If God has given us a desire for a spiritual gift, it is because He is ready to answer that desire in us.  If we want peace, or joy, or to know Him better, it is a sure sign that He is getting ready to give us what we are seeking.  If we want to be free of anger, or anything that is destroying us and others, we can know that God is at work in us to set us free. 

Andrew Murray's writing on The Two Covenants makes it clear that

...the one difference between Old and New [Covenants] is that in the latter everything is to be done by God Himself....Our whole being is so blinded to the true relation to God; His inconceivable Omnipresent Omnipotence working every moment in us is so far beyond the reach of human conception, that our little hearts cannot rise to the reality of His infinite love making itself one with us, and delighting to dwell in us, and to work all in us that has to be done there...We are such strangers to the knowledge of what God really is, as the actual life by which His creatures live....Only they who confess their ignorance, and wait very humbly and persistently on our Blessed God to teach us by His Holy Spirit and what that all-working indwelling is, can hope to have it revealed to them.

Jesus told His disciples, "If you, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask."  And herein lies the secret to everything---asking for it.  For we know that if we desire it, it must be that the Holy Spirit is awakening in us the desire and therefore, He wants to fulfill it. 

Most of us would rather work for something and therefore earn it because we thereby deserve our reward, but Jesus tells us to ask for the "Gift" of the Father, which is the Holy Spirit.  Many scholars looking at the Acts of the Apostles have commented that the book should have been called The Acts of the Holy Spirit, for it is pretty clear that the Apostles were just hanging onto the coattails of the Spirit once He had been poured out on them and on everyone present that Penecost Day.

Twelve men alone could not have changed the world, but 12 men filled with the Spirit of God did change the world forever.  The lesson is clear:  we must simply ask and wait for what we desire in the realm of the spirit.