It is in the surrender, the relinquishing, the committing that we gain the desires of our heart.

We do not know what we truly desire. We do not know our own destiny. We do not know even our true name. But God knows all these things very well. We must consider the goodness and power of the Lord, realizing He is bringing us to all we desire.

If we struggle to maintain our own way before the Lord, insisting on saving our own life, our own desires, we will lose everything. It is only as we let go and trust God that God is able to bring us to perfect love, perfect joy, perfect peace.

We are not teaching passivity—that the believer is to abandon his desires pretending he doesn't care what he receives or what happens to him. The individual who is bound by passivity is double-minded and will receive nothing from the Lord.

God commanded us to ask that we may receive. We are to give thanks to God continually, letting our requests be made known to Him.

The reader may find it difficult to reconcile our teaching of committal with a clear, decisive approach to letting God know what our desires are.

It is in the battling onward in prayer, continually informing God of our desires, that our character is formed, that our desires are refined until we are moving toward the love, joy, and peace we truly desire. Many of our early desires are not what we truly desire. God knows this and steers us away from what is hurtful and unfruitful. How our adamic nature howls in unbelief!

It is the person who seeks God continually that attains the desire of his heart. Yet he learns that in his seeking he continually must surrender his burden to the Lord. Otherwise he finds himself grasping, straining, cutting himself off from the flowing of God's Spirit, from resurrection life.

We are not to demand by faith what we want from God.

We are not to forget our desires, accepting whatever comes, throwing away our hope and dreams, drifting along in a state of spiritual passivity and the feeling that the inevitable will take place no matter what we do.

Rather we are to tell God what our hope and dreams are. We ask in Jesus' name for our desires. Then, we press forward in the Lord, patiently enduring our cross until we attain our land of promise.

The Lord will withhold no good thing from the person who walks blamelessly before Him.

We learn to live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. We have given our all to Him and so all He is and possesses belong to us. We trust Him to give us what we need, in every area of life, when we need it. Then we are abiding in perfect love, joy, and peace. Then we are dwelling in the secret place of the Most High. Then we are living in the rest of God. (from Dying in the Lord)