Our last letter in our A.C.T.S. acronym is S, for Supplication. This is the act of asking for something. This is the part of praying we tend to put first. It seems when we talk about praying, our first response is, “what are we going to ask God to do?” If you will put this one last, you will find that your request isn’t as urgent as you thought. God wants us to talk to him. He wants us to seek, to ask, to petition Him, for our needs and desires.
Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:”
Matthew 7:11 “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”
Matthew 21:22 “ And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”
Now, don’t take these verses to mean that no matter what you ask God to do He will answer the way you want him to. You must always take the full counsel of scripture. He gives us conditions to answered prayer in other places.
I John 5:14 “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”
The condition is that it must be according to God’s will. He is not Santa, waiting for our list of wants and desires, so he can rain down his gifts upon us. Sometimes we ask for things that are not best for us in the big picture of life. God sees all, and we must remember that he is looking out for our good. No one ever loved us as he does. When you love someone, you want what is best for them, even when they don’t agree.
When our children were growing up, there were many times they wanted things that we did not allow. In our wisdom, we saw the “what if’s” in life, and when the possibility of pitfalls seemed greater than the gain, we avoided the situation. No matter how hard our boys tried to convince us otherwise.
It is the same way with God. He will not answer a selfish prayer, because selfishness is a sin. He will not answer a prayer that is against His will. He is holy and cannot violate that attribute. Let me rephrase those statements. He will not answer them with a “Yes.” God always answers his children who are in right standing with him, but sometimes the answer is No, Wait, or Yes.
God wants us to ask. To talk with him all the time. He tells us in I Thessalonians 5:17, to “Pray without ceasing.” He wants us to always have a mindset where he is first. He wants to bestow gifts upon us.
Matthew 7:11 “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”
Not only does he want to give us good gifts, but he also wants to do more than we ever expect, ask, or think! He wants to answer according to His power! Think about that verse. It will blow your mind. His power cannot be measured!
Ephesians 3:20 “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, “
When we take the time to adore him, to thank him, and to confess our sin, we understand that he will do what is best for us. Romans 8:28 confirms, that he is working for our good.
We soon come to the point that our prayer life is not just about asking for things, it becomes so much more about knowing Him. We do as the verse says, we seek HIM first! When we are truly in His presence, most of our desires pale in comparison to what we are gaining sitting at His feet. The joy and love in our hearts cannot be surpassed by any request he grants. This is how we can beg God, pray until we are exhausted, and yet still say, “thy will be done.”
