Foreword on requesting from God

Before we proceed to the meat and potatoes on how God answers our prayers in the context of desire, I must first respond to the erroneous belief that some of us have, which is that God is, somehow, detesting of our requests for his fulfillment of our desires, regardless of how pious or well-intended the desire may be.

We are told by preachers and clergy alike to be humble and selfless in our prayers. God is not a genie that endlessly grants you wishes, and therefore you shouldn’t treat him as a machine that dispenses gifts. It is often said that we must first and foremost pray for others, evidenced in the scripture in passages like 1 Timothy 2:1↗ and Philippians 2:3-4↗, who demand that we pray for all men and not just for ourselves. This kind of selfless prayer is scripturally rewarded too; see, for example, Job 42:10↗, which says:

And the LORD restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.

It seems evident that God has a selfness nature, and asks of us to be selfless as well. However, God is very explicit on the specific matter that we should depend on him and ask him for any and every thing. Matthew 7:7-8↗ says the following:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

With this gospel, it is made clear in the scriptures that God commands us to ask him. This is further strengthened by another commandment in James 4:2↗, which states:

You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask.

The latter portion of James 4:2 is the negative form of the commandment provided in Matthew 7:7-8, both making the same point, which is that you must ask God, and what you are missing out on life perhaps isn’t, because you are not asking God for it.

Now, with that aside, let’s proceed.

The enlightened paths of God

God has put us on a path, itself divided in many more paths. Some of these paths, we have no choice but to go down, while some others we pursue entirely out of our own agency. Some of these paths are uncreated, meaning that we were always bound to walk down them, while some of these paths are created and are the result of our own choices. Ultimately, however, all paths branch from the core of the path of God, the enlightened trunk that we must all return to at the end of our lives, for if we get lost in some subpath of a subpath of a subpath somewhere in the maze of our choices and consequences, then we will never reunite with God.

Now, when we pray for a desire, it seems as if we’re requesting God for an improvement to our lives, but the reality is that we are asking for much more than this. Truthfully, we are requesting the alteration of our path; possibly the creation of a new one, possibly leading to the destruction of many more paths that we could have taken, possibly leading to the creation of further subpaths with many more decisions to make. Therefore, when we ask of God to fulfill a desire, he will answer depending on three possibilities:

1. The desire does not alter the person’s path. If you were to pray God to relieve you of your anxiety right now, it wouldn’t significantly change your path. In the end, only God knows.
2. The desire alters the person’s path, but leads back to the enlightened trunk. If you were to pray to God to grant you the capacity to travel, it would change your path, but possibly in a manner that leads back to the enlightened trunk. In the end, only God knows.
3. The desire alters the person’s path, and goes against God’s will. In this case, your desire will never be granted, and God will make it quite evident that it won’t be.

If God sees that your desire cannot be granted, then evidently, it will not be granted, and you will be told that it will never be granted. However, if God sees that your desire can be granted, then he will put you on the path to obtain that desire. You see, some Christians naively believe that if they are pious enough, God will immediately answer their prayers with an instant miracle; a seemingly perfect Christian asking for weight loss will wake up next morning weighing a hundred pounds less. Of course, most of us understands that this alleged charismatic nature of God does not really exist, that God would rather that we pray to him for the tools and the building blocks of our desires, in the shape of requesting strength and wisdom from God to achieve an end instead of requesting the end itself. Interestingly enough, this is also naive, albeit less than the charismatic Christian.

God may choose to equip you with strength and wisdom, but truthfully, as a Christian you are possibly already equipped with both of these virtues. Instead, God will put you on the path to your desire, which you will have to walk down. The reason, however, why we seem to fail at this (or fail to recognize the existence of such a path altogether) is because our sin and our imperfection keeps us from walking down the path. You see, the only way we can properly walk down any righteous path granted to us by God is if we let our Lord Jesus Christ illuminate the way through. Indeed, the principle that Jesus Christ is the only way for us to reach God applies not only globally, but also locally in all the paths we are taking in our life.

