I was 11 years old when I got serious about being “saved.” I had long attended Sunday School and church, and I knew that Jesus was 12—one year older—when he conversed with the elders in the temple. Twelve seemed to my mind the age of “reckoning,” the age of accountability. If I weren’t saved by then, maybe I would go to Hell if I died.

Day after day during the summer that I was 11, I stole away by myself to my bedroom, on the far side of my bed, sitting on the carpeted floor and leaning my back against the bed. My mother didn’t know where I was, and sometimes she came looking for me.

She would ask, “What are you doing?”

I would reply, “Reading.”

And she would go back downstairs, satisfied that all was well.

But all was not well. As I held the Bible in my hands, and I turned through it repeatedly, reading passages that I recognized and imploring Heaven, “I want to be saved!” To say that I spoke from a demanding spirit would be an understatement.

I didn’t get any response from God that I recognized. I didn’t feel anything very reverent. I remember a lot of frustration. God didn’t seem to be listening to me.

Fast forward five years.

I am 16 and the incoming president of the youth fellowship at my church. I attended a five-day religious conference for youth at Duke University, intended to prepare young people for leadership roles in their churches. I embarked as a seeker. I thought that the prestigious Duke might hold answers that I had not yet found. But by then I was not demanding anything of God. I was seeking His blessing, not demanding it.

And what was, for me, a miracle happened. Sitting on the floor of a classroom in the Duke Divinity School (sitting in this humble position because the room was so crowded with young people), I felt my heart strangely warmed. This was my instant of salvation, the instant in which salvation’s doors were opened for me.

What was the difference between my experiences, my encounters, with God at age 11 and age 16? I think I was demanding at the earlier time, and God listened when I was seeking only. How arrogant I had been as an 11-year-old to “demand” a response from God! My indomitable will had assured that I was not ready to accept His Will as my own. My gentler spirit at age 16 brought the gift I had sought in many ways over the previous five years.

Previously, I had been a willful child. Once I became a compliant teen, I was someone God felt ready to invite into His company. Finally I was ready to listen to God. I was no longer doing all the talking.

What does this say to me as an adult? If God appears not to listen to an impassioned prayer, perhaps we need to open ourselves more to asking that His Will, not ours, be done. Demanding does no good. Seeking often does.