The Lesser Kings in Your Week

The sermon Sunday named a pattern. We crown things beside God, ask God for them, and discover they cannot save us. The bottom line was simple: the king you ask for is not the King you need.

On a Sunday morning that sentence lands. The harder work is doing something with it on a Tuesday.

Here is one exercise for the week. Take ten minutes, get a piece of paper, and finish this sentence three different ways: "If I am honest, I have been asking God for ___, and I have been treating it like it would finally fix me." Career advancement. A specific relationship outcome. A health concern resolved. A child making the choice you want them to make. A particular feeling about yourself.

Anything you have been bringing to God repeatedly, with intensity, as if the arrival of it would settle the deeper restlessness underneath.

Now read what you wrote. That is your list of lesser kings. Not your sins. Not your idols in the dramatic sense. The things you are asking God for that you are also crowning beside him.

The next step is not to stop wanting those things. Most of them are good things. The next step is to add a sentence to each one. "Whether or not you give me this, you are still the King I need." Say it out loud over each item. If you cannot say it without flinching, that is the diagnostic. You have been treating the gift as the King.

This is the discipline of asking without crowning. It does not mean you stop asking. Saul was the answer to a prayer God yielded to. Asking is not the problem. Asking with the wrong expectation is the problem.

If you are walking with a child or a spouse who is asking God for things and getting the silence that feels like no, the same exercise works for them, said in the second person: "Whether or not God gives you this, he is still the King you need." Pray that over them.
 
Repeat it.

And on Sunday, come back ready to confess what you have crowned and ready to receive the only King who is not a disappointment.

The king you ask for is not the King you need. The King you need is already provided