Are you still nagging God! Are you asking God every day to show your kids how to be good, your husband to get saved, and for all of your bills to be met? If so, then I’d say you’re practiing the art of praying in unbelief. Jesus is our model. Jesus didn’t say please heal Lazarus. No, Jesus said THANK YOU for healing Lazarus. Now COME FORTH!
I know! Your retort is, well, Jesus was God.
The most dead prayer meetings are those where people sit around a circle and simple ask of God one thing after another. I want this, we need that, give us more, we want, we need, we, we, we! Maybe we need to be reminded that prayer comes forth from God IN our hearts- not just FROM our hearts.
Romans 8 tells us that the Spirit knows how to pray for us, and prays acording to the will of God.
The most effective prayer is that which finds the heart of God, which knows what’s best for us, more so than we do for ourselves. The best prayers are those who seek God and what it is that He wants. And very often we discover that His desires are ours. But, if we come at prayer with our desires as the opening card played, we really showing a motivation that seeks not Him, but SELF
Further to ask for something, to beg over and over, day and night for something, is simply to AFFIRM that you LACK. A prayer FOR something is an admission that you don’t have it. And to pray constantly for it (whatever it is), is basically unbelief. On the other hand to THANK God is to affirm you have it because you heard God say He wanted you to have it and that means it’s yours. Of course that doesn’t mean that God is a genie in a bottle and once you ask, it instantly appears in a nano second.
Just like nature, in the natural, some things take longer to birth than others.
But BELIVE and AFFIRM, don’t wallow in lack and unbelief.
I do agree when we know God’s will we are to pray, believing that we have received. Jesus did, however, also affirm there are times when we do need to ask for something (Matthew 7:7). The verb tense is repetitive–to keep asking. The word for this is SC 154 and it means to make a request. This word is used in James 1:5 where it means to ask God for wisdom, without doubting that God will give it. The same word is used powerfully in James 4:2–you do not have because you do not ask. Obviously, there are times when we know the will of God and need to affirm it. Other times, we need to humble ourselves as God’s children and ask our Father for information we need or things we want Him to give us.
The most successful change (visible) in my life since I started this journey with God, our Source, has been exactly this that you speak of here. Thanking God for [WHATEVER] and believing that it is yours. Like you said, it may not appear immediately, however, in belief, it is yours! He knows our needs. We don’t need to remind Him of what we “lack”. Thanks for this post.