You Can Have What You Want – Freedom to Be Fulfilled

If the Rolling Stones are wrong, my kids are going to be frustrated! For years, I’ve been telling them that they can’t always get what they want. Up to this point, I’ve said it with confidence. After all, it’s true to our experience, isn’t it?!

I’m sure, as a kid, you learned just like I did, that even if the cookie jar is full it doesn’t mean that you are allowed to eat them all. Still, I found ways to sneak a cookie here or there, or eat butter out of the carton, or sneak spoonfuls of plain sugar. What I didn’t understand at the time is that what was keeping me from getting what I wanted was me, not a lack of cookies.

So what keeps you from getting what you want? Is it the authorities, the supply, or what’s on the inside?

Jesus never told His followers that they can’t have what they want. Not in a general sense. He talked about counting the cost and taking up your cross — but He also promised peace, an easy burden, and a light yoke. So which is it? The answer is freedom.

The yearning that we feel inside is for freedom. The Gospel promises freedom, right? Jesus proclaimed that in Luke 4, quoting from Isaiah. So what is the freedom that Jesus was sent to bring? The conventional answer to that is freedom from sin. If I’m free from sin, then I’m free from indulgence that would harm me and replace God as God. Idols if you will.

At its simplest freedom is the ability to do what you want to do. When I’m free, I’m unencumbered by desires that work against what I want to do at the core of me. It’s freedom from being divided. Viewed in this way, sanctification is God teaching you to want what He wants. As I mortify the flesh and discipline myself, then I can grow to become like Christ who also had to move through the process of learning how to be obedient (Heb. 5:8).

Freedom is attainable, even while enslaved. Think about it — if you are compelled to do the very thing you want to do, are you really a slave? You have the freedom to do the only thing you want to do. That sounds more like Heaven than bondage. Real slavery requires two things: you have no choice, and the thing you’re forced to do is something you don’t want. Take away either one and it’s not really slavery as we conceive it. If I have a choice, no one is forcing me. And if I want to do it, then it’s my choice regardless.

This is what makes Romans 6 so explosive. Paul tells us that we used to be slaves to sin. Not slaves in the sense that somebody put chains on us, but slaves in the sense that we couldn’t stop. We didn’t have a choice. Sin called and we answered. Every time. That’s the slavery that matters most — the kind where you’re the one holding yourself hostage.

But then Paul flips it. He says we’ve become “slaves to righteousness” (Rom. 6:18). And at first that doesn’t sound like an improvement. So, we’ve traded one master for another? Congratulations, I guess? But here’s the kicker: what if you actually wanted to do it? Would it still be slavery or would it be freedom?

It’s like when I tell my son, we’re playing baseball tonight—whether he likes it or not. He loves baseball! So, he doesn’t call that a punishment. He calls that a great day! When the command and the desire are aligned, that’s not bondage, that’s the real life.

And that’s the picture of what God is doing in us. He’s not trying to make us miserable rule-followers. He’s reshaping what we want. The new birth doesn’t just give us a new set of commands — it gives us new appetites. The work of the Spirit is to make us the kind of people who actually want what God wants. And when that happens, obedience doesn’t feel like a grind anymore. It feels like breathing.

This is why I think so many people are exhausted. They’re trying to obey God while still wanting something else. They’re divided at their core. They want to overeat, but they also know better. And that war — that internal tug-of-war — is the opposite of freedom.

Romans 8 explains it this way: “The law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). Set free. Not set up for a harder grind. Free. The sanctification process is not God adding more weight to the bar. It’s God removing the things that divide you so that what you want and what He wants become the same thing.

That’s the freedom Jesus came to bring. Not freedom from rules, but freedom from the war inside. And God gets you there not by forcing you but by forming you. Not overnight, but over a life. So the Rolling Stones were right about one thing: you can’t always get what you want. But they missed the best story. In Christ, God isn’t withholding the cookie jar. He’s changing your appetite.