Why Do You Want That?
When might the statement, "I just want God's will for my life," serve as a convenient evasion?
We continue last week's exploration of four crucial, courageous questions necessary for all of life. In Episode 159 we unpacked, "What do I want?" Today we look at "Why do I want this?"
Not only does this inquiry aid in uncovering the motivations behind our desires but also dismantles the shame that often inhibits our growth. By addressing these questions with curiosity rather than judgment, we allow ourselves to engage in a transformative process that fosters empowerment and intentionality in our lives.
Understanding our desires and motivations requires courage and humility, particularly when confronting the possibility of self-serving reasons. Often, however, we realize the "why's" behind our "wants" may be shackling us to self-limiting beliefs that aren't based on truth. Also, cultivating curiosity in our relationships enables deeper connections and insights into the values and motivations of those around us.
Listeners are encouraged to get curious this week with two of their own "wants" and "why's" and with one "want" and "why" with their family members. It can be surprising and revealing what answers turn up!
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Transcript
Have you ever considered the possibility that the expression I just want God's will for my life could be used as a cop out?
Speaker A:We're going to be talking about this today and the second question we need to ask ourselves, and this is also a great question in our relationships and as parents, after we have asked the question we discussed last week, what do I want?
Speaker A:What is the question for this week?
Speaker A:Stay tuned.
Speaker B:If your desire is to become spiritually stronger, emotionally healthier, and relationally smarter, you're at the right place.
Speaker B:Speaker and writer Stephanie Smith inspires and equips you to achieve these three key aims.
Speaker B:If you're a parent, you also learn how to raise empowered kids ready for adulthood.
Speaker B:Let's get started.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the podcast.
Speaker A:I am delighted that you are with me today and I just want to say a word of thanks to all of you who reach out with an email to let me know what's resonating with you to ask questions, to request topics to be covered.
Speaker A:So you are entirely welcome to do that.
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Speaker A:You can.
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Speaker A:Not only is that an encouragement to me, but it helps other people to know in this world of like 20 million podcasts that this one is worth listening to.
Speaker A:Well, last week we talked about one of the four most courageous questions that we can ask ourselves.
Speaker A:Not just once, but it becomes a habit for us all throughout life.
Speaker A:And that is, what do I want?
Speaker A:One of the things that you will hear me say in one form or another is that nobody drifts to a life of success.
Speaker A:Nobody just happens to find their way into a life of maturity and meaning.
Speaker A:It only happens with intentionality.
Speaker A:Intentionality by itself isn't enough.
Speaker A:I mean, you can have good intentions, but if you have a bad map or you don't have the right instructions, those good intentions are not going to make up for that.
Speaker A:But you have to be intentional if you are going to have a life of significance and maturity and depth and growth.
Speaker A:By default, we will not progress.
Speaker A:That's just the way it is.
Speaker A:We might grow physically as a person, but we will not default to growth mentally and emotionally and relationally.
Speaker A:We will default to decay and stagnation.
Speaker A:There is no neutral.
Speaker A:There is.
Speaker A:There is no third option.
Speaker A:You're either growing or decaying.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:It's just a matter of the rate.
Speaker A:Sometimes decay happens incredibly slowly.
Speaker A:And so the effects of that might not show up for years or decades, but eventually it does show up.
Speaker A:But that is not who we are around here.
Speaker A:We are people of empowerment.
Speaker A:We are people who are intentional about our growth and about our meaning and purpose and significance.
Speaker A:So last week, as we talked about that question, what do I want?
Speaker A:And we remember that we also saw that was a question that Jesus asked people.
Speaker A:He said, what do you want?
Speaker A:And it wasn't because he was clueless.
Speaker A:And like, you know, kind of like if you've ever had somebody that you needed to get a gift for, for birthday or Christmas and you were totally clueless like you have, I have no idea what this person possibly wants or needs.
Speaker A:And so you ask them, please, what do you want?
Speaker A:Because you're desperate.
Speaker A:That is not the way that Jesus approached asking people at different times, what do you want?
