Jesus turns his back on all of these "natural" desires, trusting His Father for everything He needs: Unless a seed fall into the ground and die, it remains only a seed. But if it dies, it produces rich fruit.
In dying to our natural desires, we give up everything, trusting ourselves, body, soul, and spirit into the hands of God, trusting Him with everything we know and have. And since we know that He "wastes" nothing, He takes the fragments of our offered lives, feeds five thousand, and gathers the leftovers.
In the story of the Tower of Babel, the men determined to build a tower to the heavens, to "make a name for themselves," a natural desire which was frustrated by their inability to understand one another. In the story of Abraham, God told Abraham to leave his people and his father's house and to go into a land where he was unknown and unrecognized. Abraham died to his natural desire for recognition, and in return, God promised to "make his name great," to make him the father of many nations.
God wants to "give us the desires of our hearts" (Ps. 37). He doesn't want us "grabbing" or "snatching" them---He wants to give them to us; He wants us to receive them from Him. Psalm 37 is rich with all that God wants us to have. Most of us, however, prefer to go after all these things with our own energy and power.
Here are the things promised [in Ps. 37] to those who trust in the Lord:
- safety; protection
- the desires of your heart
- recognition
- justice
- an inheritance
- peace
- upholding by the Lord; deliverance from evil and injustice
- abundance, even in famine
- generosity
- blessing on one's children
- wisdom
- a future
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