First, we pray to God for our desires. Then, if God sees that this desire may be good, he tests this desire by putting down a path that we must follow; if we let the Lord Jesus Christ illuminate our way and we follow Jesus Christ down the path — by following his example and manifesting Christ-like values in our comportment — then we will reach the end and attain what we wanted. This is explained beautifully in a very prompt way in Proverbs 16:9↗:

A man’s heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.

If we choose to follow anything else but the guiding light of Christ down these paths, then we will fall into darkness. We will go down a wrong direction and get lost. At any point, we can see the light of Christ from afar; the scriptures are full of evidence that no matter how far you go astray, the Lord will always find you and you can always find the Lord. As a straightforward example of this principle, Luke 15:31-32↗ says:

And he said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.”

Examples of the tests of God

These are based on real world testimony. The first example is testimony of Bojan Teodosijević; the second example is testimony of a friend that does not wish to be credited for his privacy.

The example of the cheese pie

We must pray to God to develop virtues, for only through him we can become virtuous (and those that claim otherwise are too full of themselves and too trusting in the world). One of these virtues is humility; the ability to be selfless and not too confident in life. One prayed for humility through the Prayer of Saint Ephrem↗, which goes like this:

O Lord and Master of my life, grant me not a spirit of sloth, despondency, love of power, and idle talk. But give to me, your servant, a spirit of sober-mindedness, humility, patience, and love. Yes, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother, since you are blessed to the ages of ages. Amen.

The person expected that God will send down an angel from the skies (or equivalent providing figure) with a cheese pie, offering it to them as a gift. Of course, in humility, they would turn off this offer of cheese pie, but then as its consumption is would have been insisted upon, they would indulge in the delicious food. This would result in a successful test of humility, but unfortunately for them, this is probably not how humility is tested by God.

In reality, God granted them a test of humility through a new coworker; one so annoying, one so impatient, one so demanding and one so intervening that the person requesting of humility had no choice but to declare inner defeat and seek the support of another just to cope and feel better. Sometimes, we feel that we are so patient and so perfectly mentally constructed that we can just bear an infinitely increasing load, but at some point we must dip in humility and realize that yes, sometimes, we need help. This wonderful person let go of their conviction that they could, all by themselves, mentally tolerate this situation, and had no choice but to breakdown and seek help from someone else just to feel better. This is the humility they have been searching for; a test was given by God and they have succeeded, they have now developed humility.

The example of the relationship

The young generations of these days (which I find myself in, for better or for worse) find the entire world of dating and relationship-building to be troublesome. The whole idea of courtly love seem to have disappeared, replaced with trivial, temporary things like hookups. This had led to frustration in many people; young men find great difficulty in finding a relationship, while young women find great difficulty in building one that lasts. Of course, the biggest problem that arches over everything else is that none are entrusting of God. How many people blame society and try to change society in the hope of getting better relationships, when instead they should ask our beautiful and wise Lord Jesus Christ to guide them forward? Proverbs 3:5-6↗ reads:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.

One has realized this and has put his faith in God to lead him to a relationship, and of course, God has put up a test, as he did through the example of the cheese pie above. When he prayed to the Lord for a relationship with a person, the Lord immediately put him on a path that immediately tested his Christ-like values, for shortly after, the person he loved entered a relationship with another person. Facing this quite woeful reality, there were three choices, three ways to go down this path that he could pursue:

1. Discard the relationship. That is to say, get out of the path instead of walking it down. Leave the person alone and wish them a great continuation. This makes you feel better and allows the other person to continue on the path they have chosen.
2. Manipulate the relationship. This is something I’m inserting here because I keep seeing it. So many people decide to toy with someone else’s relationship in order to bend it, break it, and others back towards themselves.
3. Continue the pursuit of friendship. As difficult as it may be, remain friends with the person, keep in touch with them and continue to talk to them. This may not necessarily make you feel better and may in fact lead to jealousy, but you do not intervene in their path.

The second one, of course, is tainted in negativity and is as far from Christ-like as one may desire, and therefore it is excluded. Then, two are left: the discarding of the relationship, and the pursuit of friendship. Both seem equally valid, for they do not hurt the one you love, but only one seem to hurt neither, which is the first. However, the first is also not Christ-like.

