“The heart wants what it wants,” poet Emily Dickinson once wrote to a friend. We may not always want what we know we should want or be able to explain why we want what we want. We just do. Many believe that if we focus hard enough on our desires and live as if we already have them, the universe will give them to us. As one viral video put it, “The secret is to assume and believe it before the concrete proof shows up.”
However, good does not come from some sort of generic power thought of as “the universe.” God, the only cause and creator, is the source of all good. Does that mean, if we seem to lack some good thing, getting it’s just a matter of asking God for it and believing hard enough that we’ll receive it? After all, Jesus promised, “All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Matthew 21:22).
The book of James adds a caveat to Jesus’ promise. The writer explains, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (4:3).
Sometimes our prayers about our human needs can seem entirely reasonable. The problem comes when we try to inform God what will make us happy. God, Spirit, did not create us – and therefore does not see us – as material beings to be made happy by the bestowal of material riches.
So we’re asking “amiss” when we pray for something to fulfill our own purposes – whether altruistic or self-centered – or to gratify a sense of entitlement or desire. The happiness divine Spirit is forever supplying never can, or will, be material. It will always be spiritual and therefore real and permanent.
To be effective, prayer needs to be God centered, not “me” centered. Of course God meets our practical needs. The Bible tells us that God loves us, and He does. But we see our needs met as we grow in our love for both God and man and act on that love.
My husband had an experience where he could not say how a particular financial need would be met. The temptation to be afraid was pretty strong. But instead of telling God how much money he needed, he humbly asked God what to do.
His prayer was answered with the word “Forgive.” He understood this to mean that he should forgive a loan he had made to a friend, though he desperately needed those funds. But he also understood that he needed to stop resenting – to forgive – the friend for refusing to repay the loan. He did. His phone immediately rang, and he was offered a quick job that would exactly meet his financial need. (See Douglas Sytsma, “Financial needs met,” Christian Science Sentinel, May 12, 2014.)
On some level, every heart does yearn for spiritual things. But not every heart is ready to do God’s will if that means giving up some human goal or good. How do we stop wanting to do our own will and start wanting to do God’s?
In her chapter “Prayer” in the Christian Science textbook, Mary Baker Eddy writes, “Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 1). At least wanting to want to do only God’s will is a good start. If we’re willing to let Him purify and lift our desires to more spiritual goals and attainments, we’ll see our desires changing from a material to a spiritual basis.
Later in the same chapter, we read that one of the tests of all prayer is, “Do we love our neighbor better because of this asking?” (p. 9). We know our sincere prayer has been answered when we find selfishness and sensualism falling away, and we find ourselves loving our neighbor better.
The prayer to be Godlike, to do His will, to serve our fellow man in the way He directs, is always answered, with both a clearer sense of His loving will and everything we need humanly to sustain us in doing that will. When our heart truly wants to understand and do God’s will, our heart gets what it wants 100% of the time.
That’s an outcome well worth praying for!
Adapted from an editorial published in the June 24, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.
