I don’t mind serving my three kiddos at all. In fact, I enjoy meeting their needs and enjoy trying to make sure they have what they absolutely need, as well a few of their optional wants.
But sometimes, when their requests pile up faster than I can meet them, combined with their tendencies (at times) to forget to say "thank you," I can get frustrated. "I’m moving as fast as I can," I might think--or even holler out loud in my more frazzled moments. The latter outcome is especially likely when two or three of them start lobbing in their requests, blitzkrieg-style, simultaneously.
At this particular moment last week, I literally thought, "Why can’t my kids understand that I’ve heard them and that I’m working on their requests before hitting me with something else? And why can’t they just say "thank you" every now and then?"
You can probably guess where this is going, right?
In that moment, I had an epiphany of sorts. And not a particularly pleasant one, I might add. In a flash, I became convicted that I am often no different than my kids in my relationship with God. I offer up request after request, sometimes in an even more rapid-fire manner than my children. And do I always remember to say "thank you" to God? Do I always notice that when God answers prayers, in my self-centeredness I may have forgotten that I even asked?
Clearly the answer to these rhetorical questions is "no."
Before I get too critical or cranky about my kids’ frustrating demands at times, it’s helpful for me to remember that I’m cut from the same demanding, sometimes narcissistic cloth. But my heavenly Father still loves me and meets my needs, just as I love my children and strive to serve and meet their needs, too.
I'm reminded of Jesus' words in Matthew 7:9-10: “Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” And a bit earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, He instructed His listeners not to “heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do,” but to remember instead that “your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).
What's important for me to remember about these moments is a deeper realization that the Father hears us and that He knows our needs. Whether or not we can see how, He’s working on our behalf--even when answers to prayers seem to drag on over the years and we're tempted to wonder if He’s heard our hearts’ deepest cries. Scripture repeatedly calls us to trust that our Father knows us intimately and is even more aware of and concerned with our situation than we are.
I can't know for sure, but I suspect that God sometimes must get frustrated with our stubborn self-centeredness, too. Thankfully, He doesn't just growl "Arrgghh!" and yell at us to stop with all our requests already, as this decidedly imperfect human father might do from time to time. Instead, He's always at work and is always drawing us back--sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in subtle ways--to a right understanding and experience of His perfect fatherly heart and love toward us, a love captured with poetic beauty by the prophet Zephaniah: "The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing."
Written by Adam Holz
