John says in 1 John 5:15: “if we know he hears, we know we have. His hearing and our having are identified. As soon as God hears, we have; as soon as God hears, He gives. There is no lapse between request and gift. There is a time lapse between our request and the realization of the gift in our experience, but if we know He hears our prayers according to His will, we also know we have it (not will have it, but have it).
A child asks for a particular Christmas present, and the parents have already bought it. He comes out on Christmas morning, and looks around for the present he’s sure is there somewhere. That’s the way we ought to pray: Looking around at every moment for the places where God has wrapped and hidden the gifts He has already purchased for us. It’s ours, and it’s out there in the future waiting for us, and we just need to catch up to it.
Sometimes what’s lying out there in the future is not what we asked for, but if not, it’s better than what we asked for. It’s what we really wanted before we had the words to ask, before (as Lewis says in Till We Have Faces ) God had put us on the cross to dig that right word out of us.
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