The fact that prayer does not make any change in God’s thought or purpose, reveals His marvellous love in a very tender way.

Suppose I want something very much and need as well as want.  And I go to God and ask for it.  And suppose He is reluctant about giving:  had not thought about giving me that thing; and rather hesitates.  But I am insistent, and plead and persist and by and by God is impressed with my earnestness, and sees that I really need the thing, and answers my prayer, and gives me what I ask.  Is not that a loving God so to listen and yield to my plea?  Surely.  How many times just such an instance has taken place between a child and his father, or mother.  And the child thinks to himself, “How loving father is; he has given me the thing I asked for.”

But suppose God is thinking about me all the time, and planning, with love-plans for me, and longing to give me much that He has.  Yet in His wisdom He does not give because I do not know my own need, and have not opened my hand to receive, yes, and, further yet, likely as not, not knowing my need I might abuse, or misuse, or fail to use, something given before I had felt the need of it.  And now I come to see and feel that need and come and ask and He, delighted with the change in me, eagerly gives.  Tell me, is not that a very much more loving God than the other conception suggests?  The truth is that is God.  Jesus says, “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask.”  And He is a Father.  And with God the word father means mother too.  Then what He knows we need He has already planned to give.  The great question for me then in praying for some personal thing is this:  Do I know what He knows I need?  Am I thinking about what He is thinking about for me?

And then remember that God is so much more in His loving planning than the wisest, most loving father we know.  Does a mother think into her child’s needs, the food, and clothing and the extras too, the luxuries?  That is God, only He is more loving and wiser than the best of us.  I have sometimes thought this:  that if God were to say to me:  “I want to give you something as a special love-gift; an extra because I love you:  what would you like to have?” Do you know I have thought I would say, “Dear God, you choose. I choose what you choose.”  He is thinking about me.  He knows what I am thinking of, and what I would most enjoy, and He is such a lover-God that He would choose something Just a bit finer than I would think.  I might be thinking of a dollar, but likely as not He is thinking of a double eagle.  I am thinking of blackberries, big, juicy blackberries, but really I do not know what blackberries are beside the sort He knows and would choose for me.  That is our God.  Prayer does not and cannot change the purpose of such a God.  For every right and good thing we might ask for He has already planned to give us.  But prayer does change the action of God.  Because He cannot give against our wills, and our willingness as expressed by our asking gives Him the opportunity to do as He has already planned.