How much can / should you ask from God?

A reader asks:

"Pastor Paul came from New Jersey the past weekend for the refuge praise night. He said to pray and trust the Lord, to sort of expect things of Him.

How much can we expect from God? I know that He is all powerful and can do anything, but when we ask Him for things, is it our little faith in Him that limits His response? For example, I know it is possible for God to bring everyone on campus to the refuge praise night, but I would not ask for that nor expect that, mainly out of fear of it not happening."

I remember meeting Pastor Paul a couple years back and enjoying interacting with him. He says many valuable things, some of them also very thought provoking, and I can only guess that he said many such things at your Praise Night! :-)

When I read this one quesiton, I see a whole lot of other questions, like a load of tadpoles all under the surface of a pond! I'll try to answer the ones that jump out at me, but don't think I'll manage to hit all the issues. Maybe this is a good time to have a good long talk among all of you on prayer, so that the Holy Spirit would encourage all of you through your adventures with Him in prayer.

First, there is a group of people out there who teach that if you pray and you believe strongly enough that God will grant your prayer that God has to automatically give you whatever you request. This same group of people teach that if you don't get what you ask for, that is a sign that you "didn't have enough faith." The people who teach this are false teachers! They are blaspheming God and hurting God's people. They don't know the gospels, or if they do know the gospels, they are ignoring them. In the Garden of Gethsemene, Jesus Christ our Lord asked three times that the cup of suffering be taken from him, and three times God the Father refused. You don't get holier and more full of true faith than the Lord Jesus! Paul the Apostle asked three times that a "thorn in the flesh" be removed from Him; God in Christ responded "My grace is sufficient for you; no, I won't remove the thorn." I dearsay, Paul had more faith than I, more faith than any person I've ever met. Paul had so much faith, frankly, I'd be afraid of His prayers -- afraid of the influence they wielded in the heavenly realms. Still, God said "No." At the end of the book of Daniel, Daniel the Prophet has a bizarre vision and asks God to show him more. God says, "No, Daniel." Daniel had an incredible relationship with God. In the intimacy of that relationship, God still said, "No."

So, greatness of faith doesn't make things "easy" in prayer. In fact, the real heroines and heros of faith often get put in the thick of the most frightful spiritual battles. Read Hebrews 11. The chapter ends saying that there are some people who are so holy that "the world is not worthy of them", and that those people die because they are so faithful to God -- and yet not only do they not get what they asked for, they have to wait for what God promised to them! God calls on them to wait for the resurrection from the dead to receive what He promised to them. If your faith is great, watch out! -- You'll be called to serve the Lord with bigger, bolder, more dangerous prayers, pitted in the thick of battle with the very powers of darkness, and before powers who blaspheme and hate God you'll be slandered and made to look silly too. The promise to you is this: the victory God owns at the last day will be your victory also. Those who mocked Him, and therefore mocked you saying "Where is your God?", will not only bow before God, but they will have to admit, "Truly, God loves you!"

Now, I've answered the main question through the back door. The original, main question was How much should I ask for? The answer is: Get to know God's character, familiarize yourself with God's goals, then apply yourself and your prayers to those goals with gusto. I wouldn't be ashamed to make very concrete requests. As you wait on the Lord, planning and praying for an evangelistic outreach, if a friend of yours who doesn't know Christ is heavy on your heart, pray with everything you have that that person would come and be saved! If you see obstacles to your being able to have a successful outreach, and your ministry team has discerned that the outreach is in the Father's will, pray He would deal with the obstacles creatively and give your team wisdom.

Pray with faith! What is prayer with faith? Praying with faith is relating to God your heavenly Father with confidence that you are standing in heavenly places with Christ Jesus, your Lord and brother by adoption, at the right hand of the Father praying for you. Praying with faith is partnership in the Holy Spirit with Jesus our God. But what does that mean? When Jesus ascended (read the book of Acts, chapter 1), he was told, "Sit at my [God the Father's] right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool." (Psalm 110:1) So our Lord Jesus is waiting for God the Father's wise plan to reach completion, for the last enemies to be put down. If our praying is partnership with Jesus, then our praying should share in the conditions of His ascended rule, even as at the same time our prayers are also tainted and limited by our mortal, sinful condition. Sometimes, because we aren't perfect, we ask for imperfect things, and then God the Father simply says, "No." Other times, mysteriously, our prayers are the right prayers -- but in the thick of a spiritual battle with enemies who aren't yet put down in God's wise plan, and so the "Yes!" we get might seem for the moment to be a "No" or even pure silence as we wonder, "Why? How long?" Faith is spiritual stubbornness in the thick of war. When clear answers come in the midst of that battle, they taste all the sweeter.

Where does it all end? Paul says, "Be excellent at what is good. Be innocent of evil -- and the God of Peace will soon crush Satan underneath your feet." (Romans 16:19) So learn to be bold, "excellent" at the good of prayer. Be innocent of evil -- learn how to turn your prayers away from selfish, measly ends, and be more like the intercessory prayers of our ascended Lord Jesus. The process will sometimes be dissapointing, painful, and likely confusing. At the end, though, we'll all see that the God of Peace put every enemy under the feet of the Prince of Peace, and that we ruling and reigning with Christ our Lord and Brother by adoption, Satan himself has been put under our feet.

Now, of all the answers I've ever published, this one I think needs the most careful consideration and response. Pastor Mike?