What Do I Expect when I Ask God for Something?

Thanks, Lynn Hansen, for pushing some on this. It’s not that we don’t ask God for things when we pray, nor that God does not respond, but I would contend that the more we grow in praying, even this process changes us profoundly.

The Lord’s Prayer focuses on God’s will with asking for us to have the means to live it. Hard to believe it’s been that long, but 50 years ago I gave up prayer lists (with and without an “answers” column) and began praying through the Psalms monthly. More recently, I’ve added the prayers from the New Testament Epistles as stimulus to my praying. These have continually shaped my prayers both approach and content through these years, often in directions I never would have anticipated.

I resonate well with Romans 8:26-27. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” In this I have found roots for both my contemplative prayer practices and praying in tongues, especially when under distress.

The instruction in 1 Thessalonians 5.17 to “pray without ceasing,” has taken on deeper significance as I have been enriched by Eastern Orthodox spirituality and “The Jesus Prayer” (Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”) I know rationalistic westerners and literalistic Protestants have trouble with this sort of mystical repetition in prayer (in my practice, my concern is not with the repetition per se but when it is vain or empty). I have found that the 19^th century Russian folk classic The Way of a Pilgrim and the Benedictine hours of prayer have helped integrate prayer into the everyday rhythms of my life.

Yes, there are specific instructions in the Epistles about making requests of God in our prayers, but they seem to come with some cautions about making them with thanksgiving and not for our personal preferences or desires. Philippians 4.6 “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” James 4.3 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”

All of this was prompted by a Facebook thread in response to this piece about Soren Kierkegaard. https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/02/28/startling-prayer-life-soren-kierkegaard?fbclid=IwAR35hJh2YwBIv_zXY0IiyTrpnnvBcj6_CSjPCakD0FKDyQC4KgbsbvFzabs