Speaker A:It is because there is something significant for us to have the courage, the willingness, the humility, the vulnerability to say, I want this.
Speaker A:And the second question that needs to come right after that one is, why do I want this?
Speaker A:I'm not saying that this is a question that you need to spend days and weeks and months of years of your life, you know, in some kind of weird internal navel gazing kind of way, trying to find some deep hidden motive that, you know, that's going to take all kinds of therapy to unearth.
Speaker A:I mean, sometimes that can happen and that's needed.
Speaker A:But what I want you to think about is to have, again, the courage, the humility, the vulnerability to be honest enough to say, why do I want this?
Speaker A:Sometimes we can be afraid to ask ourselves that question because we may have a little bit of an idea that what we are wanting, we're wanting.
Speaker A:What we want is good, but we're wanting it for a selfish reason.
Speaker A:But you know what?
Speaker A:There is another reason that sometimes we can hide from asking ourselves that question and answering it.
Speaker A:And that has to do with shame.
Speaker A:I don't mean conviction, because the Holy Spirit shows us that, oh, we really have a selfish motivation, even if what we're wanting is perfectly fine.
Speaker A:But sometimes we have shame because we have believed a lie.
Speaker A:All shame is not the result of not aligning with, with God, established truths.
Speaker A:That's a holy conviction whose purpose is, as the Bible says, to bring us to repentance always.
Speaker A:The conviction of the Holy Spirit is never designed to bring condemnation so that we shrink down Further and further into this nothingness.
Speaker A:The conviction of the Holy Spirit is God's kindness that leads us to repentance.
Speaker A:What's repentance?
Speaker A:It is a change.
Speaker A:It is a turning around.
Speaker A:It is an acknowledgment.
Speaker A:We are on the wrong path and we need to take a different direction in order to line up with what God has said.
Speaker A:And that is a holy conviction.
Speaker A:Shame is different.
Speaker A:The type of shame that causes us to run away from God, just like we saw in the Garden of Eden with the very first sin.
Speaker A:The result of that condemnation and shame was to run away from God.
Speaker A:And God still came looking for Adam and Eve and he's calling to them and he still does that with us today.
Speaker A:But shame is something that keeps us away from God, away from what we need for our deliverance, for our healing, for our wholeness, for our growth.
Speaker A:And it causes us to turn away.
Speaker A:So how does this question connect to shame?
Speaker A:Well, over time, all of us absorb ideas about who we are and about how life is supposed to operate.
Speaker A:Sadly, so many of the times we align our thinking with, we align our actions with something that isn't true, but we don't recognize it's not true.
Speaker A:We don't recognize that it's a lie.
Speaker A:Just to make this very practical, several weeks ago I was in a different town and I was with some of my family and we went into this shop and we were visiting a little bit with the shop owner there.
Speaker A:And this, this gentleman was sharing just a little bit with us as, as we were talking to him about how he got started in this business, that he grew up in a restaurant and his younger brother was there as well.
Speaker A:And, and the grandmother said to him and his brother not, this wasn't just like a one off, this was something that he and his brother both heard repeatedly during their growing up.
Speaker A:And to be fair, I don't know anything about this, this grandmother other than what we were told.
Speaker A:She was very involved in the boys lives.
Speaker A:She taught them the art of cooking.
Speaker A:So she wasn't just somebody who popped in the door and you know, said these mean things and then left.
Speaker A:And I also don't know how she said this.
Speaker A:I don't know if she was saying this in a way that was meant to be kind of a joke, but at least this young man took it more seriously.
Speaker A:I don't know how she said it, but what she said to him and his brother was, you have to learn to cook and take care of yourselves because nobody is ever going to want to marry You.
Speaker A:And of course, there's a little bit of a cultural stereotype in that, you know, that the wife's going to be the one to cook and, you know, take care.
Speaker A:I'm not getting off into all of that.
Speaker A:But that message penetrated his heart.
Speaker A:Neither he or his brother ever married.
