What God Is Asking For
“And Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.
And the LORD respected Abel and his offering.”
(Gen. 4:4)
My Dearest Daughters,
God is not asking us for more activities, more labor, or even more hard work. He is asking for our heart. He is looking for relationship.
Since the fall of man, God has been seeking that place of walking together again in the cool of the day, offering each of us a way back into His presence.
When I think of this, I remember a New Year’s Eve many years ago. Our home fellowship had gathered at the Alexander home to usher in the new year with worship, prayer, and a desire to tune our ears to the voice of God—to step into the coming year with Him.
As you know, for your whole lives, and for mine as well, our gatherings have been marked by a single aim: the presence of the living God, His anointing, and His word. And we have tried, as best we could, not to pretend His presence was there when it really wasn’t.
That night, I remember struggling and searching for it, groping for it inside my own heart. Perhaps we had not quite laid aside the baggage of the holidays: the activities, the relatives, the rich food. Or perhaps it was something else. Whatever the reason, our group service was struggling. The songs felt a little stale. The thing we were seeking had not yet come.
Your Daddy, who was leading the meeting, finally said, “Let’s pause and pray. Let’s try to enter into the presence of the Lord.” So we stopped. And we prayed.
At some point during that prayer, Aurora Alexander, a dear friend, spoke up. She began to share a testimony. Shortly before, she’d been looking back over her year and prayed, “Lord, I wish I had felt more of You. I wish I had felt more of Your anointing and purpose in the things I’ve done. What can I do to bring Your presence more fully into my life and my calling?”
This surprised many of us. There has hardly been a more loving or generous friend than Aurora. She has brought meals in every busy season—concerts, sickness, long weeks—arriving with a steaming pan of brisket, a beautiful salad, a pan of rolls. She and her husband have been abundantly generous with their time, their support, and the gifts God has given them. But Aurora felt God calling her deeper.
She shared that when she asked the Lord what she could do, she offered Him more service: “I’ll make more meals. I’ll help more. I’ll serve more people if that’s what You want.”
And the Lord answered her, “I don’t need more meals. I don’t need more labor. I need your heart. I need your heart to be in everything you do.”
As Aurora spoke, her face was radiant. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and we could all see her heart laid bare before God. And because of that, our own hearts were opened. We wept as God’s conviction fell upon us, and the presence of the Lord came rushing into the room through her simple but vulnerable words. And we gave God glory from the broken place of having witnessed what it looks like when someone offers their heart fully to God and to others.
The next morning, on New Year’s Day, I prayed over Aurora’s words because they had cut so deeply. I knew God was speaking to me. And He brought me to the story of Cain and Abel.
What was it that God accepted from Abel, but did not accept from Cain? That question had been in my mind for years. And that morning, I understood.
I have been a gardener almost my whole life. And I have raised sheep nearly my whole life, too. Anyone who has done both knows that gardening requires immense effort—hoeing, weeding, watering, harvesting, digging, plowing, sweating under the sun. In fact, I believe it’s more labor intensive than raising sheep.
Yet when you pull a turnip from the earth and cut off its top, your heart does not ache. Your throat does not tighten. Tears do not burn your eyes.
But when you have raised sheep—when you have gone out into the cold night to a laboring ewe, watched her give birth, heard the bleat of lambs calling for food, seen them come running when you call them, bottle-fed them, cradled them in your arms, and then the day comes to harvest the meat, and you lay a lamb upon the table, you will weep. I certainly did.
I was five years old the first time I saw a lamb slaughtered. I cried into my father’s arms, and he patted me and said, “It’s okay. It’s okay. Go ahead and cry. We should cry when something dies.” And he was right.
The lamb had lived and died for what it was meant to do. But death should still speak to our hearts. It should cost us something.
That New Year’s morning, I understood something else I had never fully grasped before. David once said, “I will not offer to the LORD my God that which costs me nothing.” And suddenly I knew; Abel’s offering cost him something from his heart; Cain’s did not. Abel brought what had his heart in it. He brought a life that had been loved, tended, named, and known. And when he laid it before God, it was not merely a gift; it was a piece of himself.
That is what God desires, to bring us back to the place where our hearts can speak again, not just our mouths. Not just our hands. But the voice of the heart and soul can cry to God, can love our family, can bring joy to our neighbor.
God Himself says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.” (Hos. 6:6) He has never been impressed by activity alone. What He longs for is relationship and our hearts present within what we offer Him.
He does not need more sweat. He does not need more work. He wants us. He wants to walk with us again in the cool of the day.
So when we offer the sacrifices of motherhood, of loving our spouse, of serving our neighbors, He asks that they be offered with heart. When we merely add labor to labor, effort to effort, often all it does is build up ourselves.
You can buy more things for your children. You can sew more clothes. You can dig bigger gardens. But can you enter into the difficult conversations? Can you expose your own heart to your spouse and speak the words that make you feel vulnerable rather than self-assured? Can you show up for your neighbor when it risks your image—when it costs you tears, when your throat tightens and your heart burns? Can you say, “I will be here—even if it shows the real me”?
If you can, then you have begun to learn what Abel felt as he laid his lamb upon the altar before God.
So in the year to come, let us offer God something that costs us, so that we may walk again with Him in the cool of the day, bound heart to heart, soul to soul.
With all my love,
Mom
