QUESTION: Why do we need to ask God for something if God is a
giving God?
STEPHEN'S
ANSWER: Surely God our heavenly father loves us and cares
for us. He gave us air, sunshine, rain,... ,without which we can
not live, although we did not ask for them. But in many other
areas, especially in our personal lives, God wants us to ask Him.
As a Christian saying says: "God loves us just the way we
are." He won't just push anything to us and force us to accept
it, but He respects our own will. On the other hand, asking God
for something is a good approach God prepared for us to better
know His will. Through the results of our prayer, answered or
rejected, we can gradually understand what God's will is and how
we should pray. James 4:3 tells us that: "You do not have
because you do not ask (of God)." So when we have difficulties
or problems, feel free to ask Him for help. And we have the assurance
of answered prayer in John 16:24 where Jesus promissed us: "Ask
and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full."
However, for many times
we asked, but God did not give us. Why? The Bible tells us the
reasons are three. Firstly, sins. Psalm 66:18 says: "If I
had cherished sins in my heart, the Lord would not have listened."
So if we have unconfessed sins in our hearts, God will not listen
to our prayer. Secondly, wrong motives. James 4:3 says: "You
ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so
that you may spend it on your pleasures." Do we ask for something
that is just for ourselves' pleasure, not for God's pleasure?
Do we really trust God or just test Him? Thirdly, our limitation.
Probably the time has not yet come, or the thing we ask for is
not really good for us. Isaiah 55:9 says: "for as the heavens
are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts." We have to wait and
trust God that He will give us what is the best.
1 John 5:14-15 assures us
in that: "This is the confidence which we have before Him,
that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And
if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we
have the requests which we have asked from Him."
Scripture quotations taken from the
New American Standard Bible.
Further questions or comments on this
answer may be sent to Stephen at here.
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