You Can't Always Get What You Want

I spent a weekend with God a few weeks ago. I first felt led to go and do this when I was reading Esther-when Mordecai gives Esther the immortal ‘for such a time as this’ charge, her response is, essentially ‘give me three days to fast and pray, and you do it too.’ So when it came about that I was going to have a free weekend, I thought ‘great, I’ll go spend three days like Esther and seek God about my calling.’ I asked a few other friends to be my Mordecai and Co., seeking God where they were while I was seeking on my own in my ‘palace.’ (ok, it wasn’t mine and it wasn’t a palace-actually my little brother’s row-house in inner-city Philadelphia, but whatever :) )

Then God started speaking to me in my quiet times about resting, and also about seeking His face-basically saying to me, ‘hey, let’s just hang out this weekened,’ to which I replied ‘that sounds great, but I REALLY need to know what’s coming up next, because I’ve got people who need an answer from me by next Friday…but hey, since you’re God and everything, we’ll play it your way (exasperated sigh).’ And I set off for Philly planning to obey and hoping God was going to ‘surprise’ me (is it really a surprise when you’re expecting and even counting on it?) with some guidance.

Taking stock at the end of the day Saturday (the halfway point), I had to admit I’d had a wonderful, restful time, to a degree-God and I had some awesome worship times, He’d said some cool stuff in my quiet and prayer times, and we’d had an adventure walking around my little brother’s neighborhood-but I was still missing that ‘surprise’ guidance I was hoping for. It was like getting a bunch of stuff for Christmas, but not the one thing I really wanted. I tried to keep a good attitude about it and went to bed (do you ever wonder how amused God must be at our attempts to be gracious to Him? How kind of me to let Him off the hook like that).

The next morning as I was worshipping, God rewarded my ‘graciousness.’ As I was concentrating on playing, singing and worshipping all at the same time (a difficult feat for someone with my paltry guitar skills), I had a flash of understanding about Esther—she wasn’t seeking God for direction, as I had thought and hoped to emulate. She already knew what she was going to do. She wasn’t seeking Him for favor. That’s what she had Mordecai and crew doing outside the palace. She was seeking God for God—spending three days coming to a place of being ok with whatever He did or didn’t do when she walked into that throne room and waited for the king to first spare her life and then hear her request. And I saw that God, knowing what I THOUGHT I was doing, had been doing for me what I SHOULD have been doing. I saw all of those second-best presents in a whole new light then-I had appreciated them, as I said, before, but when I saw how they fit into the whole of what God planned for my weekend, I was amazed. He is good. To quote my Mom, quoting Mick Jagger: ‘you can’t always get what you want-but if you try sometimes (in this case, if you let God have His way) you might just get what you need.’

And for the record, God did finally weigh in on my decision. With time to spare.

On April 6, I will go back to YWAM Virginia to take the Principles in Child and Youth Ministry course. Please pray that God will equip me for study and ministry, provide my tuition and expenses, and most importantly use the next 5 months to prepare me to walk the path on which He has set me.