The "Shopping List" prayer...

How many times have you heard how the Shopping list prayer is inappropriate. You know the one where you just bring your list of requests before God and go through them. The desire to avoid the shopping list approach however, has negatively affected our view of God, his World and who he is.

The key issue here is "Why?"... why is the shopping list inappropriate.

We have thought it inappropriate because it only asks God "for" things and we feel that asking for those things might be inappropriate and thus we do not ask for them. However, it is not the asking for them that is the inappropriate bit, for here you are praying to the Creator, sustainer and provider of all things you have a whole lot of things that you want but you "hide" those from him how knows and sees everything. There is God going, interesting, you actually want a new tennis racket, but you didn't ask for one! That's a bit weird. What are we saying about God if we do not ask him for what we want, are we saying he cannot give it to us? Are we saying he is stingy? Are we saying, no, I will get that by myself thank you very much?

Okay, but if we lose the shackles on the shopping list, where will that stop? What will reign us in?

The shopping list that we bring to God is based on our wants and desires. It is thus not the shopping list that is the problem it is our wants and desires. That is where the problem lies. Let us pray to God that he reforms our wants and desires in order that we can without reservation pray for what we want and not have to hide those from the giver of all good things.

Let's add that to our shopping lists...