Why Do We Have to Ask?

The story in the newspaper yesterday lingers in my mind. A little girl, not yet completely toilet trained, was bludgeoned to death by her stepfather because she wet the floor. No, not because she wet the floor. She died because of the stepfather’s hard as ironstone, sadistic heart.
I wondered upon reading this. Where was God during that scene? Jesus loves children. Why then did He not intervene in a sovereign way? I asked this question of the Holy Spirit, who has promised to lead us into all truth. A minute later, into my mind came the words of James, “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2).
James had learned the necessity of asking from Jesus Himself. One day, the band of twelve traveling with the Master met two blind men who cried, “Oh Lord, Son of David, have pity on us!”
Jesus silenced the men’s singsong chant with a blunt question, “What do you want Me to do for you?”
The directness of the question shocked the beggars out of their self-pitying, pious stance. “Lord, we want our eyes opened,” they pleaded.
At such moments, it was the look of love and compassion on their Master’s face that James and the others would remember afterwards. So Jesus touched the eyes of each beggar in turn, and immediately their eyes received sight.
This was Jesus’ way. “Tell Me exactly what you want,” he was always saying. “Talk to Me. Ask Me.”
Since this family headed by the abusing stepfather probably had no knowledge of God, how could they ask? Perhaps more to the point, how many of us pray specifically for God’s intervention into homes contaminated by child abuse?
A deeper question – what is the theology of this need for specific asking? Has God deliberately made Himself dependent on a partnership with us human beings before His creative work is done through answered prayer? Why would He limit Himself that way?
Part of the answer must be that He was determined to give us a free will – a full free will – so that He might have real sons and daughters, not puppets.
So God wants a relationship with us. A two-way relationship with asking and receiving. The reason many of us retreat into vague generalities when we pray is not because we think too highly of God, but because we think too little of Him. If we pray for something definite and our request is not granted the way we want, we fear to lose the little faith we had.
So instead, we fall back on the “safe” route of highly “spiritual” prayers – the kind that Jesus brushed aside as not true prayer at all, just self deceptive “talking to ourselves.”
In order to make sure that we are not retreating from the tension of faith, it is helpful to ask ourselves as we pray, “Do I really expect anything to happen?” This will prevent us from going window-shopping in prayer. At times, window-shopping can be enjoyable; but there it ends. It costs nothing. We are just looking, with no intention of buying anything; so we bring nothing home to show for the hours of browsing.
Too many of our prayers – private and public – are just browsing amongst possible petitions, not down to cases at all. We expect nothing from our prayers except, perhaps, a euphoric feeling.
One veteran prayer warrior, John R. Rich, has expressed it bluntly in Asking and Receiving: “Prayer is not a lovely sedan for a sight seeing trip around the city. Prayer is a truck that goes straight into the warehouse, backs up, loads and comes home with the goods…”
If we think we’ll never be able to summon faith to seek specific answers to prayer, we’re right.
However, those saints who have had the most experience here on earth tell us that God uses our most stumbling, faltering faith step as the open door to His doing for us more than we ask or think.
We first decide to ask His help with some small immediate need. Our asking is like stepping into a tiny anteroom. Taking a hesitant step forward, we discover that the anteroom leads to the King’s spacious reception hall. To our astonishment, the King Himself comes forward to meet us, offering a gift so momentous as to be worthy of only a King: a lifetime of friendship with the Lord of Glory.