When my daughter Sarah was three years old, I was helping her memorize Psalm 23:1, "The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want." Normally I would repeat the verse many times and then she was supposed to repeat it back. This time, however, she just looked at me and refused. "I don't like that," she says. What?! What do you mean, you don't like that? This is the Bible, you have to like it. Besides, you just have to memorize it to get your little crowns and finish the book, you don't have to like it.
The kid has integrity, I'll have to give her that. If she couldn't mean it, she wouldn't say it, and she definitely could not say "I shall not want". She didn't know that the old style English meant, that with the Lord as my Shepherd I shall not lack anything, I have all that I need. To a little three year old, it meant just what it sounded like and she didn't like the sound.
To be honest, I don't like the sound either. I am like a big "want" machine. All day long I think about what I want and if something gets in my way, I get angry.
Want: to feel a need for something, a longing
Similar expressions: desire, crave, wish, demand, lust
Logically, it's easy to see how the word "want" could shift from lacking to desiring. When you don't have something, you naturally want it. Though the lack of something might trigger desire, it is not the only thing that does. Have you noticed that you can have the best of everything, and still desire more? I'll tell myself that one bowl of ice cream is enough, but before I even finish the bowl, I'm already dreaming about getting more.
When is our flesh truly satisfied? Where's the shut off valve when it gets full? If I had one, I think it's broken.
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