I Don’t Know What I Want

I’m almost finished culling for the summer portion of my Live with Flair book. I come upon this quote from two years ago, and I’m struck again by the truth of it. It’s just this: “They received more than they knew to want.”

For readers just joining us this year, I’m including the full text from June 26, 2012 below. What I love about rereading this blog is that it’s true! Over the past two years, I’ve received from God more than I knew to want. He brought things into my life I didn’t even know I wanted.

I’m learning that I don’t know what I want. I just don’t. That’s why I find it so intriguing when Jesus asks that very first recorded question in the gospels, “What do you want?” I laugh and cry all at once. I imagine the disciples stammering around a bit, maybe even stuttering as they simply say, “Rabbi, where are you staying?”

In other words, they have no idea what they want. They just want to be with Jesus, to know where He’s going to be. I think, after all this time, that’s finally what I want too.

“They Received More Than They Knew to Want”
I’m listening online to Paige Benton Brown give a talk at a women’s conference. I remember her from 1998 (back when she spoke at Camp Greystone to a group of us counselors). She always knew how to make the Bible come alive and apply it in ways I so desperately needed as a young woman.
So I tune in all these years later to hear her again. As she begins teaching from the Bible, she describes how when people encounter God, “they received more than they even knew to want.”
They received more than they even knew to want.
I write the sentence in my journal and stop listening to anything else. I’m just so amazed by the truth of it: God gives what we don’t even know we want yet.
We don’t know to want it.
Our hearts have been instructed by so many false narratives that we don’t even know to want the great things of God.
God wants to give what I don’t even know to want. The thought astounds me again. I entrust myself to this God who knows what I don’t know.

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