Goals are objectives toward which we should work. desires are objectives for which we should pray. i have to labor to understand my friend and to present my thinking nondefensively. And as I work toward that goal, I pray that one day he might understand me. Pray for desires. Work for goals.

Larry Crabb

to approach Bible Study with no higher a motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-satisfied self-deception 


Knowing God, Packer, pg 22

Motivations are nearly always mixed. If you wait until your motives are pure and unselfish before you do something, you will wait forever.

Tim Keller, The Reason for God (Loc 3412-22)