A man in his fifties sat in my front room and told me he had not asked God for anything in about four years.
That is not what it looked like from outside. He prayed daily. He prayed for other people, at length and by name, and he prayed about the church and about his children's faith and about a friend who was ill.
What he meant was that he had not asked for anything for himself, and specifically he had not asked for anything ordinary, and there was one particular thing he had needed for eighteen months that he had never once put into a sentence.
I asked him why not. He gave me the answer people give, which is that it felt too small to bring to God, and then he sat there for a bit and gave me the real one.
He said: I think I do not want to be a man who needs that.
That is the actual obstacle in most cases and it is not smallness. It is that naming a need out loud makes it true in front of somebody, and there is a kind of dignity that a person would rather keep than be helped.
In every thing, and he meant it
Paul writes a sentence to a church that had sent him a gift because he was short, and the sentence is wider than we usually let it be.
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. (Philippians 4:6, King James Version)
In every thing. Not in every important thing. Not in the things that are of eternal significance.
And notice the phrase let your requests be made known. It is a strange way to put it, because He already knows. So the making known is not for His information. It is a thing that happens to the one praying: a need that has been carried silently becomes a need that has been spoken.
You have been given permission that covers every single thing, and the phrase is in every thing rather than in the worthy ones, and Philippians 4 was written to people who were short of ordinary things. The Spirit is the one who takes a sentence a person could not say and makes it sayable.
The smallness is not the obstacle
Let me take the stated reason seriously first, because people do genuinely believe it.
The idea is that God has a great deal to attend to and it is unseemly to trouble Him about something minor. That sounds like humility and it is a picture of a God who is busy, and Scripture will not support it anywhere.
Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. (Matthew 10:29)
A farthing. The cheapest coin available, and the birds are being sold two for one of them, and the Father is present at the falling of one.
That verse is not a comment about birds. It is an argument about scale that Jesus makes on purpose, and the conclusion He draws from it is about the value of a person.
You are not troubling Him with something too small, and the argument against that was made by Jesus using the cheapest thing in the market (Matthew 10:29), and it is His Spirit who makes an argument about sparrows land on a man who cannot ask for what he needs.
So if the smallness were the real obstacle, that verse would settle it, and for most people it does not settle it, which tells you the obstacle is elsewhere.
What is actually in the way
The obstacle is usually one of three things, and none of them are theological.
The first is the one the man in my front room named. Saying it makes it true out loud, and a person would rather be somebody who does not need that.
The second is a fear of disappointment that has a history behind it. Somebody asked for an ordinary thing once and did not get it, and they were not able to hold that, so they quietly stopped asking for anything they could be refused about.
The third is that we were taught to pray for other people and never taught to pray for ourselves, and thirty years of that becomes a genuine inability rather than a preference.
I want to say plainly that none of those makes a person less faithful, and this is a very common shape in the most devoted people I know.
You have been formed by things that happened to you rather than by a decision you made about God, and Luke 11:9 still stands over a person shaped that way, and that part belongs to the Holy Spirit, who repairs what a history built without ever blaming anybody for the history.
You are not less faithful for having gone silent about your own needs, and the Word never once grades a person on the ratio of their praying (Psalm 34:6). That work is the Spirit's, and He gently returns a person to something they stopped doing without ever deciding to.
And the psalm has a line that puts an ordinary man's ordinary cry on the record.
This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. (Psalm 34:6)
This poor man cried. No qualification about the size of what he needed, no note about whether it was worth the LORD's attention.
So say the thing. Out loud. In plain words, with no speech in front of it.
You have been invited to bring every thing, and the invitation was written to a church that was short of ordinary supplies (Philippians 4:6), and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a request out of a man's chest and turns it into speech.
Now the counterfeit, and it is polite in this one, so learn its shape. It says: other people have real problems, and asking about this is self-centered. That is vague, it names you rather than an act, and its only instruction is to keep carrying it silently. Conviction from the Holy Spirit names one specific thing and it arrives with a next step already in it.
You are the sort of person Jesus argued about using sparrows and a farthing, and He made that argument in order to reach exactly this hesitation (Matthew 10:29), and it is the Spirit who applies it to somebody who has spent four years asking only on behalf of other people.
Nothing in this promises the thing arrives. It may not, and this site will never tie a request to an outcome or suggest that asking correctly changes anything. What is settled is that the invitation covers every thing, that this poor man cried and was heard, and that a need spoken out loud has stopped being a fact a person carries alone.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud. You are an ambassador in this and not a private citizen, and that authority is delegated to you. God said in every thing and did not attach a size to it, so speak to the pride that has kept one sentence unsaid for eighteen months. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said, and however He answers, leave the outcome to Him.
- Pride that will not let me name it, you are not reverence and you are not protecting anything. The Word of God says in every thing by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known, and it was written to people who were short of ordinary things.
- Rule that says my need is too small, you are finished in the name of Jesus. Scripture says not one sparrow falls without the Father, and Jesus made that argument on purpose about the cheapest thing in the market.
- Father, Psalm 34:6 says this poor man cried and the LORD heard him, with no note about whether it was worth Your attention. I name the ordinary thing out loud tonight, and I thank You that Your Spirit makes a carried thing into a spoken one.
Philippians 4:6
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.