This might be a different perspective than what you typically might read on this subject.
Often, I think that my prayers are too selfish to pray. So then, I either pray with little faith, or not at all. There are 2 parts to this. 1. Do my prayers matter to God – are they powerful, and do they hold weight to God? 2. Do I think my own prayers matter enough to pray them?
We are taught from a young age and throughout our lives via friendships and relationships that our needs and wants do or do not matter, and whether not “taking up space” with our personhood is selfish or not.
Then this bleeds over into what we do – what we do not ask for or accept within relationships – and the boundaries we hold with others. See, our beliefs affect and drive all of our actions, and one of those actions includes prayer. Why would I pray, if I believed it didn’t matter?!
Over the past few years, God had corrected this false belief in my mind – that I am selfish for having and asking for my needs and wants in prayer with Him – and with others. I feel guilt and shame sometimes, for asking for the things that I want – as if I’m bad for just asking for something so frivolous. While I can honor that I feel this way, I also have to get back to the TRUTH – which is that God is a good Father who WANTS good things for us, and is generous and compassionate. After all, doesn’t Matthew 7:11 say:
“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!”
Pretty sure last time I checked, a gift wasn’t God fulfilling a need, though the bible also says God does that too in Philippians 4:19:
“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
So clearly, God DOES care about our needs and wants – and He WANTS to give them to us. We can believe His heart towards us; He does want to answer our prayers and He hears them! But, with the natural leaning I already have, I can get REALLY in my own head and believe that He doesn’t want to hear my prayers -because they are just so selfish that I feel guilty asking at all! Like when I really, really want something. Typically, I get twisted all over this verse in James 4:1-8:
“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions[a] are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
Basically, what I tend to hear when I read that is, “If you pray selfish prayers – I won’t answer you.” So then I just don’t pray. Wow – isn’t this the relational breakdown that gives the Devil a foothold in our lives?
The thing that totally invalidates this thought process that I shouldn’t ask, is that God said specifically, to pray for EVERYTHING. Look here at Philippians 4:6-7
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
Here is the thing – God said He won’t answer them if He deems it selfish – NOT that we shouldn’t make our requests known to Him. You have to ASK before you do or don’t receive! God didn’t say, “Do not be anxious, but only come to me if you really need something and you can’t figure it out yourself, or only if it’s a selfless prayer.” God knows that we have a warped and incorrect lens of what we think is selfish requests are. So why not just tell Him everything, and let Him decide? And even then, God is a good father who wants to give His children good things! So why not entrust my requests to the perfect God who can look at what is before Him without tinted glasses and can see my wants and needs with a compassionate heart?
With time, God has taught me that my requests do matter, that my needs do matter, and that my desires do matter. I am allowed to take up space as a person, and that is not selfish. However, this adjustment has been slow and long, and I’d be lying if I said that it was easy to just change overnight. I can still fall into a rut of, “was I being selfish” or even mean when I am simply asking for a common courtesy and respect, or when I hold a boundary.
I am so thankful to God for showing me that it is okay to have needs and wants – and that I am not a bad person because I have them. After all , even Jesus asked to be spared in the Garden of Gethsemane. Did it make him selfish that he didn’t WANT to go to the cross and be abandoned by God and absorb the shame of the world? No, it didn’t – but it also didn’t stop him for asking God if there was any other way out of this.
To all my readers, take ALL of your needs and wants as requests to God. Big or small. Selfish or not. Let HIM decide for us, what is good for us and what is not, and what He is willing to allow to happen, and what He will interrupt for the greatest good – even if it doesn’t look good to us. Then, let’s choose to TRUST HIM with the response.
More Than You Can Ask For Blog 