Answered prayer is central to how your heavenly Father wants you to experience his love.
How does God feel about our petitions?
My oldest sons were boys when the first Star Wars movies came out, and when birthdays and Christmas came, I remember their asking for the Star Wars figurines and spaceships that came out as toys. I took the boys to stores and looked at catalogs to see which characters and ships they wanted most. “Can I have this one, Dad?” I thought this stuff was cool, lots cooler than the toys available when I was a kid. I enjoyed buying it, and I really enjoyed giving it and seeing how much fun the boys had playing with it. Giving gifts to your kids can be a strong bonding experience and a great memory.
Asking and giving can be about love, about relationship. That’s the way prayer is with our Father in heaven. Jesus revealed that prayer is much more than a needy person coming to a powerful person for favors. God views prayer as a relationship between a good father and his children. Jesus said:
“Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9–11, ESV)
Bonding with God through answered prayers
We all want things, not just “toys” but important things we need or want. It could be a job or a needed pay increase, a healing or wisdom to solve a problem, a spouse or a child. Unfortunately the more we want them, the likelier it is our prayers to God will become merely utilitarian—how can we get God to give us what we ask? Our petitions can become more about the request than about our relationship with the Father who loves us. This is a problem because that’s not how the Father primarily views prayer. For him, prayer is about love and bonding, relationship and time together.
God has designed our relationship around prayer. It is central to how he relates to us. I’ve known people who had a religious background that taught we should never pray for ourselves, but only for others. They learned it was selfish to ask God for anything for yourself. Well, they certainly didn’t learn that from reading the Gospels. No one urges people to pray for themselves more than Jesus.
Why would he do this? Because the Father does not resent our requests or wish we would go away. Rather, the Father loves it when we come to him with our wants and needs. He enjoys our requests. He compares our prayers to incense (Rev. 5:8). He invites us to ask and keep asking until we receive. He enjoys seeing how happy we are when we receive his answers. He enjoys, really enjoys, really really enjoys hearing us say thank you. He enjoys seeing us enjoy what he gives.
Why? Because he is good, generous, and kind.
Prayer is about relationship and love, and that’s why God enjoys it, because he is love. He is a relational being, a giver, a let’s-be-together person.
Moreover, our Father loves our faith. He enjoys it when we have enough faith in him to ask for what we want. This kind of faith brings him glory. God delights in our petitions because he delights in our faith, and that is also one reason why our petitions might take a while to be answered.
Our way and God’s way
Our way: We may not want to take time for prayer. We may want to hurry the process and get the answer as quickly as possible. We may not think God wants us to make personal requests.
God’s way: Prayer is a central and foundation aspect of our love relationship with our heavenly Father. Hearing and answering prayer is one of our heavenly Father’s greatest pleasures. It’s the central activity he shares with us, just as loving human fathers have certain things they love doing with their kids, such as eating popcorn together or going for a bike ride together.
Life principle: If you are not practicing daily prayer that includes asking your Father in heaven for the things you desire most, with an attitude of childlike trust that he will give what is best when it is best, you are missing one of the most important ways of bonding with your Father and experiencing his love.
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)