Speaker A:Now, I don't know all of the reasons for that, but I know that that message that was spoken to them over a period of years absolutely had an impact.
Speaker A:And it embedded this idea, nobody is going to want me as a husband.
Speaker A:And even if they came to a place later in their adult life where at one level they say, okay, no, that's not true.
Speaker A:Ideas like that, statements like that have ways of embedding themselves not just in our thinking, but in our hearts.
Speaker A:They become part of our soul.
Speaker A:They become part of our spirit.
Speaker A:When we hear those types of things over and over again, they lodge themselves in our body physically.
Speaker A:So that even when we begin to recognize things that have been spoken into us over a period of time, and we begin to take actions that don't align with that statement, what we have accepted as truth about ourselves.
Speaker A:But when we recognize, no, that's not objectively true, that doesn't align with how God has made us or what God has to say about us.
Speaker A:And we begin to make changes in our thinking and in our behavior.
Speaker A:Our bodies can kind of rebel because our bodies can kind of go, wait a minute, this is weird for me.
Speaker A:This doesn't feel right for me.
Speaker A:And it typically takes a process of time and action and deliberate changing of our thoughts for those words and those realities to become replaced in us.
Speaker A:That doesn't mean that God can't just absolutely, totally immediately change someone's mind in transformation.
Speaker A:But I go back to the scripture in Romans 12:2 that talks about that we are transformed by the renewing of our mind.
Speaker A:And this is on an ongoing process that this transformation happens.
Speaker A:When we ask ourselves the question, why do I want whatever it is we want?
Speaker A:That gives us the opportunity to see, where are those places in life that we have been aligning with something that's not true?
Speaker A:Maybe you have always wanted to learn how to dance, but you've also heard at different points or throughout your life, or maybe it wasn't something that you heard often, but you heard it at a particular point in your life and from a particular person.
Speaker A:So that it was like a rifle shot that just lodged this bullet in your heart.
Speaker A:And you have never given yourself permission to learn to dance, even though you have that desire.
Speaker A:Because competing with that and in opposition to that is this idea that says, oh, you're, you're clumsy, you're klutzy, you're not coordinated, you're.
Speaker A:Who do you think you are?
Speaker A:You would never be good at, at dancing.
Speaker A:That's ridiculous.
Speaker A:That's not, that's.
Speaker A:You're just not cut out for that.
Speaker A:You don't have the figure for that.
Speaker A:You don't have the shape for that.
Speaker A:You don't have the coordination for that.
Speaker A:Whatever the different things that could have been spoken into you so that you gave up what you wanted, well, when you begin to identify, no, I do want certain things in my life, and then you start asking, why do I want this?
Speaker A:It provides this opportunity to, to unmask shame that should not be there.
Speaker A:The shame that leads to self limiting beliefs.
Speaker A:Because it's a way, self limiting beliefs, they're just a form of lying that we usually don't even recognize are lies that have been sewn into our hearts.
Speaker A:The other way that, that second question, why do I want this can empower us is because it removes us from a place of helplessness to a place of empowerment.
Speaker A:As people, we are not designed to be helpless.
Speaker A:The greatest power that God has given to us is the ability to choose, to make choices, agency, free will, empowerment.
Speaker A:And to the degree that we do not exercise our agency and our free will and a sense of empowerment is the degree to which we will remain shriveled.
Speaker A:We will never reach our full potential.
Speaker A:When we ask ourselves this question, and why do I want this?
Speaker A:I don't want us asking ourselves this question as if it's some sort of interrogation.
Speaker A:It's not like we put ourselves into this room, you know, with the stereotypical single light bulb overhead and somebody who's there and we better ask, answer the question or else, you know, we don't know what they're going to do to it.
Speaker A:That, that isn't it.
Speaker A:Think of this more like you're having a chat with yourself.
Speaker A:You are out for coffee, for tea, whatever your dessert of choice is, and you're having lunch with yourself.
Speaker A:And, and you've already answered the question about, okay, what, what do I want?
Speaker A:What do I want in my life right now?
