Does God Want What We Want?

One of the things I am most convinced today is that one of the main reasons Jesus came was to change our minds about God, and not God’s mind about us.

This was once again reaffirmed in me the other day while conversing with someone. Over and over I heard this individual tell me, “It’s not about what I want in my life, but more about what God wants.”

As I listened, I began to wonder why a statement like this that sounded so good at face value still somehow felt so hollow.

As I left the meeting, I pondered about this while thinking about Jesus and the way he always addressed people that he encountered along his way. I wondered, if God was not interested in what we wanted, then why did Jesus ask people the same question each time, “What do you want?” Why didn’t he instead ask about their needs, or perhaps if they wanted him to reveal God’s plan and desire for them so he could make it happen?

Why do we struggle so much when it comes to our wants, our desires, and being OK with them?

I believe this begins within our minds where we believe that a walk with God is not acceptable to him unless it is about doing what we don’t like or even love.

It is as if we have somehow been successfully convinced that God is only interested in fulfilling his purposes and getting the job done, merely seeing us as useful robots that have no feelings, desires, needs, or wants of our own.

I know this lie all too well as I too once believed that it was not about what I wanted that mattered. I even aligned my prayers along this false belief, yet the more I prayed this way, the fewer answers I got. As I look back, I can see that every time I pretended that what I wanted was not as important as what he wanted, he never really answered. Yet when I began to be honest with what I wanted, answers began to show up. Suddenly there was motion.

At first, if I am honest, I declined to follow the leads since they often didn’t look the way I envisioned they’d be according to what I wanted. I figured if this was from God, then it would look different. This happened many times until one day I decided to follow the leading I was actually getting.

Here are a few things I discovered along the way.

Getting what you really want

First, when we are honest about what we want, we open this part of our heart to God. Even if the desire at the time is unhealthy, or the fulfillment of it won’t have the cause we hope for in our lives, God still wants us to tell him about it.

Second, our honesty, unlike our false pretense, triggers a journey in motion where we begin to be led towards the fulfillment of the desire.

Third, there is a very big difference between our immediate wants and our deepest desires, and this I believe is what God is most interested in showing us.

This was confirmed to me when God showed me that when we are honest with what we want, he immediately creates a path where we are given an opportunity to understand and reinterpret our desires and wants.

He does this by first opening doors into situations which are responsible for bringing healing and freedom into our lives. From this new space of wholeness we are enabled to then reassess with greater clarity our wants and the reasons for wanting them. From here, our wants normally begin to change as they align themselves with the changes that we are experiencing within. Inevitably our prayers are also affected, as they too begin to mirror the real desire that has all along been hiding behind what we thought we wanted.

I believe this is also why when Scripture tells us to ask, it says we will receive — it doesn’t tell us what we will receive. When it says to knock, it says that the door will be opened — not which door will be opened. When we are told to seek, it says that we will find — not what we will find. In other words, we are the ones who are meant to ask, knock, seek, and want, and God is the one who decides which is the best way to fulfill it all.

Today I am more than convinced that God is very interested in what we want and desire, even if we erroneously think he is not. Furthermore, I also believe that most of our distorted self-denial sentiments have a lot more in common with the unseen shame in us than the humility that is birthed in someone who knows they are unconditionally loved by God.

Remember – If God had a problem with our wants, then Jesus would have never asked about them.

–pablo–

PS. If you have found that this blog has spoken to you please consider sharing it out with others as this will help all of us in our journeys… And if you have time then please also leave me a message. I will reply as I know it has come from your heart but most importantly it has come from you…

This post comes from Pablo’s website, LivinLoved.org — inviting others to discover unconditional love and acceptance, and being a voice for the voices that go unheard. Every purchase off the website helps feed, educate, and house children in Africa and South America. You can impact destinies around the world as you shop!