We plead our requests, a list of needs and wants that we have determined for our lives and even others. We wait in expectation for God to deliver exactly what we’ve asked for like a genie to make our wishes come true.
None of this taking a laundry list of our desires to make our lives pain-free, even comfortable aligns with scripture, and more specifically how we are taught to pray by Jesus Himself. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done is all about God and His amazing plans – not ours. It’s a surrender, it’s a submission that demands we lay down our desires to let Him have His way in our lives, and others lives, and inside our heart more specifically…on earth as it is in heaven.
Let us consider daily bread – just enough for today as we are not promised tomorrow. We are a people of surplus, of more than enough,of quite frankly – too much! Most of us spend a large percentage of our money on OUR comfort, OUR convenience, OUR entertainment, etc. Making sure WE are taken care of. We glory in our possessions and what we like to think is self-sufficiency. If we are honest – it’s greed and selfishness.
Every single day, our neighbors – who we are called to love, are going without some basic needs while we woller in our wealth – and we want more. We can be found endlessly chasing experiences, possessions, titles, money; and we don’t just chase—we pray…for more. Our God has given us the most priceless gift ever and we have the audacity to continue to plead for endless “things” that have zero bearing on “Thy Kingdom come”.
Maybe we need to shift our perspective from Him being a delivery man to the One Who delivers. Scripture is clear that He will make us new. He wants to deliver us from ourselves, from our comfort, from our worldly desires, from our limited perspective, from our false sense of security, from material abundance to life abundantly. To deliver us from submitting our endless list of wishes to a single sentence of surrender-let it be to me Lord, YOUR will be done; from our striving for our own glory to an insatiable desire of, to Thine be the glory!
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Marla Geiger 