What Do You Expect When You Pray?

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If the answers you expect when you pray could fill a vessel like water fills a pitcher or like wheat fills a sack, if you could physically handle a literal quantity, what size of container would you bring to collect them? I think I come to my prayers with a cereal bowl. On a good day.

It’s hard to expect much from God when you pray with big desires and an even bigger, “Thy will be done.” I’m not suggesting we omit that part. “Thy will be done” is the pattern Jesus established in the Lord’s Prayer and the example he set in Gethsemane. If your heart is truly God’s, those words have to cross your lips at some point, probably multiple points, in your journey through this life.

But they shouldn’t shroud your prayers like a glass jar over a candle. Which is what they always seem to do to mine. Deprive my hopes of oxygen and snuff out their light.

“Heavenly Father, I want marriage and family…”

The flame burns bright.

“…but if that’s not your will…”

The jar extinguishes it.

“…give me what portion you see fit.”

And I hold out my cereal bowl.

Even that seems to come back empty more often than not, so can you blame me for not bringing something bigger?

My faith is broken. I admit it.

But there’s still enough functioning to believe that despite how empty-handed it seems God leaves me sometimes, how deprived I feel not just of the portion I desire but of any portion, my prayers go less the way of Oliver Twist’s pathetic, “Please, sir?” and yield, or at least will yield, something more like this.

An overwhelming disparity for the good between my inadequate expectations and what God actually pours out.

Don’t Base Your Expectations on What You See

When the fruits come on in our garden, I grab a bowl and head out to harvest. Without fail and despite knowing better from previous experience, the bowl I choose is too small.

I think a small bowl will hold the peas. We didn’t plant many. But I come back with this.

The beans, I suppose, may fill a little mixing bowl. It’s not long before I head back to the house for another one. A bigger one because I think I’ve learned my lesson. But even that isn’t enough.

The tomato plants are heavy with green tomatoes. The week before, I found a couple ripe ones. I can see a few more splashes of red now. Maybe there’s enough to fill a medium-size bowl.

Of course, I’m soon tossing tomatoes on the grass because the bowl won’t hold more.

Why do I repeat this pattern summer after summer? Because I’m so accustomed to meager spiritual and emotional harvests that those are the only kind I expect anywhere?

Maybe. I can’t deny that unfulfilled hopes in one area tend toward bracing for disappointment in others. Whether gardening or praying, it seems less painful to come with an unexpectant container and be pleasantly surprised when it’s filled, or at least minimally let down when it’s not, than to bring a large bowl into which you can only gather your dashed hopes.

But that’s not the only reason I underestimate. What mostly decides the size of bowl I choose is what I see on the surface. At a glance, from the edge of the garden. Nothing to do with faith and everything to do with tangible evidence.

But what I see is never all that’s there. I forget how much hides under the foliage.

In our garden, there’s a lot of foliage.

Prayer is Like a Jungle Garden

My sister and I have adopted jungle gardening. (If that’s not a thing, we’ve made it a thing.) It’s simple. Pack as much as humanly possible into every square inch of space you have.

We don’t exactly do it on purpose, but again, the condition of your faith isn’t only reflected in how you pray. We plant a lot because, as other seeds in our lives aren’t growing, we’re never entirely confident these will. When they do, it seems such a miracle we can’t bring ourselves to waste it. So, when we expect maybe fifteen of twenty-four tomato seeds to sprout and get twenty-two, obviously we can’t not keep them.

Twenty-two tomato plants in a space more suited for twelve. Twelve cucumbers in a space designed for six. All crammed in with densely planted carrots, beets, parsnips, corn, potatoes, and beans, in rows and boxes that are really too close for how far everything spreads.

That’s how you make a jungle garden.

It’s pretty. It’s fun. But harvesting is admittedly a bit of a foray. A yoga workout all its own as you stretch, twist, balance, and do the occasional split trying to pick tomatoes without stepping on potatoes, to pick corn without stepping on carrots, to pick beans without stepping on other beans. You come out stained and scratched, and anything you did with your hair before you went in, the jungle has undone.

See why I take inventory from the outskirts?

Of course, that’s no excuse anymore for coming to the garden with inadequate containers. I should know by now that for every fruit I can see, there are probably five more I can’t. I’ve watched it overflow my too-small bowls enough to plan better than I do.

But imagine the outskirts were the only place you could take inventory. Imagine that for fifteen years, that’s where God has told you to wait. At the edge of his plans. Unable to make a foray inside.

Imagine you’ve never seen a harvest come off that garden.

Off those prayers.

You’re prepared with a cereal bowl because from here, it appears that’s all that grew. Or ever will grow. If that. You have no prior experience to steer you toward better expectations. In fact, all your prior experience steers you to have no expectations.

It’s hard to believe, when you can’t go in and see, that under that seemingly impenetrable canopy of trial and struggle, God is cultivating a harvest of blessings you can’t even imagine. What feels true is that there is no harvest.

But every time I haul in those overflowing fruits, I think surely he must work this way with us. That though we come with hesitant expectations, he will give us cause to say as David, “My cup runneth over.”

That’s what rings true.

Fifteen years, or however long without a harvest, doesn’t mean there’s not one growing. It might just be covered by a very big jungle, for a purpose probably only God knows. But when that purpose is fulfilled, it will be yours.

Praying With Expectation as Well as Submission

All of this is not to say that harvest will look like everything you prayed for. Remember “thy will be done”? You still have to say that.

But not at the expense of hope.

It’s not a discrepancy between God’s will and your desires that snuffs out the candle of expectation. It’s when you think your desires are all that will make you happy. When you’re facing the possibility that God’s plans may not include what you think you have to have. And you can’t see that they do include everything you never knew you were missing.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to accept–and I’m still working on it–is that if God never grants what I’ve been praying and waiting for, he not only can but will still overflow my cup, my little cereal bowl, with a joy richer than anything I could ever dream of.

Is it really possible to be filled if I’m not filled with what I’ve had my heart set on?

I don’t know how he would do it. But he would. And that, I’m realizing, is what it means to pray with expectation.

It’s standing at the edge of the garden, eye on a certain fruit, hoping for it, expressing your desire to have it. But not exchanging your big hopes for small ones if it appears, or becomes undeniable fact, that God’s answer is no. Just because he doesn’t give you that fruit doesn’t mean he won’t give you just as much and more of another kind. A kind you’ll like. A kind that, once you have it, you wouldn’t trade for anything.

More often than not, I think he gives us some of both. What we want, and what we didn’t know we wanted.

Praying with expectation is to believe your prayers will yield a harvest. Praying with submission is to trust God with what harvest it yields.

It is possible to do both. Expect and submit. Desire and accept. To have a flame of hope the will of God doesn’t suffocate but fuels.

So don’t be discouraged if your cereal bowl, or whatever it is, comes back empty. It wasn’t a cruel God who returned it. It was a loving Father who smiled kindly and said, “That will never hold what I have for you. Go get something bigger.”

And even that will run over.

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 4:16

Thank you for reading. I hope these words will lend renewed power and hope to your prayers. Please leave a comment, and don’t forget to pass this post along.

Scripture References

• Psalm 23:5

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