You’ve probably heard the complaint, maybe even made it yourself, “I don’t want to always pray with a shopping list”. It expresses a desire to pray out of a deepening relationship with God. A longing for the relational over the transactional. If all we ever do is to bring God a list of things we want Him to do for us, then that is a problem.

There is some truth and some good reasons for this. It is important to spend time listening to God. To open our Bibles, open our ears and let God speak to us. Let our agendas and concerns be shaped by the coming kingdom of Jesus. We certainly will pray differently haven taken time to think in the presence of Jesus. Time aligning our wills with His will also make a significant difference to the outcome of our prayers (James 4:3 & 1 John 5:14-15), which I assume we want answered in the affirmative.

But the shopping list makes lots of sense and conversely praying without one makes little sense.

Firstly, we are encouraged, nay told, to ask God for things (Mark 11:24; John 15:7; Php 4:6 amongst many others). Jesus explicitly and repeatedly taught his disciples to ask God for stuff. In other words there is an abundance of permission here.

Secondly, asking is only possible on the basis of relationship. Otherwise you can ask but there will be more hope than faith that God will answer. Because He is our Father in Heaven we know He knows how to give good gifts. We know He accepts us. We can boldly approach because of relationship with the Father through the Son.

Thirdly, asking for things, is a profoundly loving and pastoral thing to do. I was sorting through some of my Dad’s papers and I came across this scrap of card. I don’t know whether it was his prayer list for every Tuesday or just one Tuesday in particular. But on a Tuesday, my Dad asked God for at least 10 things. I’m profoundly grateful to see my wife and I’s name at the top. Then he prayed for his church and some people in it, followed by missions, homelessness, more local churches, friends, more churches, more Christian organisations (a Christian bookshop), his local authorities, the preaching in his church and then whatever or whoever else came to mind.

I notice that not one of those things on that list was for himself directly. Maybe he’d done that already and hadn’t made a list for that although I suspect not.

One of the most loving things we can do, assuming we believe God hears and cares for His people, is to pray for them. It is part of the job, not just of a pastor, but of a Christian to pray and it’s OK to bring God your shopping list.

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If, like me, you’re not one for lists or you lose track of the things to pray for, then I recommend PrayerMate.