Here is a strangely difficult question to answer:

What do you want?

This is the question Jesus asked when two of John the Baptist’s disciples began to follow him, the question he asked a blind man crying out for mercy.

It is the question Jesus asks each of us.

Still, it seems like such a dangerous question. After all, doesn’t Jesus also ask us to deny ourselves, which implicitly means denying our desires, denying our wants—at least some of them?

Yes. But jumping to self-denial before doing the deep work of identifying desires can be disastrous. Stuffing desires typically intensifies them. At some point the inner container into which we’ve been stuffing them bursts open and makes a big mess, hurting us and others.

Personally, I have stuffed desires for significance, desires to be seen and known, desires to experience and create beauty. Can these desires be twisted into something destructive? Absolutely. But these desires are pointers, and rather than trying to quash the desires or pound them into something more ​“holy,” I’d do better to express them honestly before God and ask the Holy Spirit: What do these desires reveal, what is at their root, and how would you like to meet or transform each of them?

Remember that Jesus’ instruction to deny yourself was in response to Peter’s rebuke (see Matt 16). What Peter desired was for Jesus to live, to reign, to set all things right. Good things. Those desires turned evil when Peter decided he knew better than Jesus how they must be fulfilled. Imagine, instead, if Peter had expressed his desires with a heart of surrender. Jesus himself showed how to do this in Gethsemane: ​“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” — desire expressed; ​“Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” — desire surrendered.

This week in an article and on the podcast, Gem and Alan Falling, authors and founders of the ministry Unhurried Living, dive into desire and what our souls love. They compare discovering our desire to taking a submersible deep into the ocean:

“The creatures in the ocean depths remind us that there is unfathomable beauty in the deepest and darkest of places. Sometimes it is fear that keeps us from looking deeper. We are afraid we will find something unknown or even ugly. But it is in this deeper level that we also find hidden beauty. Stay open, and let God show you in his time and in his way.”