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It is good to have goals and take the steps to try and meet them. As the process begins towards that, what might begin also to happen is the idea that you have to do this. And suddenly the achievement becomes more paramount than anything else and other possibilities and approaches become automatically brushed aside as the goals and the means to achieve the goals are looked at as the path rather than a path. Then what could happen is there are a lot of things that seem to take on the weight of have to, and these obligations reduce the input that other valid or wanted outcomes could at least also be explored and considered. The theory is that other things need to be cleared out and only what matches with the goal should be incorporated in any way. This is in more common everyday occurrence especially for strivers but this can also be a problem with regards to spirituality and prayer in particular. The Bible admonishes us to bring our requests before the Lord and to also persevere in the request. So this same principal of have to might begin to arise in what we are asking for. The undercurrent of the prayer might be that you feel the Lord has to give you this, or that, or answer you in a particular way. The Bible does say you can be given the desires of your heart, but you may not even have those desires as clear as you think you do. Another approach then could be to begin any prayer request with the acknowledgement that the Lord does not have to give you this. So whatever is being asked for, you could more say I would like this, but you don’t have to give me this. This isn’t a lack of faith but an acknowledgement of that it is the Lord’s gift and it is of his choosing. Your still making your requests, but your more so releasing them to the prerogative of the Lord. Ultimately the Lord doesn’t have to give anything, but indeed he has already given a lot of things he didn’t have to give. Within this approach, someone can already contemplate that they have received gifts that the Lord did not have to give, but did in fact give. Another reason for this approach is it gets away from exclusive demands on the relationship, that seem to say if and only if I get this, then things are okay between us. It may be useful then to begin a prayer request that also might already be extended with the approach that you would like this, but you are deferring to the wisdom of the Lord and that whatever it is, it is something that he does not have to give. Also, when thinking about a blessing, in the Bible and the gospels in particular in talks of the idea of a manifold blessing or say a hundredfold blessing. But it doesn’t have to be that this blessing is precisely this way or that way or limited to this or that. For example it is very possible that the manifold or even something like the hundredfold blessings are across the board, and poured in with regards to all your interests. The blessings do not need to be contained to one area, such as say financial which is used in many of the examples of the manifold blessing but this is just really an illustration and the blessing could be all over the place and fill in through any number of areas to where you could say the blessing is gigantic but also uncontained. It is good to push forward and keep trying but it is also important to free your thinking in different directions and different levels of awareness and the idea that you don’t have to is in many cases actually important to seeing other avenues that could still be considered or that the unforeseen can arise. In the Old Testament the blessings were not only gold and silver but things such as land. In the case of Solomon, he got wisdom, gold and many other blessings in manifold fashion. There is no have to on the limits of the blessing, it can extend in any way the Lord wishes, including above and beyond, amd in ways not even imagined.
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