In his book Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? Philip Yancey shares the story of David Ford, who is a professor at Cambridge in England, asked a catholic priest the most common problem he encountered in 20 years of hearing confession. Without hesitation, the priest replied, “God.”

He said that very few people he meets in confession believe that God is a God of love, forgiveness, gentleness, and compassion. They see God as someone to cower from. 

After this, Ford, the professor said, “This is perhaps the hardest truth of any to grasp. Do we wake up every morning amazed that God loves us? Do we allow our day to be shaped by God’s desire to relate to us?

Here is a truth I have seen play out in my faith journey and others: what I believe about God determines what I ask for in prayer. It determines how honest I am, how open I am. 

If I believe God wants what is right for me,  I will ask him for everything and be okay when I don’t get what I want when I want it. 

If I believe that God isn’t good and is against me, I’m less likely to pray. 

If I don’t believe God is close, I will struggle to trust him. 

If I believe that God is like my earthly father, that shapes how I relate to him. 

But, if I believe that God is everything my earthly wasn’t, that God is the perfect Father, that shapes how I pray. 

We’ll make bargains with God: “God if you do this, I’ll never do that again.” Do we think God is a slot machine? 

Followers of Jesus do this all the time, “I’ll do anything for you, but don’t send me there or ask me to do that.” Do you know what we’re saying? We’re saying that God is a God who will call us to something that will make us miserable. Make no mistake, if you believe that God’s plan for your life will make you unhappy, that will shape your prayer life. 

Now, for us to fully engage in prayer, we need to believe that we are praying to a God who loves us and hears us. To a God who will give us his attention. A God who will move close to us. 

This is the invitation that God has for us as followers of Jesus. He is a good father who wants to hear from his kids. 

But how do kids pray? How do kids ask for anything?

I have five kids, so I’ve learned a thing or two about how kids ask for things. Maybe you have some experience with this. 

What does a child ask for? Everything and anything. If a child hears about Disneyland on a commercial or that someone else is going, they want to go tomorrow. My kids heard the word Christmas the other day and thought it was this week and didn’t know why I couldn’t make it Christmas like I can change the calendar. They keep asking!

How often does a child ask for something? Repeatedly. Have you seen a child throw a temper tantrum in the cereal aisle? No, they don’t want the healthy stuff in the bag on the bottom shelf without a cartoon character on the front with no toy in it! 

Kids have this 6th sense of knowing if they are wearing you down. If you’re a parent, have you ever laid in a child’s bed with them after you told them 15 times to go to bed and that you wouldn’t do it? Every parent has. We will do anything for them to go to sleep. Sometimes we give in just to shut them up. It’s survival. 

How do kids ask? Do they make sure it is grammatically correct? Do they make sure that it fits with your budget, time table, or something you want to do? They say whatever is on their minds. They don’t think if something is appropriate to say or ask for. For us, we think, “I could never pray about that. I could never ask God for that.” Why not? We often are afraid to pray in public because we aren’t sure it will sound right or spiritual enough. We also judge our prayers. That person seemed so spiritual when they prayed; I don’t think I can pray like that so I won’t pray. There isn’t some spiritual sounding list. We are simply talking to God. 

One author said, “Prayer is where your life and God meet.”

Do you know what else kids do when they ask their parents? Children are supremely confident in their parent’s love and power. They trust them. They believe their parents want what is good (although they often think their parents will always agree with the kids on what that good is). 

If you feel connected to your parents, if you know they love you and will protect you, it makes anything possible. 

Children come to their parent’s weary, tired, needy, wandering minds, and messy. That’s how we are to go to God, our father. 

Feeling secure in God’s love helps us to pray; it helps us to dream again. 

Jesus says that praying as a child; we get God’s attention. 

Have you ever done something and thought, why did I do that? 

I remember growing up; whenever I would do something wrong, and my grandfather found out about it, he would say, “That’s not what our family does.”

We all have one of those things. 

It might be a feeling that we wished we could stop; we struggle with worry and anxiety and wish we didn’t. It might be controlling things or feeling fearful more than we want. 

Maybe you find yourself flying off the handle and see the damage it does but don’t know why.

You tell people close to you, that you are working on it, make promises to stop an addiction, but it keeps coming back. 

So what do we do? We take a class, read a book, see a counselor, which are all good things. But the problem is, most of the time we look for ways to stop being angry, to stop feeling something, to stop buying things we can’t afford or how to stop looking at porn. 

We miss the crucial thing. 

What is that?

We miss what is in us.

Often when we look to make a change, we look outside of us. The places we go, the things we do, the people we are with. This is important, but only tells us part of the story.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, this is one of the struggles you often bump into: When we start following Jesus, some of those stops immediately. We hear people say, “I was addicted to ____ for years and started following Jesus, and it was gone.” For many of us, the things we struggled with before following Jesus, we still struggle with after we follow Jesus.  We wonder if something is wrong with us. We wonder if we’re following Jesus and beat ourselves up because a good Christian shouldn’t struggle with what we struggle with.

Think about it like this: when we do anything, we are looking for something. This can be positive or negative.

Every time we take a job or go on a vacation, we are looking for something and looking for something that will fill us.

When you look at porn. Why do you do that? What are you hoping that will fill in you?

When you work too much, what are you hoping that will do for you?

When you get angry and fly off the handle, what are you hoping to feel?

When you keep all your emotions in, what are you hoping you will get?

Every time we sin, we are hoping for something. 

Again, when we think of changing something, we look for ways to improve something, but the reality is that something came from somewhere. We have to face that.

This is painful for many of us. We have to look at our stories, what has come before us, and why we do things. 

To move forward in freedom, you have to ask, why do I respond in anger? Why do I pull away from people? Where does that come from in my story? Where have I seen this in my life or family or origin?