The Gift of Asking

Do any of these thoughts sound familiar to you? So familiar, maybe, that you’ve thought them yourself?

-          I should thank God and praise Him instead of asking Him to give me things or to do things for me.

-          God’s in control of everything, so I don’t need to ask Him for _______. He already knows what I want/need anyway.

-          It’s more important to pray for other people than to pray for myself. Praying for myself is selfish and self-centered.

-          If I do pray for myself, it should only be about “spiritual” things, like praying God will grow me to be more like Jesus.

Confession time: these are all thoughts that have run through my head at one time or another. And some of them I still have to fight against regularly. On the surface, they seem to be correct, right? We know that God is worthy of our praise, that He is all-knowing and sovereign over all things, that our focus should be less on ourselves and more on God and others, and that His will for us is that we be shaped into the image of Jesus Christ. So what’s the problem?

The problem with the thought-statements above is that they take pieces of truth and twist them just enough to produce a misdirected application grounded in an untruth—that it is wrong to make requests of God regarding things that affect us personally. 

How many times have we all heard, “God isn’t a genie in the sky, existing only to grant your wishes”? While that is 100% true, the problem is that the implication—or at least the perception—of that statement is that asking God for something “personal” is tantamount to treating Him like a genie. For those who have a right understanding of who God is—of His supremacy and perfect holiness—the last thing we want to do is denigrate Him by approaching Him as our personal wish-granter. So, if you’re anything like me, this often means that we don’t approach Him at all.

But is this really the proper response to seeing God as holy and supreme? To answer that question, the best (and only) place to find an authoritative answer is God’s own Word. Even spending just a short time in the Bible is enough to show us that this kind of reaction—this hesitation to ask God for things—is completely counter to what God intends for us.

As just one example, in the Old Testament we see Hannah fervently praying, asking God very specifically to give her a child (1 Samuel 1). This was a point of great personal desire for her, since she was childless and regularly suffered the taunting of her husband’s other, fertile wife, adding insult to her pain. Likewise, the Psalms are filled with examples of David’s asking God for healing and protection. These are impassioned pleadings for personal deliverance.  

Even if those instances are looked at as descriptive rather than prescriptive, the New Testament exhorts us “in everything” to “let [our] requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6, ESV). And Jesus Himself tells us to ask (Matthew 7:7-11), teaches us to pray for ourselves (Matthew 6:11-13), and models what it looks like to bring requests to God the Father—yes, even requests for Himself.

In Gethsemane in the hours before His arrest and crucifixion, Jesus makes a very personal request of God—that God would provide a way out of the impending wrath He is about to experience (Matthew 26:36-46, ESV). What is perhaps most striking about this passage in regards to our present topic is that Jesus, being God, knew that what He was about to endure was the only way. He knew that the cup would not be removed from Him. In other words, He knew the answer to His prayer would be “No.”

But He still asked.

That right there should be enough to show us the importance of asking. If Jesus, who knew what the answer to His request would be, still brought it before God, how much more should we! We learn from this example that even if the answer is “No,” there is still value in the asking itself, and one clue into the reason this is the case is found in the preface to Jesus’ request. He began just as He taught His disciples to begin—“My Father” (Matthew 26:39, ESV).

These words remind us that the Holy and Supreme God of the universe is also relational, and for those of us in Christ, He has entered into personal relationship with us—or rather, has brought us into personal relationship with Himself. In the same passage where Jesus speaks of asking, He also makes the connection to God’s fatherhood when He says, “Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11, ESV). Part of having an intimate relationship with someone is conversing with them, opening up your mind and heart, sharing your thoughts and feelings—even if they already know them. So why, if God is our Father, would we neglect to communicate to Him our desires?

Yes, it is true that the purpose of God’s existence is not to fulfill our every want. But it is also true that God is our Father, and He endured unspeakable pain so that we could have a relationship with Him—a relationship more intimate than any other we will experience, a relationship that includes asking things of Him and then submitting to His will in the answer given. 

Does He depend on us to communicate with Him to fulfill some relational need on His part? No. Does He know what we will say before we say it? Yes. Will He always grant our desires? No. Will He often shape our desires into different ones? Yes. Sometimes He even uses the process of our articulating our desires to perform that transformative work in us, revealing to us the areas of our lives that need to be brought further under submission to Him. But none of these things are reasons we should avoid approaching God’s throne in prayer and bringing specific, personal requests before Him.

I’m afraid that in our zeal to reject the “name-it-and-claim-it” beliefs that all you have to do to get something is ask and that if you ask and don’t receive, then you must have had not enough faith, we’ve made it easy to fall into the other extreme of not asking at all. We’ve forgotten the power of prayer—not only in effecting changed outcomes, but also in cultivating intimacy with our Heavenly Father.  But when we understand that God created us to be in relationship with Him and that it is possible to simultaneously hold Him in highest regard and bring petitions—any petitions—before Him, we can begin to see what a gift the invitation to ask things of God is. The God “who dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16, ESV) welcomes us to approach Him through Jesus Christ and to lay out our requests before Him.

This is something I have to remind myself of on a regular basis. More often than I would like to admit, I have to consciously take the mental step from simply thinking, for example, “I hope this barrier is removed,” to actually praying, “Lord, will you please make a way here where it seems there isn’t one?” Even for things that seem too miniscule, or too massive, or too selfish, or too silly, I have to remember the importance of asking, even while asking God to conform me into the image of Jesus. Because when I open that conversation with God, I also open the door to a deeper and more enriching relationship with Him.

The ability to ask is a gift God has given us. So what do you need to ask Him for today?

PC: Teresa Cantrell. Used with permission.