About 3 months ago I started noticing that I had this attitude of “But I deserve this,” and I think God showed it to me so that I could work on it and change it. I hadn’t been aware of it before then and I really, honestly had been struggling with disappointment because I wasn’t getting the things I wanted from God, although I was praying for them. When I noticed this attitude in myself I suddenly realised that I had things backwards and it was me, not God, who needed to change some things.
Perhaps you have been feeling the same? Perhaps you feel like you pray to God but he doesn’t answer and it makes you mad?
Human nature likes to paint God as a vending machine
It is our human nature to WANT. Always. To want a lot. And if we believe in God we automatically come to Him with an attitude of “God, I am a human and this is what I want from you.” The problem here isn’t that God won’t help us with our human wants and needs, but rather that we come to Him with everything the wrong way around. And then we end up angry at Him.
Not all of our prayer requests come from a good place
A lot of our prayer requests are focused on things which make our earthly body and mind happy rather than our spiritual nature.
For example:
“God, I really want a spouse so I can feel loved”
“God, I do not have the same lifestyle as my friends, where are my blessings?”
“God, I really want you to deal with this person at my work because they make me angry all the time”
We see our situation through the eyes of the earth but God sees it through spiritual eyes. He looks for character and people who trust Him regardless of whether they get what they want. Try to see the situations in your life through spiritual rather than earthly eyes.
Living right before God is important
We can’t sin and do silly things to displease God and then ask where our blessings are.
If we ask God, “Why?” it should come from a place of rational enquiry rather than a place of anger or resentment or because our expectations and wish list were not met. A lot of the time we make dumb decisions and we do not follow God’s ways of doing things. Then, when we mess up, we complain because God hasn’t answered our prayers.
Again, we do not need to be perfect, but it is clearly written in the Bible that our prayers are more powerful when we live righteously and that with obedience there is a blessing.
We know how to ask but we do not know how to trust or be patient when we do not receive
It’s weird but sometimes we end up not only lacking faith that we will receive answers to prayer, but also upset at God because He hasn’t answered them.
If God doesn’t answer our prayer immediately instead of being upset we should accept that He has our best interests at heart and that He has reason we can not see or understand at the moment. Following God is about trusting Him no matter what we see or feel in this world. It’s hard but it’s worth it.
If we feel uncared for, unloved and unheard then we feel like God isn’t real or worth following.
The enemy would love us to feel uncared for and unloved by God because then he can create a wedge in our hearts and separate us from God. He can make us live in that place where we second guess God and where we question whether or not He is real. Don’t listen to any voices which say God doesn’t love you. Or that you are not infinitely cared for.
Gratitude and humble appreciation keep us from becoming self entitled
Rather than expecting a whole bunch of things from God our attitude should be to be grateful for what Jesus has done already. The joy from knowing God and his work in our lives should inspire us to remain calm when we do not get what we want.