I was completing my morning pages today, which is where I write down for 3 pages everything that comes to mind. It’s a great way to bring clarity and awareness of our thoughts, and also of God’s leading and speaking to us first thing in the day. Today I was writing down something that I’d been troubling over, and this scripture came to mind. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4:6) I know when I have these clear thoughts, and especially one’s from the bible that God is trying to get my attention, and is speaking directly to me.
So I started to think about those words, “don’t be anxious, but bring your petitions to God”. What are our petitions? What do we actually want, and what do we want God to help us with? A lot of the time we can be unclear and not focused on our requests to God, we can pray, but it is half-hearted prayer, and not based on scripture and therefore faith.
But God wants us to ask Him for things. God tells us to ask Him for things.
Why? Because it gives God pleasure to give to us the things we ask for. When our children celebrate their birthdays, or Christmas is coming, we try to give good gifts, and we especially like to give them what they have asked for, or may have mentioned throughout the year. It gives us great joy to bless our children this way. By far the most pleasure comes when we give something to a loved one which they have asked for, which they have dreamt about for months.
God who loves us and longs to lavish good things upon us is just the same. He loves when we ask, when we petition Him with a request. Not because He doesn’t know what we want, or doesn’t know what we need, but He wants us to express our dependence upon Him. He wants us to come to Him and share our needs and our desires.
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1)
“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you”. (Matthew 7:7)
When our prayers start to seem like we’re praying the same thing over and over, or we never seem to know what to pray for, one of the best things to do is start praying Scripture Passages. If we know we are praying Scripture, then we know we are praying according to God’s will, and we then can know that we have what we asked of Him.
“Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.” (1 John 5:14-15)
C.S. Lewis wrote that “prayer where we are requesting something of God is just like work, in that we use it to accomplish things. Without work and applying ourselves to a task we can’t expect anything to get accomplished, and so also, without prayer, we should not expect anything to get accomplished”.
God wants us to bring our requests, our petitions to Him, because He wants to answer them.
Today take the time to think about what you really want, and what you desire God to accomplish for you. Then spend some time in His word, to ensure that your desires are in agreement with God’s will, and then tell him what is on your heart. He delights to answer our prayers. Make God a part of your everyday life and bring your requests to Him, and give the angels who do His bidding something to go to work on.
“Bless the LORD, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word!” (Psalm 103:20) Prayer: Lord thank you that I can come to you and ask of you. Help me to give myself time and space to really know what I want, so that I can come and ask according to your word. In Jesus name Amen.