Capacity: What Will You Do With What You Asked For?

In the 2024 documentary Becoming King, actor David Oyelowo reflects on the extraordinary journey that led him to portray Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. Years before he was cast, Oyelowo says he felt God tell him that he would play the role. He auditioned and was not selected at that time. After years of setbacks, preparation, and other opportunities, he was eventually cast in 2010.

The documentary captures a powerful question connected to that journey: “What are you going to do with Selma?”

It is a question worth asking whenever we finally receive something we have spent years praying, preparing, and persevering for:

What are you going to do with what you asked for?

That question is especially meaningful for couples.

Most couples have prayed for something they eventually received: more financial stability, a healthier marriage, a growing family, a new home, a business opportunity, more time together, or a deeper relationship with God.

But receiving something and having the capacity to steward it are two different things.

Capacity is the ability to hold, manage, and grow what has been entrusted to you.

Consider a couple who has spent years talking about having more time together. Eventually, their children become more independent, their careers stabilize, and their schedules open up.

They have what they asked for.

But now they have to learn how to use it.

The calendar is no longer filled with school activities, work obligations, and constant responsibilities. There is finally room for dinner together, meaningful conversation, travel, and simply enjoying one another.

Yet they discover something unexpected: having time together does not automatically create connection.

They have to develop the capacity to communicate differently, listen differently, and intentionally enjoy each other again.

The same principle applies in other areas of marriage.

A couple may pray for financial increase but need greater financial discipline.

They may ask for business growth but discover that growth requires better systems, communication, and boundaries.

They may desire a deeper marriage but realize that intimacy requires vulnerability, forgiveness, and time.

Sometimes the blessing reveals the places where capacity still needs to be developed.

This is why renewal cannot stop at rest.

Rest creates space. Capacity determines what we can do with it.

For couples, stewardship begins with recognizing that marriage is something you have been entrusted with, not simply something you possess.

Your time is entrusted to you. Your resources are entrusted to you. Your influence is entrusted to you.

Your spouse is someone you are called to love, serve, and honor, not simply someone who is supposed to make your life easier.

Capacity grows when couples stop asking only, “What do we want?” and begin asking, “What kind of couple must we become to steward what we are asking God to give us?”

That question can change the way a couple approaches everything.

What you have asked for may already be on its way. The question is: what will you do with it when it arrives?