Sometimes the thing we most want God to change is not the thing we most need Him to change.

In Mark 2, a house in Capernaum was so crowded that four men carrying their paralyzed friend could not get through the door. Rather than give up, they climbed onto the roof, opened it, and lowered their friend down directly in front of Jesus. Everyone in that room knew why the man was there. He could not walk. Surely, if Jesus was going to do something for him, He would heal his legs.

But Jesus did something unexpected. Before He addressed the man’s paralysis, He said, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee” (Mark 2:5). Jesus saw what everyone else could see, but He also saw what no one else could see. The man’s greatest problem was not his inability to walk. His greatest need was forgiveness.

I wonder how often we do the same thing. We come to God with the problem that seems most obvious to us. We ask Him to fix a circumstance, open a door, restore something we have lost, remove a difficulty, or change someone around us. There is certainly nothing wrong with bringing those needs to the Lord. But sometimes, while we are focused on what is happening around us, Jesus wants to do something much deeper within us.

Over the years, I have had prayers that I desperately wanted God to answer in a particular way. Looking back, I can see that while I was asking Him to change the situation, He was often using the situation to change me. He was exposing areas where I needed greater faith, patience, humility, surrender, or dependence upon Him. The answer I wanted was important, but the work He wanted to accomplish in my heart was even more important.

Jesus eventually healed the paralytic. He told him, “Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house” (Mark 2:11). The man walked out carrying the very bed on which his friends had carried him in. But Jesus made sure everyone understood that the greater miracle had already taken place. His sins had been forgiven.

Perhaps there is something you desperately want God to change today. Bring it to Him. Pray about it. Trust Him with it. But also be willing to ask a harder question: “Lord, what are You trying to change in me?”

Sometimes we come to Jesus asking Him to change our circumstances, while He sees a need that reaches much deeper. And because He loves us, He refuses to settle for merely treating what everyone else can see.