In “Man’s Search for Meaning”, psychiatrist Viktor Frankl writes about his experience during the Holocaust. Trapped in one of the worst circumstances imaginable, Frankl realized that he could not control what life threw at him but he could control how he responded to it. He could fight with life to give him what he wanted or he would work to become who life was calling him to be in that moment.
“We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life,” Frankl wrote, “and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.”
I encounter so many people who talk to God about what they want from him but so few who come before him to ask God what he wants from them.
There is definitely a time and place for us to request from God the things that you need and desire; things that only he can give. The trap we can fall into if we’re not careful is coming before our Heavenly Father like he’s our cosmic Amazon Wish List instead of our Savior and Lord. We often talk of him as our Savior and neglect him as our Lord. He calls the shots; not us. He can’t be our Savior without being our Lord.
During this season of Lent, let’s come to the Lord with our confessions, hurts, and needs. Let us also come to him with open hands, asking what he wants from us as taking precedent over what we want from him. For the things he wants from us are actually the very things we need most from him.
Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself,”
Let’s be a people who come to the Lord, beginning our time with him by calling on him to reveal what he wants from us in this moment, begging him to change us into the people he wants us to be and that our world need for us to become in this day.
Jeff McClung 