My daughter Jessica is a mooch. She’s a happy, cheerful little mooch. In fact, she admits to being one. Sometimes, she will say, “Mommy? Guess what I’m going to do after I finish my lunch.”
“What?” I ask, as if I don’t know.
“I’m going to mooch your lunch,” she’ll say with a mischievous grin.
Other times, there’s no warning at all. As I sit eating a snack, I’ll sense a presence next to me, and I’ll look up to see Jessica standing there with her mouth open, her index finger pointing to her tongue, a grin crinkling her eyes. “Aaaaahhhhh,” she’ll say cheerfully when I notice her.
Jessica comes to me when she knows I have what she wants. She comes confidently, expecting to receive what she asks for. She comes to her mother the way we should come to our Father: eagerly, cheerfully, and expectantly.
I’ll confess that I don’t always approach God that way. I sometimes ask Him for things, knowing He can provide them, but not really expecting Him to. I don’t come confidently; I come out of a sense of obligation. I know I’m supposed to make my requests known to God, so I do. Not that I think it’ll do any good, I think to myself.
Maybe you too sometimes have difficulty believing God will grant what you desire. True, there are times when God says no to our requests. He knows far better than we do what would be a good thing for us, and He sometimes says no when we think He should say yes. But that doesn’t mean we should approach Him merely out of a sense of duty, not out of a sense of expectancy. You see, each time we make a request of God, He grants us what’s best for us. It may not be what we asked for, but if not, it’s going to be something better.
This can be a tough pill to swallow. Some requests seem so obviously good that we can’t imagine their ever being denied. But God often denies the seemingly good in order to give us what is certainly best.
That’s because He desires to give good gifts to His children. He rejoices in giving us what is best for us. He looks forward to our requests, because He knows He will have the chance to give us a gift. Yet when He goes for the “best” instead of the “good”, we get mad or hurt. We think He’s done nothing, when in reality, He’s done even better than what we asked for.
I’m still learning this truth myself. Even now, I can think of situations where I might make a certain request, be denied, then wonder how God’s actual answer could be better than what I asked for. But either I believe God or I don’t. Either He knows what He’s doing, or He doesn’t. Either He’s God in times of suffering just as much as He is in times of joy, or He isn’t.
I choose to believe that He is. I hope you will choose the same. Then we can both look forward to bringing our requests to God, knowing that either way—whether our request is denied or fulfilled—we will receive something good.
Psalm 107:9—For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.