Troublesome Topic: ASKING FOR FAVORS IS NOT TRUE PRAYER

If true prayer is joining God in His great purpose and asking Him to do what He has already said He wants to do, what is the other type of prayer – non-true-prayer? It is asking God for favors.

Most of us use prayer to ask God for we want. In so doing we have made prayer about us and what we want. Most of what we pray for has to do with us and our problems.

If we ask God to cause things to go smoothly because we don’t like problems, hassles, headaches or setbacks, we are asking for a something that may be contrary to His will. If we ask for an event or an endeavor to be “successful,” we may be asking for something outside His will. These are definitely not prayers, they are requests for favors, which may even be dangerous to our spiritual growth, and God cares more about our spiritual growth than about our comfort or “success.”

There are even some things that we think are quite legitimate that fall under the category of asking for a favor. I may ask God to keep my young adult children safe as they drive, but that is not true prayer, that is just asking God for a favor. I may ask God to take away a headache while I am at work, but that is also a request for a favor.

If I feel I should include something like, “if it is your will”, I am most likely asking for a favor. It is not wrong to ask for favors, and we should say, “if it is your will”, when we know we are asking for a favor. But we need to keep in mind that God sometimes says “Yes” and sometimes says “No” to favors.

I am trying to learn to pray with God’s glory as my priority and focal point. I imagine that most of us need to relearn this thing we call prayer. We need to pray with Him in mind, not ourselves. We need to be willing to pray dangerous prayers and leave the results up to God, rather than telling Him what we want the outcome to be. We need to focus more on His glory than on our desires.

SOMETIMES GOD DOES ANSWER OUR REQUESTS FOR FAVORS

Because He is a loving and kind Father (the right kind of father), he often chooses to grant our requests for favors. When God does grant our requests for favors, we need to be good about giving Him praise and glory. We should do this, not by telling people that asking for favors works, but by telling them we have a loving God who is often good to us beyond what we deserve. He does not enjoy seeing us suffer, although He will use suffering for our good when that is needed. When God answers our requests for favors it says more about His loving nature than it does about the effectiveness of making requests for favors.

The next lesson in this series is WHY DO SOME PRAYERS GO UNANSWERED?