What God Wants For You, Not From You

Have you ever asked, “God, what do you want from me?” I have. And then I delved into Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman He met at a well and realized I had been asking the wrong question altogether. Pull up a seat and let’s listen in.

This woman had been cast aside by five different husbands and was now living with a man who was not her husband. I suspect her expectations—for marriage and life—were very low. And yet, in the heart of the day, Jesus sat beside a well and waited for His God-given assignment to arrive.

When the woman came alone to draw water, Jesus asked her, “Will you give me a drink?” Oh friend, Jesus did not need for that woman to give Him a drink. He had a purpose and a plan to give her one.

What followed is the longest recorded conversation Jesus had with any one person in the Gospels—and it was with a woman, in a culture where men didn’t speak to women in public. She was stunned.

Then came the turning point when Jesus made a statement that made her thirsty for more.

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water,” (John 4:10). Jesus salted her thirst with these words and then went on to pour living water on her dehydrated heart with the news: He was the Messiah who had come to give her what she had been searching for her entire life—unfailing love.

I shout with my Samaritan friend, “Give me that water!” I hope you do too.

This encounter was never about what Jesus wanted from her—water from Jacob’s well.

It was all about what God wanted for her—a living stream to flow through her weary soul.

Jesus lifted a woman beaten down by life and raised her expectations to what the glory life could really be.

The gospel is not a self-improvement plan. It is not a formula to get what you want when you want it. It is not a spiritual savings bond to cash in someday. The gospel is a story of God pursuing humanity to restore intimate relationship with Himself.

Psalm 37:4 tells us: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Too often, we’ve emphasized the wrong part of that verse—turning I into a name-it-and-claim-it promise rather than a call to intimacy. Always intimacy.

Let’s read it again, with the emphasis where it belongs: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

When you delight in God, your desires begin to align with His. His longings shape your prayers. What matters most to Him begins to matter most to you. And what matters most to God has always been this—relationship. Always intimacy.

The Hebrew word for delight, hapes, means to take pleasure in, to love, to set one’s heart upon. It is synonymous with the verb “to love” and “to be pleased.” It carries the idea of seeking what brings joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction.

An English idiom that expresses this meaning of hapes is “to have one’s heart set on someone or something.”

God longs for you to in Him—just as His delight is in you. Ephesians 1:4 reminds us: “Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love,” (MSG).

So, what does God want for you?

He want you to throw yourself into the river of His love.

To surrender to the current of His perfect will.

Whether careening on quiet streams or battling through violent rapids, you will trust that He is right there with you. Protecting. Guiding. Sustaining.

No matter where the river leads, His presence fills every moment of the journey.

That’s what God wants for you today.

Father, too many times I ask what You want from me, rather than what You want for me. Today, I rest and revel in the truth that You want me to be in a close relationship with You that permeates every moment of every day. No matter what today holds, I know that I am never alone. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

What is one thing that you know that God wants for you today? Leave a comment and let’s share.

Digging Deeper
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