In our Christian life, we seek God’s grace but we want him to take away our weakness too, the very reason why we need his grace. The objective, though, is not to grow to need God’s grace less, but to depend upon it more and more. Or to realize more and more your complete and total need for it.

Still, often we ask God for something, say more of his joy or love or power, but we ask without wanting the process that it takes to produce those things in us, an abiding in him through which he gives those things to us. We rather want God to circumvent the process and cut the cost of drawing us closer to him, of changing us, of conforming us.

But we can’t escape the process.

Any Christian who is (or longs to be) salt and light (Matthew 5:13-14) should be seeking more of God—more of his joy, love, power, etc.. But the question isn’t if we want or need those things—of course we do—but if we’re willing to pay the price for them and the cost to us?

And it’s not even really a question of us having or possessing those things. It’s really a matter of God having or possessing our whole heart.

Yes, God is moved by our needs. Yes, God wants to meet our needs because he is merciful and faithful. But in moving towards meeting our needs, God is moving towards meeting us, drawing us towards knowing him.

As a result, sometimes God’s mercy and loving faithfulness feel severe. He is moving or cutting through our needs to uncover, get at, and meet our deepest need. Our deepest and greatest need is not always what we’re asking for. Our deepest and greatest need is always for knowing him.

To this end, God generously spares nothing. He is not interested in a people who always get what they want or need from him, but in a people who know and love him first, who having him, though nothing else, feel they have everything in the world. God spared nothing, not even his one and only Son Jesus, to make us his one and only treasured possession.