Becoming One with God
Prayers of Requests (Supplication)
Supplication is perhaps the most common reason people pray: when we need something from God. Since he is God almighty and we have by now established that he is both able and willing to help us, how then can we go to him and ask for the things we want? Is there a right or wrong way to ask? Or is there a way that is more effective than another? Some may even argue if God is all-knowing, he already knows what you need, so we don’t need to ask.
Nonetheless, most of us feel compelled to ask through prayers. Consider this principle when you pray: Ask, don’t command. Most of us learned to pray by first telling God what we want, and then proceeding to tell God what he should do for us. We often treat God like a genie in a bottle who is to be summoned to do our bidding. Listen to this:
Dear God, please help me to pass my exam.
God, my aunt has cancer, please heal her.
Father in heaven, please help me to be patient with my coworker. He’s driving me crazy.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with telling God what we want or need from him. In fact, as a generous father, he loves it when we go to him and let him know what we need. Matthew 7:11. The problem, however, is that often we make requests with little faith or humility. We say these prayers without looking up to whom we pray: the one who decides whether and how he would grant our request. He is the gift giver, we are the receivers. Yet we babble on.
Prayer of request is more than telling God what we need. It is an opportunity to open our hearts to God, to invite him to be part of our desire journey. It can be incredibly connecting, intimate, and faith-building. Instead of telling God what to do ‘straight up’, we can express our desires, needs, and problems to God with a child-like heart. Consider these examples:
Example 1: Dear God, please help me to pass the exam
Try this instead:
Expressing our needs to God: Dear God, I am having a hard time understanding the course material and I am afraid that I won’t pass the exam. Will you open my mind to understand? I really would like to pass the exam so I can finish my study and pursue the career of my dream.
Example 2: Dear God, please help me to be patient with my coworker.
Try this instead:
Dear God, my coworker is very difficult for me and I lack the patience to deal with him. And it happened again yesterday at the team meeting – I wanted to scream at him so badly because he doesn’t do his job well and makes all kinds of excuses- and even tries to blame me for his mistakes! Please teach me how to be patient with him, to learn how his words trigger my anger. Yeah, I get so triggered when he says things without thoughtfulness. I don’t want to blow things up and make the situation worse. What can I do to hold back my anger?
Do you see the difference? The Expressing Desire prayer is like a conversation with someone you know well and trust wholeheartedly. There is intimacy in letting God know your fears and worries, there is vulnerability in telling God your desires and your weaknesses, and there is care in describing the challenges in detail.
I think of how Jesus stayed up all night to pray, or that he got up early to pray. What did he say to God that took all night? I bet he didn’t rush through a list of prayer requests. I can imagine how Jesus pours out his heart to God about his loneliness, the temptations he finds hard to resist, or his doubts about his mission. They talked, like father and son.
When I pray like this, I discover two benefits:
1. Often while I am still praying, the spirit reveals the answer for me. I may be in the middle of telling God about my worries about not passing an exam, or my frustration with dealing with certain individuals, an idea would come. It could be a tutorial video that I could watch, attending a Q&A session, or an insight about the difficult person’s personality or needs, or clarity on what I should say to that person. God gives me the wisdom to confront my situation. (James 1:5)
2. I feel I can release my worries or anxieties. There is a peace that comes from knowing that God is now fully informed. I trust that he will act on it. I just have to wait and listen. (Psalm 5:3)
Consulting professionals understand the concept of Requirements and Solutions very well. They are hired as experts to solve a client’s problem. The client may start with, ‘Please help us with a new marketing strategy (solution) so we can improve our revenue (requirement).’ The consultant would then interview the client and research the business, and would perhaps find out that the client’s need is not a new marketing strategy, but a new process to reduce production costs. By working together with the experts, the client is able to correctly diagnose the problem and develop a targeted solution to achieve the goals.
God is our expert. We can go to him and let him know what troubles us and what our desires are (problem statements and goals). He then partners with us to reveal the ‘real issues’ and to work out a solution. If the solution involves an outside party, God himself would either lead us to that person or resource or prompt them to want to help us.
