1 John 5:14-15 “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: 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 what we asked of him.”

I think we have to stop asking God for things out of formality. God is not half-listening to our prayers, so we shouldn’t be half-praying them. We shouldn’t pray to God simply because that’s what Christians do. Stop letting doubt and fear of disappointment guide your prayers. If you pray to God and request something that you believe aligns with His will, then believe that God is going to do it. Why is that so hard?

God already knows all about you. He knows just how human you are. He knows your personality, your thoughts, your beliefs, your fears. Yet despite knowing every integral detail about who you are, He isn’t ashamed (Hebrews 11:16) and He has called you. Let’s then be honest with God. Let’s present our requests to God and wholeheartedly believe He will fulfill them. And if our little human hearts are wrong, so what? God understands. I am what I am. You are what you are. At times our will may not be His will. And in those moments, we have a chance to learn and grow. We can come to a clearer understanding of what God wants.

So let’s pray without inhibitions. And hopefully that will lead to praising without inhibitions. I am a human with a human mind, a human body, and a human heart. I will fall and make mistakes. I will be overly ambitious and even sometimes selfish. I will look out at the world and decide I must have something and often pray to God for it. And when He denies me what I want for the sake of what I need, I should strain away from feeling disappointed. I should always remember that He always has a better plan. If anything, God’s firm “No” should bring about waves of excitement for what He has planned instead.

Therefore, from today forward, I will try my best to pray openly as God would expect his human daughter to do. And I encourage you to do the same. Because every request we make to Him will bring one of two responses from God:

1. He grants the request, at which point we should be happy and thankful (even if He grants it with the sole purpose of teaching a lesson), or
2. He denies the request, at which point  we should be filled with excitement and anticipation for what He has planned instead. And in the process we will learn more about the Father and His will for our lives.

K.J. 11/2015