For When We Don’t Get Exactly What We Asked For

“Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will [instead] give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will [instead] give him a snake? If you then, evil (sinful by nature) as you are, know how to give good and advantageous gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven [perfect as He is] give what is good and advantageous to those who keep on asking Him.” (Matthew 7:9-11, AMP)

Ever been on a long road trip with a baby? I have now, and if you take a look at this past weekend, you might say I took several.

We had to take a trip to Connecticut this weekend as a family– yes, including our six week old, Piper, and Archie, our dog. In order to try and make the journey easier, we planned to make several stops along the way that would let us stop and rest on our way to where we had to be and then traveling back home. 

North Carolina, Richmond, Long Island, Connecticut, Baltimore, and back home– one long trip broken down into several short ones. And I think we were all doing pretty good, considering the traffic was horrendous on every leg of our journey and the fact that we all were run raggedly exhausted and had colds, until the day we went from Connecticut to Baltimore. A five hour journey became seven between stops and constant car accidents. About three and a half hours in, Piper lost it. 

I knew she was hungry. I pumped a bottle and tried to give it to her. She wouldn’t take it no matter how I tried to give it to her. I tried different angles of holding the bottle. I tried singing to her to get her to calm down long enough to take it. We played worship music through the car. 

All the while, I knew what she wanted. She wanted to be picked up out of the constraints of the car seat she had been sitting in on and off all weekend, held close, and to be nursed from the source. Unfortunately, my little girl didn’t understand that we were in stop-and-go traffic with no opportunities to pull off safely to do what she wanted. 

So I kept trying to give her what I had for her. What I knew was best for her. But because the milk wasn’t coming in the package she wanted or in a way that she expected or was comfortable with, she refused it. It was the same milk. I knew it was, and maybe she did too, but because she had something else in mind, she wouldn’t take it. Meanwhile, if she would have taken the milk from the bottle, she would have had a full belly and her grief– not to mention mine– would have been spared. 

And how many times do we do this? We ask God to provide something or to answer our prayers, and foolishly reject the good gifts He gives us in response to those prayers simply because they weren’t given in the way we wanted them to be? How many of us will then stomp our feet and wonder why God didn’t bless us?

The thing is, God’s gifts are always given with the knowledge, foresight, and perspective of His goodness. It may not be packaged up or presented in the way we expected or anticipated, but it is still a good and perfect blessing.

God does not give stones when we ask for bread. God does not give snakes when we ask for fish. Just as our key verse says, even in our sinful nature we understand how to give good or advantageous gifts. A good father or mother doesn’t give their children something that will harm them. I wasn’t giving my daughter spoiled milk or another substance that she couldn’t process as nourishment. 

But I was giving her milk in a vessel she isn’t used to or values as the preferable method.

We may pray for our spouse and give God the long list of things we desire them to have, and God may give you someone who is all those things, but they look different than what we always dreamed. That person God provided as a spouse is still a good person and may be a better fit for a spouse than we ever dreamed, but will we reject them because they’re not the person we conjured up in our head?

We may pray for a big, beautiful family, but run into fertility issues. It may take lots of trying, going to doctors, medical intervention, holistic methods, and jumping through many hoops, and God may bless us with a child. Was it easy to have that child? No. Was it what we expected at the onset? No. But is that child even more beautiful than imagined? Is God still good to give that child? Is the family still whole and was the struggling worth it? Yes.

And God has a reason for giving the gifts He gives and in the way He gives them. If we can understand wanting to give good gifts to our own children, why would we doubt that our perfect God in heaven won’t do even better than we could? Why would we reject that blessing when we receive it, just because it doesn’t live up to the expectation we thought up in our minds? 

The fact of the matter is this: When we ask God for something, we should ask knowing that however He chooses to pour His blessings out, He is still good and faithful to provide. We should also keep our hearts in check to be on guard to accept it as it comes, knowing that He knows what is best for us and how to best give us what we need, and in exactly the way that works in tune with His will and what is best for us in the long run.