Needs And Desires

Sometimes the Lord blesses us according to our needs. And sometimes the Lord blesses us according to our righteous desires. Sometimes we may have a righteous desire, but the Lord withholds the blessing that we are seeking because, according to His own wisdom, it is not what we need most right now. And sometimes there is something that we desperately need, but because we have not thought to ask, the Lord does not bless us with it until we have the righteous desire to ask Him for it. When we pray, I think some of us feel like there is this somewhat adversarial relationship with our Heavenly Father. Like, we’re trying to secure a loan from a particularly stingy bank and we have to come up with convincing arguments on why our request should be granted. God is not stingy. God does not need to be persuaded to work in our best interest, nor is it possible for God to be persuaded to do anything other than to act in our best interest. The purpose of prayer is to bring into harmony our needs and our righteous desires and God’s will for us. The more we seek to understand God’s will for us, the more He will reveal to us the reasons behind why He does or does not bless us, and how this fits in with what we need most. And the greater our understanding of our Heavenly Father’s will grows, the more that our righteous desires will align with our needs. Through this refining process, we will accept with patience the reality that our righteous desires do not match up with our present needs, and we will also learn to ask not amiss or try to override the Spirit’s promptings. If we are struggling in our prayers, we should try to determine if our needs and our desires and our will are lined up with God’s will for us.