Speaker A:What do I want for the long term?
Speaker A:What do I want in my relationship with God?
Speaker A:What do I want to be as a parent, as a wife, as a mother, as a husband, as an employer, and all these different categories of life as a friend?
Speaker A:And then to say and, and why do I want this?
Speaker A:And ask that question with curiosity, not with a threat of, you better come up with the right answer or else.
Speaker A:You know, in the very beginning of the podcast, I asked the question, could the statement, I just want God's will for my life to be used as a cop out?
Speaker A:And the answer to that is, of course it can.
Speaker A:It's a safe answer.
Speaker A:And honestly, it kind of protects us from having anybody dig any deeper, including ourselves.
Speaker A:Because if all I can say is, well, I just want God's will for my life, that's why I want X, then that doesn't necessarily require a whole lot of courage.
Speaker A:Please understand me and hear me accurately when I say this.
Speaker A:I am not saying that we should never make that statement, nor am I ever saying that that is not what should be the desire of our heart.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:To be able to say, God, I want your best for me.
Speaker A:I want your will for me.
Speaker A:But sometimes we think of God's will as this masterpiece plan, kind of like this master chess game.
Speaker A:And if we just have a good enough relationship with them, he's going to bestow on us the wisdom to know how to make every right move.
Speaker A:And like, there's only one right move.
Speaker A:And I don't see that.
Speaker A:Throughout scripture, I see where God absolutely sometimes steps in to direct people's paths in divine ways.
Speaker A:But I also see where God's will, which is the redemption of humankind, gets brought about through people's ordinary lives and even their own desires that God has given to them, which may not always show up in some big dramatic form.
Speaker A:They might just be the kind of normal desires that God has already, like, pre wired and pre built into us.
Speaker A:So I'm not saying to throw out the response of I want God's will for my life, but rather to add that at the very end.
Speaker A:So after you have asked and answered the question, what, what do I want?
Speaker A:And then you've said, okay, and why?
Speaker A:Why do I want this?
Speaker A:Then you can follow that up by saying, but most of all, I want God's best for my life.
Speaker A:I want his will for my life.
Speaker A:So if any of these desires need to change God, then I'm going to ask you to change the desires of my heart so that I will have different desires.
Speaker A:This is also a fantastic question in our relationships and again, not to be asked in a way that is demeaning, right?
Speaker A:Have you ever gone shopping with somebody or you've gone out to eat with them and you saw something on the menu that just sounded delicious to you, or you saw an outfit or some sort of item and you Were like, oh, that is so cool.
Speaker A:And the person that was with you just looked at you and kind of like, why in the world would you ever want to eat that?
Speaker A:Or what are you thinking?
Speaker A:What would you do with it?
Speaker A:Why do you want.
Speaker A:That is not the kind of why do I want this?
Speaker A:That I'm talking about.
Speaker A:I'm talking about the curiosity that says, well, tell me why you want that.
Speaker A:Tell me what about that sounds appealing.
Speaker A:Tell me why you like that outfit or that book or that musical instrument or whatever it is.
Speaker A:And when we approach people with that kind of curiosity, it opens the door for us to learn who they are.
Speaker A:And this is a question that every parent just needs to work into their ongoing vocabulary, just becomes part of your ongoing conversation style that you have with your kids.
Speaker A:And again, that is not asking in that kind of irritated or annoyed or why do you want that kind of way, but in a way of curiosity.
Speaker A:So tell me what, what is attractive to you about that?
Speaker A:What interests you about that?
Speaker A:Tell me what is the appeal to that for you?
Speaker A:Because when you ask those questions without condemnation you and without rolling your eyeballs or any kind of other thing, you're going to be able to be clued in to how they see the world and what they value.
Speaker A:And this can begin at very young ages.
Speaker A:You know, one of the things that can happen as a parent, and I know this because this was definitely mistakes that, that I made more than once.
Speaker A:And we can think that because we are around our kids all the time, especially if you are a stay at home parent or if you're homeschooling and you're like, you know what I am like with my kid 24, 7, or at least it feels that way, then you can confuse proximity with intimacy.
