Dave Edgren discusses Philippians 4:6 and argues you can bring any request to God in prayer. He shares stories about praying before school exams and a child named Mikey praying for his Shetland pony to win a race, illustrating what childlike faith looks like.
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Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. That's Philippians 4:6. Now what's interesting about that verse is, have you ever heard it said, when I was a little kid, I actually heard somebody say from the front, God is not Santa Claus. And to a kid, that means you don't come to God with your wish list. You don't just talk to God about anything and everything you want. God's a busy man. Only talk to God about the things that God— you need God for. But that's not what that verse says at all, is it? Don't be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. In everything. You can talk to God about anything. There's nothing that God says, "Hey, I'm too big for this." God is not too big to be small enough for you. God is always willing and always waiting to hear our prayers on any topic at any time. I know that, and sometimes I just wonder how God answers prayer. Have you ever thought about that? When he gets farmers praying for rain and surfers praying for sun on the same day? How does he, hmm, who do I answer today? I know, I don't know if you went to Christian schools, but I went through Christian schooling, and before an exam in high school, I was praying, okay? And my prayer didn't sound anything like the teacher's prayer, because in Christian schools they pray before the exam. Teacher stands up and she says, "Let's bow our heads before you start today, guys, and we'll just have a prayer. Dear Lord, please bring to mind all that these young people have studied and help them to remember everything that they've studied so that they will reflect their knowledge perfectly." That wasn't my prayer at all. My prayer was, "God, I know you could speak directly through the prophets, and their pen, they could just write thoughts straight from you, and I know I should have studied, but I didn't put in as much effort as I, you know, but I know you're a forgiving God, and can you just, I'll be your penman, you be my, you know, I'll just write. Go!" Very different than the teacher's prayer, and I'm sure God smiled at one of the prayers and thought, "Fair enough," to the other prayer. Because my exams always looked like I hadn't studied. But not always, there was— sometimes I did good. One time with my 3 kids in Tasmania, there's an outdoor zoo called Zoodoo, and you go there and you get in a bus and they drive you through this zoo, and there's all different kinds of enclosures, ostriches, giraffes, all different kinds of things. And we went through the whole place, And when we got to the end, one of the exhibits they had was tiny little Shetland ponies. And they told us, "Don't put your hands out of the bus with the Shetland ponies." They gave us bags of birdseed for the ostriches, and they're huge, and camels sticking their heads over the— it was an open-air bus— camels stick their head over into a bucket of seed right in the middle, or bucket of camel food, in the middle of the bus, but don't touch the Shetland ponies. Why? They said, "Well, when they're in a herd, they get this attitude problem. They've got herd mentality, and they—" They think they're bigger than you, and they'll bite you, they'll nip you. So just keep your hands in the bus. So we did, and we got back to the beginning, and we got out, and they said, make sure you go into the shed, and that was their reception area, and watch the races. And so we went in there, and sure enough, in a room— the shed was probably about as big as this— and about half as big, there was a racetrack, which you can imagine, that's not very big for a whole racetrack. And they brought out 6 Shetland ponies. And they lined them up in the gates, and they strapped stuffed monkeys on their backs, so they all had a stuffed animal on their back, and each pony had a number. And then they went around and they gave numbers between 1 and 6 to every kid in the audience. And then the guy did a perfect race call as these— he said, the gates, you know, "Boom!" And then he starts calling, "Number 1, number 1, that number 3, number 3, number 3, number 3." And they're actually running, these little Shetland ponies are racing for all they're worth, and they come all the way around the track, And go across the line and he yells, "Number 2! Number 2 is the winner!" And so he said beforehand that whichever kids win, take their number up to the front desk and they'll get a free Fredo Frog. So I look down at my kids' numbers and Mikey won. But Mikey, as you can see right now, he's a bit excitable. But he didn't get excited. He just looked at his number, put it in his pocket quietly. I thought, "Mikey, what's wrong with you?" So I said, "Mikey." Didn't you have number 2? He said, yeah. I said, well, you won. Do you want a Fredo Frog? Uh, yeah. So he went over and he stood in the queue and he turned in his ticket. She said, oh, you're a winner, congratulations. Thank you. Took his Fredo Frog, put it in his pocket. We got in the car, we're driving home. Look in the mirror at Mikey and I think, what's going on with Mikey? He's been in a good mood all day long. I said, Mikey, you can eat that Fredo Frog if you want. And he said, Oh, okay. And he gets it out and he's eating it and doesn't tease his brothers and sisters, you know, that his brother and sister that he won and they didn't. And finally that night when I'm putting him to bed, I say, Mikey, I just been thinking about you a lot today and I'm really proud of you. Why? Because when you won that race, and I know you had to be excited that you won, you didn't make fun of your brother and sister. You didn't say, I won, you lost. And you just took your prize and quietly Ate it, but you didn't rub it in their faces. Thank you for being such a good boy. He said, well, it wasn't really that. Wasn't? What do you mean? He said, I cheated. You cheated? Mikey, how could you cheat? He said, I prayed that Jesus would let my horse win. And you know, I just had that aha experience. No wonder God says, Jesus said, we have to be like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Mikey thinks to himself, I'm the only person that's ever been to a horse race and prayed that my horse would win. Or maybe that's not what he thinks. He thinks to himself, it's not fair because God answers prayer, and I knew that I could ask God and he would answer my prayer. Isn't that amazing to think about prayer like that through the mind of a child?
