Last night I reached a breaking point in my heart. We do this occasionally—only so long can we carry a burden of pain and sorrow before it spills out everywhere, one direction or another. Mine spilled out into prayer, and it took the form of unusually direct prayer: I asked for what I wanted, without apology. Generally speaking, when I do not know a desire is God's will, I try to add as many conditionals as possible to my prayers. "If it's your will... I might be wrong, so if this is good... This is my perspective, but if it's not yours..."
But last night I simply asked for what seemed good to me. No conditionals. Not that I was demanding; but it seemed right to lay out what seemed good to me as clearly as possible.
Now, here was the striking thing: I realized that I was asking with fear, not with faith. My deepest emotion, if you pulled it up and stated it as a proposition, was: "I want this very deeply, therefore God will take it away (for my good)." In fact, this belief has been operating quietly in my heart for as long as I can remember. I think a good many of the conditionals in my prayers have come from this place of fear—ask for what you want, but don't let God know just how badly you want something, because then he will surely deny it. After all, it has become an IDOL—and what better for you than to take away your idols?
There is a sort of logic here. We need to love God most of all; check. Things we want deeply can often become idols; check. We have a hard time letting go of idols; check. God loves us and wants us to love him; check. ERGO, God will seize and destroy all the things we want most deeply so that we can love him alone. QED.
But there is a hidden premise in this argument, and a hidden belief in many of our hearts: God prefers to teach us to love him by withholding things from us.
Really? Is this Biblical? Or is it more of the same lie that we heard so long ago in the Garden: "Did God really say you can't eat of any tree in the Garden?"
