I was recently in a conversation with some other leaders about growing in the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23) which was challenging but deeply helpful as I was having a bad day. As we talked the concept of character, growth was put in the context of a very simple grid: appetite, ambition and approval. I found this an immediately helpful way of thinking about submitting all of my life to the lordship of Christ.

Appetites

This is what we desire, what we long for, what we crave and feel we need. Just as our bodies need food, water and rest, our souls want and need. Appetites are hugely powerful forces and misguided appetites are immensely destructive.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:6,

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Ambition

This is what we will work and strive for: power, fame, achievement, celebrity, success. Ambition reveals our determination to achieve certain goals and ambition can override many other ethical considerations as anyone who has watched House of Cards can easily see. However appetites and ambitions are not always aligned – a man’s appetite for risky sex may undermine his ambition for a successful political career for example.

In Philippians 2:3 Paul writes,

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

Approval

This is the most fundamentally powerful of the three forces. Appetites need immediate filling, ambition drives us but our quest for approval shapes everything and lives with us always. This is where we gain our sense of worth – who approves of us? Who says we have value and significance? For most people it comes from significant others – partners or parents. Where there is disapproval it can alter and shape a life.

2 Corinthians 5:17 boldly declares that,

If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Through faith in Christ we find we have God’s approval and it becomes our ambition to serve Him, and we hunger for things of God and His righteousness.

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