Do I Want What God Wants?

When a man brought his ailing son to Jesus for healing because the Disciples couldn’t heal him, Jesus said, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” After Jesus healed the son, He then turned His attention to His Disciples who asked why they couldn’t heal the son. Jesus said, “Because of your unbelief.”

At that time, a man came up to Jesus and kneeling before him said, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; for often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.” And Jesus answered, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move hence to yonder place,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. But this kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting.” As they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.”

Matthew 17:14-23

Many of us would hear these words as scolding because we are not accustomed to hearing Jesus call His Disciples unbelievers. They were following Him from town to town through deserts and wilderness. One would seriously doubt Jesus thought they were faithless. So what really is Jesus trying to tell us today in this Gospel passage?

Most of us like to think we are believers and followers of Jesus Christ, but when we are challenged by something not going as we would prefer, instead of accepting that God doesn’t want us to ‘have something’ we question why we didn’t get what we wanted in the first place. This reflects our selfish desires rather than our faith in God. For many of us, so long as God wants what we want, we are willing to believe Him. But when He wants something different than what we want, instead of changing our desires, we challenge Him and demand answers to, “Why?”

Any parent has heard this question a thousand times so we can appreciate what God must be going through when He says, “How long am I to be with you?” But unlike us, God remains patient and calm, and sometimes stern, as He continues to teach us to desire what He desires.

Something to think about this week…. “Do I want what God wants?” If not, instead of demanding answers from God as to ‘why’ He doesn’t agree with us, maybe we should challenge ourselves to want what God wants. If we want what God wants, we will ALWAYS get what we want and there will be no reason to complain to God. 

Learning to want what God wants requires deep faith and patience, something we learn from prayer and fasting. “This kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting.” It isn’t about food and words. It is about faith and patience and wanting what God wants.