For years, much of my prayer life centered around asking God to change something.
Heal this.
Provide this.
Restore this relationship.
Make this successful.
Open this door.
And when those things didn’t happen, I often interpreted the unchanged circumstance as God not acting, not answering, or not coming through.
Eventually, I realized my disappointment wasn’t just with the circumstances. I was disappointed in my relationship with God.
Lately, I’ve been asking myself an uncomfortable question: Did God actually give me a reason to expect those outcomes?
I still believe I can ask God for healing, provision, reconciliation, or anything else I desire. But I’m beginning to recognize how easily my desires become expectations. And when those expectations aren’t met, I can begin measuring God’s faithfulness and goodness by something He never actually promised.
So my prayers have been changing.
I’m praying less for God to change my circumstances and more for His help participating in what is actually happening.
Help me understand what I’m feeling.
Help me communicate clearly.
Help me stay present when I become overwhelmed.
Help me know what needs my attention today.
Help me love this person well.
Help me faithfully do what is mine to do.
And something surprising has been happening. My relationship with God has become so much more precious to me.
In some ways, that might sound more hopeless or helpless. I have fewer expectations of God than I used to because I’m realizing many of those expectations were never promises He made. But I’m also discovering that expecting less circumstantial change doesn’t mean depending on God less.
It’s been the opposite.
As I’m being challenged to participate more instead of passively wanting God to fix everything, I’m becoming more dependent on Him. I’m praying less for Him to change what is happening around me and more for Him to simply be with me through it.
Interestingly, that seems much closer to the context surrounding some of Jesus’ strongest statements about prayer. In John 14–16, Jesus tells his disciples to ask, and they will receive. But the surrounding conversation is about abiding in him, bearing fruit, loving one another, continuing his work, and remaining faithful through difficulty.
Maybe “whatever you ask” was never intended to mean anything I could possibly want. (Including truly good things associated with Jesus’ Kingdom, like healing.) Maybe it was more of an invitation to depend on him for everything we need to participate in the life he is calling us to live.
So I’m learning to distinguish between what I have agency to participate in, what I desire, and what God has actually promised:
- If I have agency, I can participate with the Holy Spirit.
- If I have a promise, I can hope for its consummation, even if it’s only in the life to come.
- If I have neither, I can recognize and admit the desire, release my expectation, and move forward.
I’m not learning to expect less from God. I’m just learning to expect something different.
And surprisingly, as I’ve become less focused on what I expect God to do for me, my relationship with Him has become more precious to me.
With hope,
Nathan
