The Specific Prayer I Pray When I Can’t Tell If It’s God or Just My Ambition

I spent years asking God to bless things He never asked me to build and I don’t do that anymore.

I am wired with an obnoxious level of ambition. I’m not saying that with false humility or as some kind of cute confession – I’m saying it as a straight up fact that has caused me real problems in my life, my business, and my walk with God. I am the kind of person who gets an idea before she peels her eyelids open in the morning and has a fully formed business plan by breakfast. I will strong-arm a door open with my bare hands and then ask God to bless it as I’m walking through it, already committed, already running, already three steps past the point of no return while asking God to keep up.

For years I thought that’s what faith looked like for an entrepreneur because it’s what I saw being modeled. You dream big, then you take massive action, and you believe God gave you that vision so obviously He wants you to GO! God rewards the action takers. And if you have peace about it, there’s your confirmation.

Oh, how painfully, expensively, and spectacularly wrong I was.

When you’re a driven, capable person of faith, you can make almost anything work through sheer force of will.

So you never get a clear “no” from God because you keep kicking the door open yourself. The thing – whatever it may be – gets built, and you point to the results as evidence that God was in it, when really you were just good at building and God was gracious enough to let you glean your wisdom the hard way.

Tell me if this cycle sounds familiar, because I’ve never met a driven person of faith who doesn’t do some version of it…

An idea hits you square between the eyes. It feels like lightning and the excitement is immediate, almost physical… you can see the whole thing. The offer, the audience, the impact, the revenue, the way it all fits together so perfectly that it has to be God ordained. So you get to creating, telling people about it, investing money and time and energy. You spend time in prayer because, after all, you’re a person of faith, asking God to bless this beautiful venture.

But the problem is that you were never actually seeking direction, you were seeking approval for a decision you had already made.

There is a canyon-sized difference between “God, is this yours?” and “God, make this work.”

Excitement feels like anointing if you’re not paying close attention.

That rush of clarity and energy when a new idea clicks? It is almost indistinguishable from the Holy Spirit confirming a direction, but sometimes excitement is just excitement. Ambition creates its own kind of energy and motion feels like progress even when you’re sprinting in the wrong direction – which I have done more times than any reasonable person should admit publicly, and yet here I am, admitting it at the kitchen table because that’s what we do here.

So what do we do with that? I resisted this change because first and foremost, I’m impatient. And asking God to reveal the will for your life or the choice that’s right for you isn’t always dropped in Magic 8 Ball level speed.

For me, it had to start with a shift in what I was actually praying and saying to God and how I was (or at the time, was not) partnering with Him in my work.

The thought of the cost of continually getting this wrong finally started to outweigh my impatience.

After I nearly died – after the stillbirth of our son and almost losing my own life – I woke up with this terrifying clarity that I had been building things God never asked me to build and calling the exhaustion burnout when it was actually lack of obedience. I kept asking God to sustain me inside a life He was trying to redirect me out of and I kept wondering why I was so tired all the time.

The prayer I pray when I’m considering a big leap.

So I started praying differently, and I want to give you the actual prayer, word for word, to be made your own, because this is how I pray but it might look different for you. I pray some version of this prayer every time I’m considering a big leap, a new idea, opportunity, or even just a continuation of something I’ve already been pursuing for some time.

Lord, I’m excited about this and every part of me wants to run with it. But I need You in this with me. I have a tendency to get excited and let ambition drive, and then call You in at game time to bless it, but I really do want You to guide the creation of my life. I want to live in accordance with Your will, not mine.

If this is of You, Lord, confirm it. Show me through trusted wise counsel, through Your Word, and through patterns in my life that this is Your direction for me in this season. If it’s Your will, bless it. Open doors I never could on my own.

But if it’s just a distraction from what You really have for me – gently close that door. Protect my heart as you do it, because I am genuinely excited and drawn to this, and I need to know with great clarity whether this is Your direction or mine.

Diminish my passion and my excitement for the things that aren’t Yours. Make me less drawn to them, and give me a passion for exactly what You’re calling me to – an excitement so clear for what You want that I cannot deny it.

