The Holy Ask
teach us to pray and never hear
(a meditation on Luke 11.1-13)
We keep asking for answers.
Jesus tells us to, “ask… seek… knock,” and immediately we begin putting the idea of how to pray into a framework that gives us the answers we crave, as if God were the magic 8 ball for our lives.
“Should I take this job?”
“Should I move across country?”
“Is he the one I’m supposed to marry?”
All the questions we want answers for we bring to God, expecting to hear from the divine’s blueprint for our life.
I’ve done my share of asking of God. Hell, I still do. I want to know what to do when the future feels out of my control. I give up my own agency in hopes that God will direct me to do the “right” thing to make me healthy, wealthy, and wise.
It’s not bad to want to hear from God; it’s just misguided.
We want God to give us direction on such banal things as what side to butter the toast on, and all the while God is inviting us into something deeper, something more true, something that is true no matter what decisions we make. God is inviting us into a place of presence.
When the disciples came to Jesus and asked him to teach them to pray, Jesus didn’t give them the bat-phone to God. He didn’t give them a formula to cajole God into answering our questions and desires. Jesus gave us a prayer, but isn’t a prayer about receiving.
It’s a prayer about asking.
That asking is what our posture should be in prayer, not a praying to receive, but praying just to ask. That praying to ask puts us in the presence of the good God who gives the Holy Spirit to their children. And it’s that presence—not hearing—that is at the heart of anything we are asking for.
We come near to God and knock, seek, ask.
For the Kingdom to come.
For bread.
For forgiveness.
For deliverance.
We ask for these things that are personal, that are important, that transcend the day-to-day mundanity of life. We are asking to shake the foundations of the system of suffering and oppression we are all trapped in. We are asking for the provision of our basic needs and declaring that we are forgiving each other even as we ask to be forgiven.
These asks matter. They are the basics of life seeking life. They are holy.
And most of the time, God is silent in response to our asks.
This is where we find ourselves in frustration and desperation. We ask God for the things that are more than jobs, finances, relationships, and God remains quiet.
We come and feel like we have said the right words, and God is silent.
We ask and hear nothing in return.
We seem to spin our wheels, going round and round trying to figure out how to hear God.
The frustration with this situation is palpable.
The Frustration I Have With Most Prayer
When prayer doesn’t work
and the oil doesn’t heal
what is it we are doing
throwing words in the air?
When God’s ears are closed
to lament and plea
how is it that we can keep
supplication and praise?
What are we doing
praying to the sky,
throwing words around
like the powerless we are?
We are convinced that there is something wrong with us. God had to have spoken; we simply didn’t hear them. We become desperate and despondent, trying to hear God, to know that there is divinity listening to us, responding to us. We try silence, meditation, devotions. We buy the latest book, listen to ambient music, take better sermon notes. We get up early. We stay up late. We burn the candle at both ends trying to figure out why we can’t hear God.
I want to gently suggest something.
Maybe we’re not supposed to hear God.
As a spiritual director, I have found that the desire to hear from God is a desire for certainty, a desire for control. We end up feeling like we have to know every little thing about our life so that nothing will go wrong, so that nothing will hurt us. We want security about the future to wield like a shield, saving us from pain, suffering, and the consequences of our own actions.
God’s not really into being manipulated like that though. God isn’t a vending machine in the sky, dedicated to dropping security and safety like Skittles if we will only put in the right code.
God is a god of mystery and magnificence, and God wants us to step into the great fog of unknowing so we can be postured toward presence, not protected from the practical and pragmatic.
So maybe we’re not supposed to hear God.
When we give a holy ask, underneath all our prayers and pleadings, what we are really craving is the proximity of God. In other words, we want God to hear us, to be near us, to remain with us.
This is where my role as a spiritual director comes into play. See, spiritual directors aren’t going to give you answers. That’s the job of a theologian—sometimes. Spiritual directors aren’t going to give you the magical ritual that will unlock God’s response.
A good spiritual director will help you find your own way into the presence of God that we are craving when we bend a knee to give a holy ask. Spiritual directors join with the work of the Spirit in your life as she helps you not hear God, but sense God.
This isn’t about some sort of esoteric experience or some super-hidden feeling. Sensing God is about awareness, our awareness. The truth is, God is near. Between the breath and the beating of the heart is where you will find that mighty incarnation of divinity.
God is close.
God has already answered our deep want. When we go to ask, desiring God to be near to us, to hear us, to have a posture of love toward us, it is in this moment that God is nearest to our hearts, our bodies, our minds, ourselves.
But we don’t know this. We are too busy striving and trying to get God’s attention that we don’t notice God holding us in the lap of divinity. A spiritual director can help us peel back the layers of work we put into trying to be spiritually right and help the core of the seed of self emerge into the perpetual light of God.
What we need are not more practices, not more study, not more striving. What we need is the silence God offers as God waits for us to recognize how close we are to heaven now. Prayer, that asking of God without ever hearing from God, is the way we posture and position ourselves to respond to God’s nearness. The prayer under the prayer is what we are praying, and that prayer is only said in silence.
So pray. Pray the Lord’s Prayer. Pray your own prayer. Pray with your gut. Lament. Rejoice.
But don’t hear. Don’t expect an earth-shattering response of the voice of God. Pray, but remain. We kneel on holy ground, offering our hearts intentions into the perpetual light of God’s presence, and placing ourselves in the proximity of God, who is already as close as our skin.
Pray, but don’t hear.
Pray, but wait, linger.
Pray, ask, seek, knock, and know that your desire for closeness, your seeking for acceptance, your knocking at the door of love has already been answered with bread not stones.
If you’re in a season of unraveling, reimagining, or just aching to be met with compassion, I offer spiritual direction as a space to slow down, listen deeply, and be fully seen. It’s not about having the right answers—it’s about attending to the sacred in your questions. If that sounds like something your soul could use reach out to me via DM or click the button below. I look forward to seeing what we hear together.