For the following piece of writing, I have restricted myself to half an hour. It might hurt, but I will have to churn out many much-less-than-perfect sentences if I am to have any chance of getting my point across in that time period. The idea of this is twofold: (1) to increase the pace of my writing, and (2) to gallantly fight against a perfectionist streak that is busily ruining several aspects of my life. Here goes.

The Personhood of God

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past six months, it’s that God is no slot machine. Groundbreaking, right?

You cannot simply put a prayer ‘in’, and expect an answer ‘out’. If you could, then God could be replaced by an omnipotent super-ChatGPT. True, if you ask Elon Musk, that’s who God is anyway; but he’s wrong. I’d take James’s word for it:

“Every good thing… is from above, coming down from the Father” (James 1:17).

The God we serve is a Father. For this reason, God gave us earthly fathers — to teach us what He is like. So think back to when you were three years old, and you were imploring your earthly father for an ice cream. Or perhaps it was an oreo. Whatever it was that really turned your crank at age three, insert it into the story.

In your three-year-old mind, you could recall a time the previous week when, having asked the same question — “Dad, can I have an ice cream / oreo / other-item-that-rings-your-bell?” — you actually received the requested item. Your Dad did, in fact, buy you an ice cream / oreo / some-other-thing-that-tickled-your-fancy-at-the-time. Learning quickly, therefore, you decided to repeat the experiment next time you found yourself wandering around the shopping centre with your father.

“Dad, can I have an ice cream / oreo / to-be-honest-it-was-probably-a-happy-meal?” you asked, with just the right amount of unassuming, polite innocence.

Your Dad, also quickly learning, realised that there was a lesson for you here. So he refused. No, you can’t just have things because you ask for them. Why? Because, as a three-year-old, you do not always know what’s good for you.

In God’s eyes, we are like three-year-old children; and as much as it gives him joy to answer our prayers, and shower us with gifts, he also (probably, who knows?) has chuckle over the stupidity of some of our requests.

“No,” he says, “you can’t get that job. You’d hate every minute of it, and if I know anything about the boss (which I do, by the way, because I’m God), he’ll fire you in less than six months.”

In short, being a person, the Father does not answer prayer the way a Large Language Model would. And sometimes, like three-year-old children, we have trouble deciphering why.

The Point I Wanted to Make

That analogy got away from me a little, and since I have a timer running, I should get to my main point.

As one writer once put it, God doesn’t steer parked cars. If you are praying for God to get in the driver’s seat and literally live your life for you, then you are asking for something that is against the will of God. You are being passive. It is like asking for your earthly father to go to school and take your spelling test for you.

Rather, you should get in the driver’s seat yourself, and push down rather hard on the right-most pedal. Make sure that handbrake is off, and get ready for some speedy gear-changes. Then, once you are moving, ask God to steer. Tell him about that orphanage that your car is quickly bearing down upon, and ask him to guide the vehicle away from it. Inform him about the old lady crossing the road, and ask God… — well, no, I suppose in this analogy you have control of the brakes. Don’t run the old lady over.

But the point stands.

God answers active prayers, not passive ones.

“And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.” (Nehemiah 4:9)

If your prayers are simply a mass of requests to God that so-and-so would do such-and-such so that your life would be easier, you are being passive. You are sitting back and expecting the world to move around you in miraculous ways.

Instead, ask God for strength, wisdom and courage to do what needs to be done. Suppose you are trying to win a promotion (or something else perhaps). There are two prayer approaches: you could focus on outside forces — “God, please put it in the heart of my employer to promote me” — or you could focus on your own actions — “God, please give me the skill and determination to become so good at my job that my employer can no longer pass me over.”

Neither approach is wrong, inherently. But a responsible individual ought to focus much more on the latter than the former.

In addition, if you only pray prayers of the former kind, this will mean you won’t necessarily acknowledge God as the source of your own subsequent victories. You won’t see your courage as coming from the Lord, because you didn’t pray for courage. You won’t see your determination as God-derived, because God seemingly had nothing to do with it.

“The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord.” (Proverbs 21:31)

You are like the horse making itself ready for the battle. But you must pray for strength and victory, so that if you do win, you more readily acknowledge that “the victory belongs to the Lord.”