“Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” (John 16:24)

Around six years ago my office experienced a complete turnover of upper management. The five most senior people in my division all retired at the same time. One day prior to the mass exodus, my direct manager at the time, who was set to take over the division came into my office and was asking my thoughts on replacements for the new leadership team. He rambled off a few names, all of them well qualified, and I shared my opinion on each. But he never mentioned my name in the list. Now we had a long history together on the job, he was the person who first hired me over twenty years ago. I remember going home and having this mixture of anger and disappointment over the fact that my long time boss wasn’t considering me for this new role. I stewed over this for a few days, then finally collected myself enough to walk into his office and ask the question. “Why didn’t you consider me for the job?” He listened to my pre-rehearsed speech on the topic, waited for me to finish then he said, “If you want the job it’s yours, you just never asked for it yet.”

Today we finish off our Worship, Admit, and Request mini-series on prayer talking about making the request. We understand that God knows all, but there’s something powerful about putting our requests to words in prayer. Even though God has a better understanding of what we need than we do, God still wants to hear the request from us. The hard part about requesting from God is that we are to pray His will not ours. Scripture tells us that our prayers become mountain moving statements when we request God’s will to be done. So today pray in confidence through worship, admitting and yes by making God honoring requests.