I’m trying, Lord. I want to choose wisely. But sometimes I’m distracted by my own excitement and even misguided by my own peace. Guide me mercifully onto Your path. Amen.

Now let me tell you why that prayer is so hard for someone like me, because I think that’s actually the most important part of this whole piece…

“Diminish my excitement for the things that aren’t Yours.”

That line was tough for me to pray at first because I love my ideas! I love the buzz of a new direction or chasing something exciting. I love that moment when everything clicks and my brain starts building the plan before I’ve even finished the thought. I am asking God to take away my desire for something I genuinely want. That is a surrendering of something I am deeply attached to, and it requires a level of trust that I frankly don’t always have, which is exactly why I have to keep praying it.

And then there’s the other gut-punch line – “sometimes I’m misguided by my own peace.” That one took me a long time to be honest about, because we’re taught that peace is confirmation. If you feel peace about it, it must be God. But I’ve felt peace about things that were absolutely not God’s direction for me.

I want to be really clear, though… I don’t pray this because I’ve arrived at some enlightened place where I always get this right. I pray this because I still get it wrong, regularly. I am in this mess right now, in real time, navigating a season where God is planting seeds in my heart left and right and every fiber of my ambitious little being wants to harvest them immediately.

This very full season – homeschooling, nursing a baby who considers sleep a personal weakness, finishing a book, building this Kitchen Table thing from the ground up – God has been placing ideas on my heart constantly. And some of them genuinely feel like Him. But I’m learning (slowly, painfully, with the subtlety of someone being repeatedly hit with a frying pan) that not every seed God plants is meant to be harvested this afternoon. I never claimed to be a green thumb.

Sometimes He gives you the vision in one season and the green light in another.

The space between those two things is often where driven people like us absolutely lose our marbles. The seed very well may be from God, but our hunger for quick timing might not. And sitting with a real seed that you’re not allowed to plant yet is one of the most uncomfortable spiritual disciplines I’ve ever experienced (even more so than fasting, and I like me some food).

So how do I tell the difference between “move now” and “not yet”? Because that’s really the next question, isn’t it? It’s “is this from God FOR RIGHT NOW?”

I don’t want to make this sound like a formula, because discernment isn’t a checklist, but there are patterns I’ve noticed in my own life that have kept me from blowing past God’s timing with my own red-hot enthusiasm.

• Does pursuing this right now require me to neglect what God has already asked me to steward? He doesn’t typically ask you to be unfaithful to your current assignment in order to chase the next one. That’s ambition math, not God math.
• Are doors opening without me forcing them, or am I the only one pushing? There’s a flow to God-ordained timing that my forced opportunities have never had. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, it means I’m not the only one doing the work.
• Is wise counsel confirming this, or am I arguing with everyone who questions it? When I’m in ambition mode, I will debate anyone who challenges my direction. I will explain away their concerns and find reasons why they just don’t understand the vision. When I’m doing that, I’m not seeking counsel, I’m seeking cheerleaders.
• Can I write it down, set it on a shelf, and still feel peace? Or does it feel urgent in a way that’s more anxiety than calling? A calling can wait. It has a patience to it, a steadiness. It doesn’t go away, but it doesn’t scream either. Ambition says “now or never”, but God almost never talks like that.

Sometimes stewarding what’s already in my hands is the calling, which can feel super boring to a doer.

Especially when my brain is buzzing with fourteen ideas that all feel anointed, and urgent, and clearly meant for me.

This is where I am right now, in the thick of it still figuring it out and fighting nature most days. I’m at the kitchen table with you, trying to be faithful to the one thing God actually asked me to do today instead of all of the other things I’d rather be doing because they’re more exciting, more visible, and more impressive.

If you’re about to make your next big move – in business, in life, in anything that’s got your engine revving – maybe try praying something like this first. God made you a builder, yes, but the version that’s actually His will always be better, lighter, and more fruitful than the one you’d construct off your own steam. The only way I’ve found to know the difference is to ask Him before you’re already running.

Stop asking God to bless your plans and start asking Him to show you His.

They might be the same thing, but they might not.

I’d rather have one God-breathed assignment than a hundred self-made successes.

Love + prayers,

Liz

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