Suppose you were gifted a life changing sum of money. And the grantor of this gift happened to be a successful stock market investor with decades of 50% returns per year. Suppose they also offered to let you invest your gift in their own private fund. Would you take the money to Las Vegas and see if you could do better yourself?

It may not seem like it, but this is exactly what we do when we waste our prayers and all of our other spiritual energy on ourselves. We take what God has given us and decide that we can manage it better than the One who gave it to us. By investing our prayers into learning the ways of God, we reap the compounding rewards of better knowing Him and experiencing more of His love. We start to become a little more like Him, and we start to trust Him. This has a double effect of taking our focus off of our wish list and trusting Him, which brings peace and joy that we want to see others enjoy. Sharing that becomes more important than our own wish list, freeing up even more time for peace and joy.

When we pray for what we want, we get the same experience you get at a Blackjack table. Some random wins and losses, and an increasingly short stack of chips in front of us over time. We notice what we don’t have, we worry about bad things happening to us, we get angry and make mistakes which brings more problems and creates more to worry and be angry about. Our “wins” are short lived and really just give us more to worry about losing later.

Maybe this has something to do with why Jesus told us to store up our treasures in Heaven. Investing in God’s righteousness pays off. Righteous prayers are answered more often, because simply put, in the end, His will WILL be done. He offers us the gift of better understanding WHY His will is best, so we can enjoy it when we see it playing out. Or we can bet on ourselves and wait around to lose.