By Brett Knight
I’ve discovered that life-changing moments are rarely announced in advance.
They don’t arrive with fanfare or dramatic music. Most of the time, they happen quietly. A conversation. A loss. A failure. A moment of frustration. Sometimes they come in the form of a simple question.
Years ago, I asked God a question that would eventually change the course of my life, my legal career, my ministry, and my understanding of addiction.
The request was simple:
“God, show me what I’m missing.”
At the time, I didn’t realize how dangerous that prayer was.
Most of us spend a great deal of our lives trying to convince ourselves that we already understand what’s happening around us. We develop opinions, formulate conclusions, and build entire worldviews based on our experiences. The longer we live and the more successful we become, the easier it is to assume we have things figured out.
I certainly thought I did.
As a new prosecutor, I believed I understood the addiction crisis. I saw the arrests. I reviewed the evidence. I listened to the testimony. I negotiated plea agreements and argued sentencing recommendations. From my perspective, the problem seemed straightforward. People were making destructive choices, and the justice system existed to hold them accountable for those choices.
The longer I worked, however, the more frustrated I became.
No matter how many cases we processed, the problem never seemed to improve. Every day brought new arrests, new overdoses, and new families in crisis. For every person who left the system, another seemed ready to take their place. It felt like standing in the middle of a flood with nothing more than a bucket.
I began asking questions.
Why wasn’t this working?
Why did so many people return to the same behaviors?
Why did punishment seem unable to produce lasting change?
Most importantly, what was I failing to see?
That frustration eventually led me to prayer.
I wasn’t looking for a theological answer. I wasn’t asking for a Bible study. I was asking for understanding.
“God, show me what I’m missing. Show me what You know that I don’t. Let me see what You see.”
Looking back, I think that may be one of the most important prayers a person can pray.
Not because it produces immediate answers, but because it requires humility.
Humility is difficult for successful people.
In fact, success can become one of the greatest obstacles to growth. Success has a way of convincing us that our current perspective is sufficient. If we’ve achieved results, earned credentials, built careers, or accumulated experience, we naturally assume our understanding is accurate.
The problem is that experience can create blind spots just as easily as it creates wisdom.
We begin seeing patterns and assume we know the whole story.
We stop asking questions.
We stop listening.
We stop learning.
We stop growing.
The prayer I prayed forced me to admit something I didn’t want to admit.
I might be wrong.
Or at the very least, I might be incomplete.
That’s a difficult realization for anyone, but especially for someone whose profession depends on making judgments and decisions.
What happened next was most definitely supernatural, but it wasn’t dramatic. There was no booming voice from heaven and no supernatural vision. Instead, my perspective began to shift.
I started seeing people differently.
The defendants who appeared in court were no longer simply offenders. They became sons and daughters. They became fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives. They became people carrying burdens I knew nothing about.
I started hearing stories I had previously overlooked.
Stories of abuse.
Stories of abandonment.
Stories of trauma.
Stories of grief.
Stories of pain.
The more I listened, the more I realized that many of the people trapped in addiction were not simply running toward drugs.
They were running away from something else.
The drugs were often an attempt to silence pain they did not know how to heal.
That realization changed everything.
It didn’t eliminate accountability. It didn’t excuse criminal behavior. It didn’t remove consequences. What it did was add compassion to my understanding.
Compassion begins when we recognize that there may be more to a person’s story than what appears on the surface.
Unfortunately, our culture often encourages the opposite.
We live in a time of quick judgments and instant conclusions. Social media rewards certainty, not curiosity. We are encouraged to immediately choose sides, form opinions, and defend them at all costs.
Rarely do we pause long enough to ask, “What am I missing?”
Yet that question has the power to transform relationships, leadership, parenting, ministry, and even entire communities.
Consider how many conflicts could be resolved if people genuinely sought understanding before judgment.
How many marriages would improve?
How many leaders would make better decisions?
How many families would heal?
How many lives would be changed?
The reality is that most problems are more complicated than they first appear.
The employee who seems disengaged may be carrying burdens at home.
The teenager acting out may be struggling with pain they don’t know how to express.
The person battling addiction may be fighting wounds that began decades earlier.
The coworker who seems difficult may be dealing with circumstances you cannot see.
What we observe is often only a fraction of the story.
One of the greatest leadership lessons I have learned is that curiosity is often more valuable than certainty.
Curiosity creates room for learning.
Curiosity creates room for growth.
Curiosity creates room for grace.
Certainty, on the other hand, often closes doors.
When we become convinced we already know everything we need to know, we stop searching for deeper truths.
The prayer I prayed years ago continues to influence my life today. In fact, I find myself praying versions of it regularly.
When I face difficult situations, I ask, “What am I missing?”
When I encounter conflict, I ask, “What am I missing?”
When I feel confident in my conclusions, I ask, “What am I missing?”
Not because I doubt every decision, but because I’ve learned that wisdom often begins with recognizing the limits of my own perspective.
That lesson applies far beyond addiction recovery.
It applies to leadership.
It applies to parenting.
It applies to ministry.
It applies to business.
It applies to life.
The people who continue to grow are rarely the ones who believe they have all the answers. They are the ones willing to ask better questions.
Years ago, I thought I understood the problem I was trying to solve. Then I asked God to show me what I was missing.
What He revealed changed my understanding of addiction, justice, grace, and people themselves.
More importantly, it changed me.
Sometimes the most powerful prayer you can pray isn’t, “God, fix this.”
Sometimes it’s simply:
“God, show me what I’m missing.”
You may be surprised by the answer.
*This article is drawn from the book From the Gavel to Grace – Brett Knight. It is my personal observations and not to be taken as legal advice.