What Do You Want?

August 23, 2019

“What do you want me to do for you?” It must have sounded absurd.

“Isn’t it obvious?” would have been an entirely understandable answer. Two blind men who had heard about this man Jesus and the things he had been doing. How could he ask such a dumb question in response to their plea, “Son of David, have mercy on us!”? Is he the blind one here? 

And yet, Jesus asked the obvious, not because he didn’t know, but because they needed to give voice to their deepest desire.

When Elijah was about to be taken up into heaven, he told Elisha, “Ask! What may I do for you before I am taken away from you?” When Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah’s spirit, Elijah responded, “You have asked a difficult thing. Nevertheless...”

I wonder how much of what God wants to give never happens because we’re afraid to ask difficult things of God. We’re somehow afraid his reputation will be sullied if we ask and he doesn’t answer. Even more telling, I wonder how much of what God wants to give us we fail to receive because we don’t know ourselves what we want. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” It doesn’t say he will give us the desires of his heart, but of ours. He’s not like the overbearing parent who says, “You don’t know what’s good for you, so even though you want this, I’ll give you that.”

The only condition is that we first delight ourselves in the Lord. When our heart beats in unison with God’s, he delights in giving us what we want because we would never want anything other than what he would want. The problem is, we don’t know what we want enough to ask for it. Our prayers are bland and proper, but rarely bold. We ask for little things when God wants to give big things. We splash around in the shallow end of God’s grace and power when he is calling us to launch out into the deep where we cannot touch bottom, but where we may learn the magnitude of his power and love. And all the while, we think we’re being holy because we wouldn’t dare presume upon God.

It looks like I’ll soon be easing into retirement once more. Jesus’ question bothers me. What do I really want? What difficult thing do I want from God? To be honest, right now, I don’t know. I only know this: I don’t want to someday stand before Jesus and hear him inquire, “Why didn’t you ask for more?”