There comes a time in every believer’s walk with God when the usual prayers, fasts, and service no longer quiet the hunger within. You’ve shown up, stayed faithful, carried burdens, and poured out more than most will ever know. But instead of feeling full, you feel this unsettling ache rising in your soul—the ache for more. Not just more activity or accolades, but more of what’s real. More purpose. More fruit. More fire. More of the life Jesus said was possible. A life that is rich, satisfying, and dripping with the kind of joy that no storm can erase.
I’ve been wrestling with this lately. That word more has been echoing in my prayers and even showing up in my restlessness. I’ve done what I knew to do for the Kingdom, and yet, the fullness I hoped to feel hasn’t met me the way I imagined. And the Spirit began to ask me one of the hardest, most humbling questions I’ve ever had to face:
“You expect more, but have you truly presented more?”
It’s a hard pause. One that reaches into the areas of my life I thought were already surrendered. Luke 12:48 (NLT) came in like a sharp but loving reminder: “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.” I’ve been entrusted. Called. Pulled out of darkness for purpose. But maybe I’ve capped my surrender at what felt like enough, not what wasenough. Maybe the “everything” that God wants includes the places I still hold back—the quiet ambitions I keep, the timelines I wrote in pencil years ago but still refuse to erase, and the frustrations I try to manage rather than fully surrender.
God wants everything.
It’s not just about the good works or the church service. Not just about your time, your talents, or your tithe. God wants more than what you do for Him — He wants you. He wants your heart, your habits, your desire to stay in control, your questions, your expectations. He wants the parts of you that you’ve tucked behind performance. The places you haven’t surrendered — not because they’re sinful, but because they’ve felt “personal.”
And sometimes the personal is a longing—a longing for the love we never received and so desperately want. A desire that doesn’t quite line up with God’s Will… but if we’re honest, we still want it. But even that belongs to Him. Even that is part of the surrender.
Jesus said in Mark 12:30 (NLT), “And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” That covers it all. It doesn’t leave room for partial commitment or segmented sacrifice. It calls us to wholeness in our devotion—and to the kind of love that gives God full permission to tell us what to do with everything we call ours.
Romans 12:1 reminds us, “Give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.” Worship isn’t just a sound. It’s a surrender. It’s a lifestyle and posture that says, “God, You can have every part of me—even the parts I don’t understand yet.”
Maybe the reason that divine dissatisfaction won’t let up is because what we’re expecting doesn’t line up with what we’ve truly offered. We say we want the rich and satisfying life that Jesus promised in John 10:10 (NLT), but when we step back and look at the altar of our lives… it’s still cluttered. There are pieces—only pieces—we’ve laid down and pieces we’re still holding onto—old dreams we’re too afraid to let die. We only trust God in small doses but expect big mouth-fulls. We pray big prayers for abundance, but we’re still clinging to things God asked us to release. We’re asking for open doors, but deep down, we haven’t fully opened our hearts.
The more that you’re asking for from God may require a deeper level of death to self—a letting go that feels almost unreasonable until you realize that God never empties you without the intent to fill you with something better. Philippians 3:8 (NLT) speaks a truth that should be our life’s anthem: “Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ.” That’s the kind of surrender that unlocks the life we were born to live.
So, ask yourself—what am I still holding back? What part of “everything” have I not yet given God full access to? It might be painful, but it’s also the doorway to the more your soul is longing for. God doesn’t want part of you—not if you’re asking Him for the fullness of who He is. He wants everything. And on the other side of that surrender is more than you ever imagined. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“God Wants Everything from You”, written for Springfield Fellowship © 2025. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.