Luke 15:28-31
28″The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’
31″ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.

I was thinking about the older son in this parable. Why wasn’t he able to ask the father for a young goat all those years? Why didn’t he ask? What was his view of the father? I was thinking about my own prayer life and certain prayer requests I’m shy about. Subtly, I categorize prayer requests as “spiritual” or “unspiritual.” And of course the unspiritual prayer requests, God would not be concerned with. God is only concerned with important things that do not have much to do with the things that I care about. But is this a correct view of God? God cares about me and he cares about the things that concern me. I should be ok with coming to God with whatever concerns my heart. If I have something that I say “I can’t pray about this, I shouldn’t pray about this,” then that causes my overall prayer life to be one dimensional, and it creates a distance between me and God. For example, this past week, when Ed flew to Philadelphia for Jama, I was really anxious. I think this anxiety has something to do with the fact that I lost my father as a young child. I realized I want to be spared of the pain of losing my husband at an early age. So, I uttered a prayer to God timidly. I said, “Lord, can you spare me the pain of losing my husband early?” Afterwards, I felt slightly shy and illegitimate about the prayer that I had just uttered. But why? Why am I shy about praying this kind of prayer to my Heavenly Father, my Abba Father, my Daddy? I had to repent about my flat view of God. I am like the older son in this story. We have prejudices about what God is like and we box him in, and we fail to experience him in a much greater way. As I get older, I realize that my view of God needs to grow as well. One way this is going to happen is through coming to God with ALL of my concerns and not just the spiritual burdens. By coming to God with ALL of my concerns, I will experience God’s strength and provision for my life in ALL situations. If I bring only certain kinds of burdens, then I am going to feel alone. I don’t ever have to feel alone. Oh, what joy and strength I forfeit because I don’t come to him in prayer. My view of God falls short of who he actually is. He’s so much more concerned, generous, loving, merciful, patient, wonderful, exciting, etc. I would like my prayer life to properly reflect the One that I am praying to. I don’t want to limit my infinite God in any way.