My prayers often focus on requests. Please God do this for me, provide that for me, get me out of this trouble. Sometimes they are not selfish prayers: my requests are for God to do this, and provide that for other people, and that they might escape their trouble.   

Now, of course, it’s not wrong to make requests of God. The Bible encourages us to ‘…not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.’ (Philippians 4:6 NIVUK). But I wonder if sometimes our requests to God are too small, too narrow, and too limited.

If, as Paul says in our header scripture, we haven’t seen, heard, or even begun to imagine what God has prepared for those who love him, then I know I need to change the way I pray and perhaps you do too. Rather than simply presenting our requests, which we see, and our hearts have imagined, we need to say to God that we don’t know what you have prepared for us and those I’m praying for, but we know it’s good and for the best, and so your will be done. 

If God’s will is beyond anything we could request, if his plans are more wonderful than anything we could conjure up, if God can only be loving and kind and generous and good, then why limit our prayers to our own myopic list?

Instead of praying for God to align with our requests, why not pray in a different way, and seek to join him in his plans? Then we will see that he ‘…is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…’ (Ephesians 3:20).

Local congregation:
Grace Communion West Hampstead
Sidings Community Centre
150 Brassey Road
West Hampstead
London
NW6 2BA

Meeting time:
Sunday 12.30 pm

Local congregational contact:
Gordon Brown
gordon.brown@gracecom.church

Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church