The Secret To Getting What You Want (It’s Not Anything Like I Thought)

I wanted to move. In the last 5 years I must have told my hubs a hundred times, “This looks like a beautiful place to live!” (Skirting around the subject is my strong suit.)

I’m living on the same road I grew up on. I say that like it’s the worst. Like I’m 14, moaning about my lame parents. 

I did cartwheels on the bridge outside our west window in junior high. I remember scraping fists-full of chipped asphalt from the shoulder, flinging it into Forked Creek just to hear the water spray like rain. A hay field now grows where the dairy farmer once grazed cows. Miles of corn, rivers of trees. Memories repeat all around me. Beautiful ones, fun ones, hard ones, scary ones—all here on this once dirt road, now repaved, publicly posted, and often used as a shortcut for speeding cars, vans, and delivery trucks. The noise level has risen, but more distressingly—greener grass keeps calling from some other place. Like I’m missing the boat I’m supposed to be on. Pining for something better than I have.

This road is lacking and I’m left wanting.

The wanting heightens when I hear couples talk of their new home, or a second home. Cabins on the lake. Cottage along the coast. A ranch out west. Followers on Instagram post mountain views, sandy beaches, glimmering sunsets. There’s a burn for change that’s hard to shake. 

This is what I finally found—wanting only weighs us down—wanting is the worst. What’s calling isn’t higher mountain, warmer beach, or longer lake views, but an impatient heart churning for enduring trust in God. Ain’t one thing wrong with deciding to move—it’s thinking moving can stop these eyes from wanting.

Wanting says we doubt God is enough, gives enough, knows enough, loves enough—and it’s never ever enough.  

But here’s the filling when you trust God for all your wants: He becomes all you ever want. The deeper the trust, the stronger the want.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Rom 15:13)

Joy and peace fill up when in God I put my trust. Hope flows over when I hand over all my wants.

JESUS IS MY MOUNTAIN! 

We can gaze all day on waters and waves—but where does unwavering help come from? From He, who with His hand hath made heart and mind, ears and eyes, heaven and earth—Creator and Savior of all mankind. 

The beauty of the earth has no power when we hurt. In the day of adversity climate can’t control the enemy. Nothing in the dirt beats living with the Lord. 

Remember Stephen? With trust so fixed he told the whole history of God’s faithfulness to opposing leaders of his day. Whose gaze was so tight he never blinked, being dragged away, calling out forgiveness for his assailants—with his last breath! And all because he trusted God this is what he saw: Heaven. Opened. And the Son of man standing at the right hand of God! Who doesn’t want trust like that?

“One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” (Ps 27:4)

Because our eyes cannot be trusted—trusting God is a must.

Here’s our climb: every time, every testing time your eyes turn toward want—circle to trust. Build your trusting muscles until heaven opens up.