Get to know God better first, then know what to ask for

I have been attending a small group Bible study, and have been learning a lot from Christian women who are more spiritually advanced than I am. One important concept which I learned from attending this group was that we should get to know God better first, and then we will know what to ask Him for.

All too often we ask God for something but we have no idea if that's something he would want for us. Instead, knowing God (through prayer and reading the Bible) leads us to then knowing what He wants for us, which means we will know what things to ask Him for.

Without that knowledge, we would be asking God for things which are not necessarily in line with what He wants for us, which means we are wasting our time asking for those things.

As a related concept, in church I also learned that God is more concerned with developing our character than our level of comfort. While this seems painful (and often is), it is less painful to go with the character development than to resist it. Also, when we think about it, character development is what we expect from our children too, so we should not resist it for ourselves. We all send our children to school instead of letting them stay home and play all day. Sure, playing all day would be far more fun for the kids - but in consequence, they wouldn't learn much and they'd be at a disadvantage when seeking jobs when older.

This is such a simple concept, yet one which had eluded me for so many years. I am grateful for all I have learned in this Bible study.

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