There are times in our lives when one thing becomes almost all-consuming. In his masterful novel, Moby-Dick, Herman Melville explored the mad obsession of Captain Ahab for a great white whale — an obsession which ultimately destroyed him and virtually all his crew. In the graphic last sentences the whale drags the boat down into the sea, in a way similar to Satan who would not sink to hell till he had dragged a living part of heaven along with him.

Most obsessions are indeed dangerous and destructive. Saul became so obsessed with holding onto the kingship that he threatened his own son, Jonathan, and chased David throughout the countryside, trying to kill him. Finally, he descended to inquiring into the future by means of consulting a medium at Endor.

The rich man in Jesus' parable became so immersed in his own wealth that he did not give death a thought. The obvious fact that rich men have a mor­tality rate of 100% did not cross his mind, and so Jesus pronounces the judg­ment of God upon him:

Fool! This night your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up trea­sure for himself and is not rich toward God. Luke 12:20-21

When Herod Antipas first heard of the teaching and miracles of Jesus, he was frightened and thought that it must be John the Baptist brought back to life (Mark 6:16). Herod's sins in marrying his brother's wife and having John the Baptist beheaded weighed heavily on his conscience, and obsessed him to the point where he could not think clearly.

At other times it is not specifically said to be an evil motive that drives an obsession. Laban made Jacob work seven years in order to marry Rachel, "but they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her" (Gen. 29:20). We would not have been surprised, however, if the text had read that the time had dragged almost inter­minably for Jacob.

When many of the people of Judah were taken into exile by the Babylonians sometime after 597 B.C., they were told by Jeremiah to settle down: "Build houses, plant gardens, take wives, have children, and pray to the Lord for the welfare of Babylon" (Jer. 29:5-7). But the reality was hard going indeed: "By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion" (Ps. 137:1).

The Holy Spirit brings about a con­viction of sin which can obsess us for a time. After his adultery with Bathsheba and his virtual murder of Uriah, David wrote: "For I know my transgression, and my sin is ever before me" (Ps. 51:3). He had trouble thinking about anything else, until he was assured that God had forgiven him his sin, and cleansed him through and through.

When God brings a sinner to a con­viction of sin, that can be a time when the sinner's horizon is dominated by one thing — his sin. It may have been a lie, an act of deceit, an act of extreme selfish­ness, a betrayal of a friend, a sexual transgression, or even an abortion. The memory of it is not easily dimmed. There is no cure in a false defence, but peace is found only in open confession before God (Ps. 32:5).

Yet there is such a thing as a godly obsession. As Nehemiah sought to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem, there were conspiracies designed to divert him from his task. He could not be moved: "I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?" (Neh. 6:3).

David, the sweet singer of Israel, put it more poetically:

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. Ps. 27:4

The apostle Paul too could write that "to me to live is Christ" (Phil. 1:21) and "one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13-14). This is indeed an obsession, but an obsession unto life.

A sinful desire can easily take over us and obsess us. A conviction of sin, which is the pathway to well-being, can be as all-consuming. Yet there is a godly obsession with one thing. In days of revival, Christians have known more of this. John Wesley wrote: "I seek another country, and therefore am content to be a wanderer upon earth" and "I desire to have both heaven and hell ever in my eye, while I stand on this isthmus of life, between these two boundless oceans". That is to be obsessed by the one thing that is everlasting and life-giving.