Many of our prayers begin with what we want Jesus to do for us.
We ask Him to forgive us, guide us, protect us, provide for us, heal us, strengthen us, and change the circumstances that are hurting us. When life does not move in the direction we hoped, our disappointment can expose an expectation we may not have realized we were carrying.
What are we primarily looking for in our relationship with Jesus?
There is nothing wrong with coming to Jesus because we need Him. The gospel meets needs we could never meet for ourselves. We need His forgiveness, grace, salvation, and the hope of eternal life. Even after we become Christians, Jesus invites us to bring our burdens, desires, and requests to Him.
We never reach a level of spiritual maturity where we no longer need to receive from Jesus. In fact, the more we grow, the more deeply we understand that everything we have comes from His grace.
But a relationship can be genuine and still need to mature.
Early in our faith, much of our attention may naturally rest on what Jesus has done for us and what we hope He will do next. As we come to know Him more deeply, however, something within us gradually begins to change. We still come to Him with our needs, but receiving what we want becomes less central to why we follow Him.
Our primary concern slowly begins to move from what Jesus will do for us toward how our lives can bring glory to Him.
This is not a light switch that turns on in a single moment. It is a gradual reordering of our desires. Our motives will often remain mixed. We may genuinely want Christ to be glorified while also desperately wanting Him to give us a particular outcome.
Christian maturity does not require us to pretend that we no longer care about that outcome. It teaches us to want something even more.
We begin living more for Him and less for ourselves.
Paul described this transformation when he wrote:
“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Corinthians 5:14–15 ESV).
Notice what produces this change. It is not guilt, fear, or an attempt to repay Jesus. It is the love of Christ controlling us. What Jesus has done for us remains the foundation of our relationship with Him, but His love gradually transforms what we want to do with the life He has redeemed.
Jesus did not die merely to help us build a better life for ourselves. He died so that we might no longer live for ourselves at all. The life He saved is now a life that belongs to Him.
This does not mean we bring Jesus something He lacks. We cannot repay His grace or add anything to His sufficiency. Even our ability to surrender is made possible by what He has done for us.
As Christians, we already belong wholly to Him. Maturity teaches us to live increasingly in the truth of that belonging. The life He redeemed finds its truest expression when it is lived for His glory.
That changes how we begin to see everything.
When God blesses us, we do not view the blessing only by how much enjoyment or security it gives us. We begin asking how it can be used for His glory.
When He opens a door, we do not see the opportunity only as evidence that life is moving in the direction we wanted. We ask how we can honor Christ through it.
When He closes a door, we do not automatically conclude that He has withheld something necessary for our lives to have meaning. Our purpose was never confined to what waited for us on the other side of that door.
Even when suffering enters our lives, our deepest purpose remains available to us. We may not be able to control what happens, but we can still desire for Christ to be revealed through the way we walk with Him in it.
Mature faith does not deny what we want. It teaches us to place that desire beneath a greater one:
“Jesus, this is what I want from You. But more than I want this outcome, I want my life to bring You glory. If You grant it, help me use it for You. If You lead me through something different, let Christ still be seen in me.”
Paul lived this tension when he pleaded three times for Jesus to remove the thorn from his flesh. His request was not sinful or evidence of spiritual immaturity. Paul was honest about what he wanted.
But Jesus answered him:
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10 ESV).
Jesus’ grace did not become sufficient when Paul accepted His answer. It had always been sufficient. Paul was learning to recognize, trust, and rest in that sufficiency.
The removal of the thorn was no longer necessary for Paul’s life to fulfill its deepest purpose. If the power of Christ could be displayed through his weakness, then Paul could still live for the purpose that mattered most, even while the thorn remained.
Paul did not celebrate weakness for the sake of weakness. He rejoiced because weakness had become another place where Christ could be seen.
This does not mean mature Christians stop asking Jesus to change their circumstances. It means the change we desire is no longer the condition upon which we will trust Him, praise Him, or offer ourselves to Him.
We may still be disappointed by an outcome. Christian maturity does not remove grief, longing, or the pain of an unanswered prayer. But disappointment with what happened does not have to become an accusation that Jesus has disappointed us.
We can lay down our lives before Him without demanding that His sovereign will produce the life we would have chosen for ourselves.
The peace, strength, purpose, and contentment that grow from this surrender are beautiful gifts. But they are the fruit of surrender, not the reason for it. If we live for Jesus primarily because we believe doing so will give us the outcomes we want, we are still measuring the relationship by what it gives us.
We do not live as those who are wholly His so that He will give us the life we have chosen.
We live as those who are wholly His because belonging to Him is the truest expression of the life He has given us.
This transformation will not be completed all at once. There will be moments when our prayers reveal how much we still want Jesus to serve our plans. There will also be moments when we recognize that something within us has changed.
We still want the answer, the healing, the opportunity, or the relief, but we want Christ to be glorified even more.
That is growth.
We never outgrow our need to receive from Jesus. But as we mature, receiving what we want becomes less central to why we follow Him. More and more, the life He redeemed finds its purpose in being lived for His glory.
As you sit with this teaching today, consider what your prayers and disappointments reveal about what you most desire from your relationship with Jesus. Are you measuring His faithfulness primarily by what you receive, or are you learning to look for how Christ can be revealed through you? What desire can you honestly place before Him while also asking that He be glorified regardless of the outcome?
If you are willing, share your reflections or questions in the comments so we can learn and walk this journey together.