by Joshua Packard
I want to share a crucial secret to authentic and fruitful prayer. When we are growing up hearing about prayer, the temptation is to think that prayer is all about figuring out how to get God to do what we want. That is backwards. The key to fruitful prayer is coming to know what God wants. The key to prayer is asking for what God wants. While it is important to ask for what we want, it is more important to keep in mind that God knows and wants what is best for us. When we pray for what God wants, we are guaranteed to have our prayers answered. So yes, we should pray for what we need and want, but what we really need to pray for is what God wants. We pray always for God’s will over our own wills, and we need to pray for our wills to come into greater alignment and eventually perfect conformity to God’s will. And if we don’t know what to pray for, we can pray to know and do God’s will. Sometimes the most fruitful prayer, especially when we don’t know what God wants, is to just simply ask God what He wants us to pray for. So please do pray for what you want and need. But also especially pray to know what God wants you to pray for. Ask Him what He wants you to want and need. Incorporate this idea into your prayer, instead of the mostly immature idea of prayer as simply trying to get God to give us what we want, as if God is just some merely cosmic vending machine. God is not a vending machine. He is a loving Father who knows all that we need, who knows what is absolutely best for us, and who will give us exactly what we need, when we need it, and who longs to have us ask Him to do what His love desires for all of us.
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