Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive it, so that your joy may be complete. (John 16:24)
I needed a sermon illustration for how God answers prayer. At the same time our phone required service. I reported the trouble, then asked the Lord to cause the usually sluggish repair service to handle the matter in a timely way. This would be the perfect example for my sermon on trusting God. I wasn’t going to take matters into my own hands and pester the phone company.
Two days went by and I was tempted to make a follow-up call. Soon four days lapsed, then five. I was squirming to know if my service order had been deleted by accident, yet I wanted to hold out so the Lord could provide a living illustration.
“Okay God, I can give you until three o’clock tomorrow, then my sermon has to go forward.”
The deadline came and went, and the phone wasn’t fixed. I was out of an illustration, a telephone, and confidence in prayer.
I asked God why my experiment failed and he reminded me I often mislabel my requests as kingdom necessities. It’s silly to think I can manipulate God by declaring that my agenda is on his behalf. The relationship works the other way around. To ask in Jesus’s name is to pray in harmony with his desire. It’s not the magic utterance tacked on the end that will force the genie to perform.
When we were children my siblings and I bought our father an Easter present—a live, fluffy chick. It was a thinly veiled ploy to obtain something he’d probably not allow. As children, we lacked the foresight that a chick would grow into a rooster who crowed in the city at five in the morning. Dad named the bird No No and sent it away after the first screeching attempts at cock-a-doodle-do.
Rather than manipulating our father, we might have simply asked, “Is there a pet that would be good for us?” What loving parent could refuse such a request? That’s the kind of humble dependance I need in my prayers so my joy will be complete.
Prayer: Patient Father, show me what you want me to ask.