You see, if one chooses to discard friendship when they are unable to attain a relationship with the person they like, you immediately taint all past actions of good-will and friendliness with the same selfish negativity found in the second path listed. Incidentally, you have baptized your friendship with the person as transactional; no longer was it for the good of your friend, but rather for the obtention of your relationship, but now that the relationship was not obtained, the exchange can no longer occur. Indeed, by forgoing your friend because of unrequited love, you have fashioned the whole of your friendly interactions towards them as a selfish act with the expectation of a return, willing or not. The good-willed actions that you did served only, in the end, to generate something for you. Indeed, Philippians 2:3-4↗ warns against this:

Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

And not only does it become transactional, but it also becomes harmful. You built your good works on a foundation of selfishness and stood surprised when it collapsed, so it hurts you, but it also hurts the one you love because you are withdrawing something from them. The relationship they have entered with someone else is not an indication that they want to withdraw from you and discard you, but yet you do not see this and decide to withdraw from them. Therefore, you have not only hurt yourself, but you have hurt the other, who may have gained a partner, but in the process, lost a friend.

Thus, the only remaining option is the continue the pursuit of friendship. Indeed, this is the path illuminated by Christ; a love you dispense that survives all offense is closest to the love that Christ offered to the world. Does this mean that you won’t feel hurt at times, or even jealous, because you are seeing the one you love love another? Of course not, for we are human and being human necessarily entails these feelings. However, to feel like this is not exclusive with wishing, and praying for, the best for them. And does this mean that you cannot ever hope to be with them? Again, of course not, for it is this hope that initially led you to love them and be a good friend to them, and the pursuit of friendship in spite of their relationship is the ongoing effort that rejects the transactional aspect of your works.

Now, you cannot wish harm upon them. To hope to be with the one you love is not to hope that they will suffer through a devastating breakup, or that something bad will happen to their partner that puts them out of their relationship. Rather, it is to hope that their path will one day lead back to you, regardless of the means, that whatever happens will be useful and meaningful to the development of their characters; ultimately, it is to hope only good to this person, whether this good presents itself as a relationship with another, or with you. John 15:13↗ states:

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

And while we may believe that a relationship with us may be better than whatever relationship they have with them, and while we may believe that a relationship with them will lead to suffering or a worse outcome than a relationship with us, we must remind ourselves that this is devoid of humbleness, for the only one that can look into the future and determine this is God. At the end of it all, only try to stay good to the person regardless of how you feel, for Colossians 3:13↗ says:

[…] bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.

In light of all of this, the one facing this particular challenge elected to pursue friendship, and truly I tell you that this had led to wonderful things for him. It is the most Christ-like path, and yet, it is the most difficult one to take. Indeed, this is exactly like the example of the cheese pie: we expect an easy path forward, but we will presented with an uncertain, most difficult path through which we must follow the guiding light of Christ to illuminate us across. Yes, the application of Christ-like values may be difficult, for we are sinners and corrupted and we want to do things our own way, our human way, but we need to remind ourselves that nothing is easy in life, and to the very end we must pursue Jesus Christ and walk in his footsteps.

The necessity for this kind of enduring love that prevails above everything else is entirely scriptural. One of the most beautiful passages of the bible, 1 Corinthians 13↗, speaks of this in great detail and passion:

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Everything stated above is summarized perfectly in this passage. Love will make you suffer, but you must be kind, you must not envy, you must not be jealous, and you must not be self-centered. Pursue friendship no matter what; in the ones you want a relationship with, and in the ones you really think you don’t want to be friends with.

Conclusion

Let us read James 1:2-4↗:

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

How does God answer prayers? God is not magic, and he answers each prayer with something measured to it and the one offering it, but if you ask God for a desire, regardless of how selfish, chances are, he will reply with a test. Your faith will be tested, and you will have to show patience; you will be put down on a path, and to follow this path you will have to use the guiding light of Christ to illuminate the way across, as 1 Peter 2:21↗ says:

For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps[…]

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on us.