What Do You Want?

“And Jesus stopped and called them, and said, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?'” Matthew 20:32

I suppose this dates me, but I have fond memories of the annual arrival of the Service Merchandise Christmas catalog. Page after page of items were there to help you answer the all important question: What do you want for Christmas? I remember turning down pages or leaving the catalog open to give not-so-subtle hints to my parents. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes not. But it was a way for me to communicate my desires.

That was the basic issue in the story in Matthew 20 of the blind men who were healed by Jesus. In its simplest form, the question Jesus asked was, “What do you want?” It was a question of desire. Unfortunately, we don’t often talk about desire in a positive light. But desire comes from God and leads us to God.

As author Gerald May put it, “There is a desire in each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it…. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake…. Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire.”

Our problem comes not with desire but with disordered desire. We see this in the fall story in Genesis . “The tree produced good food, was attractive in appearance, and was desirable….” This desire was disordered, because it disconnected the man and the woman from God.

Examples of disordered desires and what they do to us are abundant. For instance, a disordered desire for wealth can lead to greed, envy, and dissatisfaction. Likewise, a disordered desire for power can lead to a loss of compassion. Furthermore, a disordered desire for achievement can lead to imbalance and the abuse of others.

We may think that we should try to suppress our desires if they can be so easily disordered. But such a choice typically leads to apathy and disintegration. This is what happened in a story I read recently about a man who was struggling in his marriage and in his spiritual life. After several sessions with the couple, the counselor met with him alone. Eventually, the counselor asked, “What do you want out of your spiritual life?” His answer: “I don’t want anything.”

So the goal is not to suppress desire but to find the true desires hidden below our surface desires. Perhaps you have a surface desire for achievement. You want to be known as someone who has made something of yourself. It sounds like a worthy pursuit. However, underneath that desire is a longing that is far more important – the desire for fulfillment. Achievement is an outward thing that has limited value, but fulfillment is inward and is connected to the work of God in our lives.

So what do you want? What do you really want? Spend some time pondering this. Our souls are shaped by our desires.