Words With God: A 5-Day Reading Plan From Addison BevereSample

Asking through Prayer

Why do we need to pray to the God who is all-powerful and all-knowing? If something of the good sort needs to get done, won’t the good Father tend to it, whether we ask Him to or not?

Before you throw a Christian cliché back at me, sit with these questions—make both the questions and answers personal.

Even Jesus told us to keep our prayers short and sweet, for the Father knows what we need before we ask. If the Father does indeed know what we need, then why does Scripture encourage us to ask for bread and mountains to move?

One of the paradoxes of our Father’s kingdom is that He invites us to relentlessly ask for what we need while cultivating contentment with what we have.

If the Lord’s Prayer is to be followed, we, based on Jesus’s own words, ask the Father for what He already knows we need. Sometimes I wonder if anyone else has struggled with this paradox. I’d rather it be one or the other: either give me what I specifically ask for in prayer or grant me the release to just pray, “Your will be done.”

But if we’re honest about Jesus’s example, we know that we don’t get the luxury of either/or. We must, once again, embrace the tension of non-dual thinking. As Jesus modeled in the garden, with blood leaking from His pores, we must be specific (“let this cup pass”), surrendered (“not My will but Yours be done”), and steadfast (He prayed these words three times).

In fact, any great prayer is one that is specific, surrendered, and steadfast.

Whether our prayer is a bold ask or simple surrender, it must be anything but vague. The Father can do a lot with an imperfect prayer, but a vague prayer doesn’t do much for anyone. A large part of bringing our requests to the Father is that it creates opportunity for us to better understand His nature.

In Luke 11, we’re told that God responds to our prayerful petitions because of the honor of His name, and He gives us even more than what we ask for. He is Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides, and the tension created in and through our petitions opens our eyes to the reality of who He is.

We ask in prayer to become aware.