Groups here.

If you missed last week’s step, you can read it here: https://www.icebergology.com/blog/abiding-not-visiting-the-life-god-actually-intends