What do you want?

“What do you want me to do for you?” “Lord, I want to see,” he replied. Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.” (Luke 18v41-42)

The question lingered in the air, “Bryan, what do you want from God?” I was caught off guard by the question. No one had ever asked me that before. However, I immediately had a response. I said, “I want to be ministered to.” I had been in a long season of continuously pouring into other people and was in need of being filled up. 

Our church was in the middle of navigating it’s third major pastoral transition in four years. The two previous transitions had been really messy and left a fair amount of collateral damage for the staff to clean up. The difference with this transition was that it came with some staff restructuring. I was being asked to consider a new position. I wasn’t sure if I was being called to it, or if I even wanted it.

Our elder board scheduled a meeting with me to talk through this potential new role. During the meeting, I was able to ask my questions and express my concerns. I also shared about how the last two transitions were really hard on me and I had doubts about whether or not I even wanted to be a pastor anymore. That’s when one of the guys in the room asked, “Bryan, what do you want from God?” 

At first, it seemed a little inappropriate for me to be telling God what I wanted from Him. Isn’t He the one who says what He wants from me? But just like in Luke 18, there are times in the Gospels when Jesus directly asks people what they want, and more specifically what they want from Him.

That doesn’t mean Jesus is a genie in a bottle who’s going to make all our wildest dreams come true. It’s not as though our wish is His command. But Jesus knows that the starting point to connecting with people is meeting them where they really are. Sometimes, like in the case of Luke 18, Jesus gives people what they want. Other times, like in the case of James and John asking to sit at Jesus’ right and left hand in His glory, He doesn’t.

The reality is Jesus is acutely aware of what’s going on in our heads and our hearts. He knows what we want even before we know or ask. It seems that Jesus asks the question, “What do you want?” more for our benefit than His. He asks so that we might own up to our desires with the intent of meeting us there. I have a friend who says, “God’s so real, He meets us where we really are.” 

During the meeting with our elder board, after I owned and named that I wanted a season to be ministered to, I was given the gift of a two-month sabbatical to discern where God was calling me. During that time, God strengthened my spirit and made it clear He was leading me to take this new position. The new role wasn’t something that I was desiring, but I knew that because God was calling me into it, He would supply what I needed in the midst of it.

God meets us where we are so that He can bring us to where He wants us to be. The challenge Jesus gives to us is to submit our desires to Him and to trust that He is good. He may not give us everything that we want, but He promises to give us exactly what we need. 

So, what do you want? Share that with Him and trust that He’ll meet you there.