God wants to know your needs because His Heart is entwined with your life, as much and even more than as an attentive and invested father is with his child.

“I feel lost…”

“I need prayers – I have just been diagnosed with…”

“I need prayers for my marriage…”

“I don’t  know what I am supposed to do…”

There are times when we need help with life. There are times we cannot keep going on our own, and unfortunately times when no one else can do that much to make our lives more manageable, except by asking God for help on our behalf. Currently there are many situations in our world in which we feel a need to respond, and yet feel a certain helplessness about being able to change or stop what is happening. Not having a sense of control is uncomfortable for us.

But we are not alone in this. Everyone has some suffering or situation that is beyond their control. Everyone needs prayers. Praying for what we need is appealing to the highest authority there is – it is seeking help from the One who has the understanding, insight and power to help us when no one else does.

God wants to know your needs because His Heart is entwined with your life, as much and even more than as an attentive and invested father is with his child. While He knows every need we have, He does not want to impose Himself in our life, so He respectfully waits for us to call on Him. We can at times feel like failures because we cannot handle everything in life on our own, but this discovery is key to living life in true freedom. Because when we realize we are not self-sufficient, we are released from the pressures of being expected to always know what to do, the pressure to hide our deficiencies, to take full responsibility for the welfare of our children, to be in control of situations that we are powerless in changing. When we realize that we cannot do it on our own, that we are not expected to be God, we can live in a greater freedom from these pressures. We can depend on God for help rather than depending on ourselves.

A child who wants something high above him on the counter will do well to ask his parent for it, rather than to keep stretching his arms and standing on his toes in frustration for something he simply cannot reach. Many solutions to the problems we face are out of our reach. When we  pray to God  and ask for His help concerning all the situations going on, our life will not feel as unmanageable, since we will not be managing it alone. And you will not be praying to Him alone. We will pray with you, for you, and for what you need, joining you in seeking assistance from the One who has the ability to help in a way no one else does.

Maria Miravalle is the Spiritual Care Coordinator at Cornerstone of Hope’s Cleveland Location.