Is It Wrong to Want More Than a Good Life?

By Angela D. Thomas, DrPH, MPH, MBA

No, it isn't wrong to want more than a good life. A good life can quietly become the enemy of the promised life, because comfort makes it easy to stop asking God for what He actually said. God isn't offended by your desire. He's the one who planted it.

Let me step on a toe real quick. Sometimes the hardest woman to move isn't the woman in crisis. It's the woman whose life is just fine.

The Shunammite woman wasn't broke and she wasn't begging. She was notable. She had a household, she had margin, she had enough to build a whole room for a prophet passing through. Her life was good. And that's exactly why the promise scared her. When you already have good, wanting more feels greedy, and losing the little bit of more you dared to hope for feels like something you can't survive.

When Good Enough Becomes the Thing That Stops You

I told you yesterday that disappointment buries a desire. Complacency is sneakier. It talks you out of ever digging it back up. It tells you to be grateful, sit down, and quit rocking the boat. And there's a version of that which sounds real spiritual but is honestly just fear in a church hat.

God doesn't need you to despise your good life. He just doesn't want your good life to be the ceiling.

What Does It Look Like When God Gives a Desire Back Late?

Watch my husband. His heart's desire as a boy was to play baseball. But church bumped right up against everything baseball, so he grew up carrying real resentment about the game he never got to chase. That desire got shelved for decades. And then, in his fifties, God handed it back to him. He umpires now. He calls baseball games. And the joy on that man doing the thing he thought he'd missed forever is one of my favorite things to watch. He gave me permission to tell you that.

Here's the point. God isn't running on your schedule, and late in your eyes is right on time in His. His promises don't come with an expiration date. 2 Corinthians 1:20 (NKJV) says, "For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us." Yes and amen. Not maybe. Not if there's still time. Not if you're still young enough. Yes and amen.

The Move Is to Want Again on Purpose

The move here isn't to burn your good life down. It's to refuse to let good be the final word when God said more. You revisit the desire, you say it out loud again, and you let yourself want what He promised without apologizing for it.

And you're going to have to renew your mind to do it. Romans 12:2 reminds us that transformation starts in how we think, so the first thing that has to change is the story you keep telling yourself about what you're even allowed to want.

Take this to the Word yourself. 2 Corinthians 1:20, Romans 12:2, Psalm 37:4.

What This Means for You

Where have you been calling something contentment when it was really just fear of getting disappointed again?

Yesterday we dug up a buried dream. Today we gave ourselves permission to want it out loud. Next up, we deal with the hardest season of all, the one where the very thing God promised looks like it died.

I teach God's Word weekly inside the SheShed Community, and this is exactly the kind of teaching that hits different when you're in the room for it. The replay of this teaching, "Making Mad Moves," is available inside the community as well. Come sit with us.