Some thoughts about prayer from 2017.

I don’t know if you have ever had this experience or not, but sometimes there are things I pray about and they seem to have no answer.  No matter how many times I pray about the problem it does not go away.  Last night as I began again to pray about this matter I started to beg God to listen to me and do something.  Yet in this middle of this, I realized that begging is not right.  I am not a beggar before God; I am a son.

What is the difference between a beggar and a son?  A beggar asks for something, hoping for someone to take pity on him or her.  The beggar has no right to the thing asked for, but only hopes for some kind of trifle from strangers.  A beggar cannot expect much.  As the old saying goes, “beggars can’t be choosers”.  Sometimes I know that I have approached prayer like a beggar, believing that somehow I have to persuade God to listen to me and perhaps if I cry enough he might give me something small.  Perhaps he will take pity on me and drop me a few crumbs.  But this is not how the Bible tells us to pray.  I am not a beggar; I am a son.

Jesus said, “Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever” (John 8:35).  A son is a permanent part of a family and thereby has permanent relationship with the Father.  Beggars have no such relationship.  But sons know that they are sons of the Father.  The Father is good and gives good gifts to those who ask him (Matt 7:11).  Since I am a son and not a beggar, I can come with complete boldness and confidence to my Father in heaven and ask him for what I want.  I do not do this with grovelling as if he has no reason to pay attention to me.  Begging God for an answer expresses a lack of faith in his goodness.  It says that I don’t believe that I have become a son of God through Christ (Eph 1:5).

So in the middle of begging God for an answer I stopped begging and began to pray like the son that I am.  I thanked God for his goodness and that he is sovereign over my life.  I have no idea when he will manifest an answer to that particular prayer.  But I know that I don’t have to beg.  Father God has heard me.  He knows me and loves me.  As a son of God I can therefore trust him and be confident of his answer, even when I cannot understand why it has not yet occurred.