The story we hear today of Abraham negotiating with God always strikes me as somewhere between comical and extraordinary (Genesis 18:20-32). Is God really prepared to haggle like some market trader? Aren’t we more used to the idea that we bring our petitions to the Lord and then we wait (and maybe wait some more) and hope – rather more like pleading with a feudal king.
Neither of these images of God is very helpful. Jesus replaced them with the image of a father (Luke 11:1-13), and went on to point out “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?”
The words of the prayer that Jesus gave us don’t suggest that we are arguing our case with our father, but Luke follows it with the parable of dealing with the unhelpful neighbor who is won over by persistence. There is no passivity here, this is someone really going after what they want.
What all these stories tell us is that there is much more back and forth in our relationship with God than we often imagine. He is not looking for us to be passive recipients of whatever happens. We should indeed start our prayer with an acknowledgment of the holiness of God, as Jesus taught, and as Abraham does in saying “See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes!” But that doesn’t prevent us asking for what we need, or arguing the case for others as Abraham did.
We don’t know how God will respond, and we may not understand when he does, but the one thing we can be certain of is, as a father, he will not ignore us. So we should have the confidence to ask. Jesus tells us: “ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” If we fail to ask, and even to argue, that’s on us.