It’s this chapter of the Bible, 1 Samuel 8, that has led me to pray many times that God wouldn’t give me a king, or don’t let me ask for a king.

I don’t want to ask for something that’s not His good will for me, that’s not God’s best for me. We need to choose God’s will for us, not choose for Him what we want Him to do for us.

However, we have to accept God’s will on faith. He can see the finish line and all the steps along the way. We can’t. He’s got the vantage point to make the best decisions for us. We are limited in our view, imagination, understanding, knowledge, and in every other way compared to God.

We don’t get to weigh our options and pick what we want. We choose God’s will or death.

It shouldn’t be a hard choice.

When we’re praying, we shouldn’t be laying out a plan. “We need a king who can lead us out to attack the Philistines.” God raised up Gideon to lead the Israelites against the Midianites while he was just out doing his chores. God didn’t need them to have king.

The prayer, the request, should just be to ask God to deliver them. He is the deliverer. We can ask Him to deliver and expect it.

We don’t get to dictate to him the time and place, the how, when, the details.

We love to pray, dictating the details of what we want and when we want it and how we want it done. That’s us playing God. That’s us trying to usurp His position. That’s the same old sin of the garden, us wanting to be God. We make horrible gods.

Let God be God.

Let your prayer be “Yes, Lord” even when you don’t know what you are saying yes to other than His good and perfect will.

Then let your prayer be, “You know, Lord” and spare Him the details of all the complications and problems you can see that might come up.

And then let your prayer just be thanksgiving and praise, what most of our communication with God should probably be.