How do you pray? What do you ask God for? Do you stick to the basic necessities, emergency solutions, and safe travels? Do you ever pray for the things you want? Do you ever just open up and ask God for the desires of you heart? I remember my wife asking me if it would be wrong to ask God for a million dollars. What do you think? Is it wrong to ask God for a million dollars? Is it wrong to ask God for your dream house, dream vacation, the perfect job, or a brand new Ferrari?
We often stick to safe prayers, the prayer clichés if you will: safe travels, good health, a job, clothes, roof over our head, and food on the table. It is perfectly fine to pray for those things; although, it is a little redundant. God has already promised to provide the necessities if we seek Him first (Matthew 6:25-34). If somebody told you that they were going to grab you a drink; would you respond by asking them for a beverage? You might seem a little strange if you did, but we do that to God all the time. That isn’t to say that I don’t say those prayers. I do it quite often, especially when I catch myself starting to worry about them. It is much better to pray and remind myself that God has it under control than it is to keep worrying about it, but there is so much more for us to pray about then just these basic essentials.
Have you ever asked for things you just really wanted but didn’t need? Psalm 37:4 says “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” So it clearly isn’t out of the question to take these desires to Him. God already knows all of the things you want anyway. So why not ask Him for them. “…Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it” (James 4:2). I’m actually in the process of trying to teach my kids this lesson. They have a tendency to come to me whining or they need help so they just start whimpering. I need them to understand that you don’t need to whine, just ask me if you can have a snack. You don’t have to cry, just tell me you need help unlocking the toy closet. They have gotten a little better, but I want them to learn to come to me before they get frustrated so they will also recognize to go to God before they reach that point. Well, that and whining 4 year olds is not exactly on my list of favorite things.
Clearly asking God isn’t a guarantee; He may still say “no.” Just like my kids asking me won’t necessarily end with them getting what they want, another lesson I am trying to teach them. “Yes, I know you asked me for a new Ipad. Good job asking, but my answer is no.” Just like God knows the desires of our heart, he also knows the condition of it. So if you are asking Him for things that will lead you away from Him or turn you away from the calling He has placed on your heart, you can rest assured that He will say “no.” “And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong-you want only what will give you pleasure” (James 4:3). However, it is still OK to ask; we just have to be prepared to accept God’s answer.
Perhaps, you have some desires that you are too ashamed to ask God for. I know when I was younger and I wasn’t living my life for God, I wouldn’t have gone to God with my desires in a million years. They weren’t really things that I would tell anybody about, because I knew they were selfish, sinful desires. If you can’t go to God with your desires because you find them shameful, it may be time to check where you are in your relationship with God. You should probably go to God and ask Him to help you renew your mind and to give you a heart for Him.
God wants to bless us. He isn’t looking to give us just enough to get by; He wants us to live in abundance. “The Lord will again take delight in prospering you” (Deuteronomy 30:9). Jeremiah 29:11 also talks about God’s plans for us: plans for prosperity and to give us hope and a future. If you look at the story of Solomon, then you will see God can bless us beyond measure. Solomon was given wisdom with no equal and riches beyond comprehension, in fact, at one point in the story it actually says that during Solomon’s reign, gold was so abundant that silver lost its value. Try to imagine that. Gold, our financial standard, was once so easy to get and in such large quantities that silver was worthless, just some rocks in the ground. Now that is living in prosperity.
The only warning that I would issue to this, is that you have to be willing to accept God’s answer. If you are going to ask God for a Ferrari and that will make or break your relationship with God. That is a desire you need to let go of, not take to God. If you can’t accept God telling you no, then you should work on building a stronger relationship with God, instead of chasing after your own personal desires. If your first desire isn’t God than you need to concentrate on that before you start working on your “Amazon wish list.” We should recognize God as a need and you always take care of your needs before you move on to your wants.
Remember the question my wife asked me? Would it be wrong to ask God for a million dollars? Would you like to know my answer? “No, that wouldn’t be wrong. You can ask God for anything you want, but you should probably expect Him to say no and you need to be ok with that answer.” Why did I tell her to expect God to say no? I knew that my wife was saying she wanted a million dollars just so she wouldn’t have to worry about money anymore, but at the time God was teaching us to trust and rely on Him through our finances. It wasn’t a lesson I was having fun learning, but I knew it was something that we needed to learn. There may be a time in our life when that is a desire that God fulfills. To be honest, I still pray for it from time to time. Looking at my bank account, today isn’t that day.
Perhaps, you don’t want to take those desires to God because you are afraid you will be disappointed? You don’t want to ask God for something, because you feel like God always says no. Well I would suggest to you something my Mom suggested to me: a prayer journal. Use it to keep track of what you have asked God and what date you started praying. Whenever God answers a prayer mark it in the journal. Write how he answered it and what date he answered it. This way when it seems like God is always saying no and the enemy starts to whisper in your ear, telling you that God doesn’t answer prayers, you can pull out that journal, remind yourself of what God has done, and call Satan out as the liar that he is.
What are the desires of your heart? Have you taken them to God? What’s stopping you?
