My husband and I often discuss prayer. At times, our conversations remind me of a scene in the classic sitcom King of Queens, the Holy Mackerel episode, starring Doug (Kevin James) and Carrie (Leah Remini), where the couple discovers and explores prayer, discussing what is appropriate to ask God and what isn’t.
Doug believes prayer is reserved solely for world concerns, and Carrie feels she can ask God for anything, including shoes. Their heated discussion and disagreement on what is appropriate to ask God and what isn’t leads to a “prayer-off,” where Doug tells Carrie he’s praying prayers to cancel out her prayers. In his attempt to stop her from asking God for things he deems inappropriate, he forbids her to pray at all.
Although my husband and I wouldn’t ever attempt to forbid each other to pray, we’ve had intense moments in our discussions about prayer.
In Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus urges us to “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
But, often, others discourage people from asking God, accusing them of treating Him like a genie or being greedy, selfish, and more, but He calls us to ask. Jesus tells us in John 14:14, “You may ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it.”
God knows human hearts better than we do, so when He tells us to ask anything, He knows how we’ll take His words and literally run with them, and how most of us won’t always ask perfectly.
Many of us have experienced failed attempts in our prayers. James 4:3 describes, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
Unanswered prayers cause many people to give up asking God, believing He doesn’t want us to ask, but even if we’ve asked with wrong motives in the past, He doesn’t want us to stop asking.
James 4:2 describes what happens when we hesitate and turn away from asking God first: “You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.”
Growing up as a daddy’s girl, I was unafraid to ask my earthly father for anything, confident in his love for me and that he wanted to meet my needs. It seemed to me that my dad found pleasure in my boldness to ask.
Often, my mom and brother would send me in to ask for things they wanted, not because my dad wouldn’t give them the things they asked for if they asked themselves, but because they lacked the confidence to ask.
Because of the kind of relationship I experienced with my dad, it shaped my relationship and approach in asking God, believing He, too, like my dad, loves me, wants to meet my needs, and appreciates it when I approach Him with boldness.
Hebrews 4:16 encourages, “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
On the other hand, for some, like my husband, who grew up in a large family, wanting or needing something meant asking his father, which usually led to a direction to find it on his own or make do. He was on his own and had to look around to scrounge up, convert, or fix an item to meet his needs.
These types of experiences with an earthly father condition individuals to ask less and less, believing they have to be self-reliant, which unknowingly influences them to hold back from asking God, too. But James 4:2 reminds us that some of the reasons we are lacking is because we have given up asking.
Most of us have been taught in life that when it comes to asking people for things, there are limits. Usually, we can only ask for so much before we can’t ask for anymore because we’ve reached our limit. In learning about this, it’s easy for us to think the same of God.
But the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4:6 encourages us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”
God is not like men and women. He is limitless in how many times and how much we can ask of Him. Psalm 119:96 describes, “To all perfection I see a limit, but Your commands are boundless.”
It’s easy to forget that God wants to fulfill the desires of our hearts, like Psalm 37:4 explains, “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”
Meeting our heart’s desires means more to Him than to us. To see this, just look around and consider the Earth and all it holds for us. When we do, we see that God didn’t hold back when giving us the Earth and creation to enjoy.
He went beyond and above all that we could imagine, creating such a wide, beautiful array and variety of plants, trees, animals, flowers, and more, surrounding us with more than we would ever have thought to ask Him to provide for us. As well, He went even further by giving it the ability to multiply and keep providing for us through the centuries.
In asking, we want to remember that God is our Father who gives good gifts, the only source in heaven and earth for good gifts. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17).
Like Matthew 7:9-12 reminds us, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”
In Luke 18:1, Jesus told a parable to encourage His disciples to always pray and not give up.
As a giver, God does not hold back when it comes to giving us what we need.
God is not like man; He doesn’t set limits or have a maximum amount for what He will give us. When it comes to His generosity to us, Psalm 84:11 describes, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”
John 3:16 describes the extent of His generosity to the point of being sacrificial: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
In 2 Corinthians 9:15, Paul gives thanks to God for His gift of Salvation to us: “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!”
Salvation had to be God’s idea because we would have thought it was asking too much of God, hindered by our understanding and experience with humanity’s limits, but God is a giver unrestrained by our earthly experiences.
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Lynette Kittle is married with four daughters. She enjoys writing about faith, marriage, parenting, relationships, and life. Her writing has been published by Focus on the Family, Decision, Today’s Christian Woman, kirkcameron.com, Ungrind.org, StartMarriageRight.com, and more. She has a M.A. in Communication from Regent University and serves as associate producer for Soul Check TV.