The Lord desires to give us all the gold we want. He longs to shower gifts and blessings and goodness upon us. But we have to recognize the difference between blessing and burdens.
When we seek money, power, and fame from the world, we are not seeking lasting treasure but trivialities that will be eaten by moths or rust away. That satisfies a desire, but not our deepest desire.
The infinite gold and great wealth that Jesus offers is considered foolishness by the world, but is actually a true and lasting wealth that will not perish. This is what our hearts truly long for.
We sense this and perceive it in some deep place within us. Yet because we confuse our desires, this verse is perhaps one of the most misused and misquoted verses in Scripture. Psalm 37 is not about God giving us the desires of our flesh. These desires are a mere shadow of the things for which we truly long. The desires of our flesh are not our purest desires. The spirit is the seat of our deepest longing, and the place our true treasure is stored.
What we really value is spiritual treasure like peace, belonging, and acceptance. The issue is not that God doesn’t give us the things we ask for; the issue is that we don’t really know what we want.
If we are distracted by the perversions, the shadows that we cannot name, we can lose sight of what we truly desire. How do we discover what we really want? Trust in the Lord. Delight ourselves in him.
He will show us the source of our longings, the deepest desires of our hearts. The water he gives will cause us to thirst no more.