"If God were sitting here with us today, what is one thing you would ask him?” The question may sound cliche, and the responses in Compassion International’s video are at once heartbreaking and totally adorable. But I feel like there’s another lesson for us in this precious video.
If you have questions for God, why aren’t you asking them?
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us, Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in Heaven give good things to those who ask him (Matthew 7:7-11).
I’ll concede that if you go to God in prayer and ask him for the recipe for rocks, he may not whisper his divine formula in your ear. But there are so many questions that we simply aren’t asking God, who has given us every good thing including the beautiful freedom to approach him through his Son. We can be sure that when we pray in the name of Jesus, we will be heard. And he has promised us peace and answers to prayer — although maybe in a different way or timeframe than we expect — but we still sit wondering skeptically why we should pray. Or we tell ourselves we have no right to ask things of such a powerful God when we are so small and weak.
But that cynicism and self-doubt are temptations whispered by the one who wants to destroy our lines of communication with the Divine. God has summoned you to his heart, adopted you, and invited you to engage in a deep and constant conversation with him.
Don’t worry about how silly or angry or eloquent your words are: he just wants to hear your voice.