Speaker A:You can confuse knowing your kid with knowing everything about your kid.
Speaker A:And let me just say, it is impossible to ever fully know 100% of what is in someone else's heart.
Speaker A:And one of the things as parents that we want to do is we want to stay curious.
Speaker A:We want to stay in a position of being not just our child's parent, but we also want to be their student.
Speaker A:We want to be intentional to learn who they are because they come pre wired with their own personality.
Speaker A:And then as they go through life and that that personality develops, that seed of personality develops according to the environment that they're raised in, the activities they have, the exposures that they have, both good and bad.
Speaker A:Then when we stay curious and say, well, tell me why you want that, what's important you might just be shocked at what their reasons are for something.
Speaker A:And you don't want to miss significant opportunities to learn about them and to speak into their life or just to necessarily chalk up some critical piece of information about them that you can use to help build a strong, nurturing, intimate relationship with them.
Speaker A:So we want everything that we do around here.
Speaker A:At the Life Ski 3 podcast Stephanie presents.
Speaker A:We want this to be practice, practical, and applicable to real life.
Speaker A:I want you to have the theory, I want you to have the principle, I want you to have the why.
Speaker A:But I also want you to have the what and the how.
Speaker A:So between now and the next episode, I want you to think of just two things in your life that you identify.
Speaker A:These are two wants that I have.
Speaker A:And then I want you to just get curious and say, why do I want this?
Speaker A:You might discover some really cool things about yourself.
Speaker A:Now, to be fair, it's also true that there might be something that you see in yourself.
Speaker A:And you're like, well, okay, God, I guess this is one of those growth gaps that you're working on me about.
Speaker A:And you don't need to crawl off in shame.
Speaker A:You need to go, all right, so, God, we're going to work on this.
Speaker A:You're going to work on helping me, whether that's with repentance.
Speaker A:Perhaps there's an area where I need to repent to you or someone else.
Speaker A:Or this is a matter of this is where change gets real and this whole life of Christian discipleship gets real.
Speaker A:But you might also discover that there are some things God's wanting to know about yourself because they are good things that are resonant within you that you haven't realized.
Speaker A:And he's trying to bring those things out so that you can step better into the fullness of who you are and to have the impact that he desires for you to have.
Speaker A:So, two questions about yourself, and then pick at least one person.
Speaker A:And if you're married, if you have kids, just one thing for every person in your family at some point to identify.
Speaker A:Just keep clued in as to something they want.
Speaker A:And it might be something that they bring up.
Speaker A:And if not, then you can just kind of bring it up in conversation and then just ask them in a curious kind of way and tell me why you want that.
Speaker A:Tell me what's important or attractive to you about that.
Speaker A:And then as you continue to do this, it will become part of how you show up in life.
Speaker A:And these types of practices, they will compound.
Speaker A:They're like compounding interest as you go throughout your life.
Speaker A:And I can guarantee you these two questions have the capacity to make a significant difference in how you live and how you show up, not just now, but for the rest of your life.
Speaker A:All right, my friend, that is going to wrap us up here today.
Speaker A:Hey again, if you haven't already, subscribe Rating Review reach out.
Speaker A:You can find me on my website, also on Facebook and Instagram.
Speaker A:Stephanie Smith Presents.
Speaker A:Share what is helpful for you.
Speaker A:Give suggestions for comments or comments for things that you would like me to cover and to hear about.
Speaker A:And most of all, remember this and live like it's true.
Speaker A:Because it is.
Speaker A:You have an impact that is immeasurable, eternal and irreplaceable.
Speaker A:I'll see you next time.
Speaker B:Thank you for listening.
Speaker B:Visit the website Stephanie Presents and sign up for High Impact to join the mission of building spiritually strong, emotionally healthy and relationally smart women and families.
Speaker B:You can also book Stephanie to speak at your event and check out additional resources.
Speaker B:Together we can invite and equip generations to engage fully in God's grand story.
