The Bible says that we don't have because we don't ask, and we do not receive because we ask amiss. (Ref: James)
So it is clear that we must not only pray (a solemn request of God), but pray properly for our request to be granted. The principle of praying properly is to pray in God's will, not our own, as in "Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven." Satisfying our own selfish desires (or "lusts") are not proper requests.
God is Spirit, and we are to prioritize The Holy Spirit of Truth (where Truth simply means "Objectively Correct from All Perspectives") used to produce its specified Fruit (i.e. The Fruit of The Spirit): {Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, Goodness, Self-Control}, which, notice, does not include "truth" because the general principle of The Fruit of the Spirit is: caring about Other-than-self. Some truth may be used selfishly or to do harm, as blackmail, boasting, belittling, and tattling illustrate.
The Bible tells us that when we pray we must not doubt. How is that possible?
Remember, a 'Prayer' is a "Solemn Request", and a 'Request' is distinct from a command or an order that must be obeyed. A request by its very nature may be either granted or denied; if it cannot be denied then it is a command, as an order that must be followed, not a request. I hope none think we may command God, or believe that we are ordering Him to do anything. It seems clear our prayers may convict us of believing that God doesn't already know, or needs our prayers to authorize His activities. God does know, and He can do what he wants whenever He wants.
How, then, can we make a solemn request that there is no doubt will be granted? By asking for what we already know is wanted by Who decides. If we pray for what God wants - and He has shared His Word with us in The Bible through Jesus Christ - then we can be certain that our requests will be granted. God will do what God wants to do, exactly when He want to.
So what can we pray in God's will that we know will be granted, and be what we want?
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Oh Lord, may I want and be able to do, be, and feel just the way Jesus hopes that I will, patiently, without needless suffering. Amen.
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God wants us to emulate Jesus.
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Needless suffering neither produces good Fruit nor is used for correction, discipline, or overcoming sin. This trusts that God loves us as He says, so doesn't want us to suffer without good reason.
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God is Spirit. We are to prioritize The Spirit of Truth over the desires of 'the flesh' - our body and its feelings and sensations. So to pray in a way acceptable to God, instead of praying for more things we should pray to be content with what we have; instead of praying for more comfort, we should pray to appreciate our situation; instead of praying for pleasurable experiences, we should pray to be grateful and be pleased with the experiences The Lord provides.
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Oh Lord Jesus, if it is acceptable to You please ask our heavenly Father for the Spirit of Truth sent to me to let me appreciate and be grateful for what is, replacing expectation and disappointment with trust in both God's Love and His power. Amen.
Almighty God knows and can do what He wants when He wants, so 'what is' must be His will, because God could make it different if He wanted different. What is IS what God wants. We do not know better what works together for God's good purposes, so we should not pray for God to change His perfect plans. His grace is sufficient for us, so we must pray about how we respond to God's perfect plans, not asking Him to change them for us.
On Free Will
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Whether or not we have "free will" is an important consideration. And, like many considerations, needs an examination of its terms.
"Free" is not in the sense of "free to do anything", because people cannot do just anything, like flap their arms or wiggle their ears to fly.
"Will" is a name for motivation arising due to interacting priorities and preferences. Your "will" is what you choose to do.
I'm going to characterize Free Will this way:
Free Will: The existence of an ability to make a choice.
So I'm not saying that every choice is freely made. Merely that at least one has been or will be.
Since I experience Free Will, to dispute its existence requires you to convince me. On what basis is Free Will denied?
Usually the argument boils down to "I believe science teaches that every effect has a cause; every state of being is a necessary consequence of a prior state because of the laws of physics. Therefore there is no free will because everything has been caused by something else. Free Will is therefore just an illusion."
First of all, no. Science does not teach that at all. Science teaches that cause and effect are relative, and that sometimes effects precede causes. At the level of the most fundamental building blocks of "reality", such a mechanistic attitude is not taught, or observed experimentally.
A follow-up argument might be "If we knew the precise state of every aspect of a system we could know exactly what a future state of the system would be."
Once again, quantum mechanics disagrees. The particles and waves of light and electrons (and a famous cat) are considered probability distributions, wave functions that have no particular physical existence unless the "collapse of the wave function" occurs due to an observer. Additionally, physics theory and experiment show that certain pairs of states cannot in principle be known at the same time. This is not that the measurements of the states "cannot be known at the same time because measurement disturbs the system". Per theory, the pairs of states cannot, logically, both be known at the same time. One classic example is that position and momentum cannot be known at the same time.
So that's a problem, because in principle all the states of a system can never be known at the same time! It's not that someday we will overcome the limits of experimentation and be able to know everything in a system all at the same time. By the physics of today (remembering that Science usually changes its mind--I mean modifies its models based on experimental observations--on all theories) such full knowledge cannot exist. And due to situations of "sensitive dependence on initial conditions", as in chaos theory, even the most minute error could blow up to a massive deviation from prediction.
So, what is needed to deny Free Will--a mechanistic universe where complete knowledge of a system absolutely determines a future state of that system--is wrong, according to the science that drives the belief, and also impossible according to that science.
But, suppose I grant you the possibility that the universe could be well enough known by us someday that systems would be absolutely predictable. There's no free will because each state is perfectly defined by its previous state, and perfectly predicts its subsequent state. So we are not deciding, exercising judgement or will, but are being deluded into thinking we are making choices by inexorable forces of cause and effect.
An issue I have with that is that thinking and judging correctness of reason is something we do. When we realize the correctness of some relationship (the "Ah Ha!" moment), we have judged it to be correct. But if we are not really judging, but being forced to have that realization and feel the relationship is correct by a mechanistic universe, there is no justification in believing that what we believe is correct! In other words, if we are not judging correctness, but must judge a proposition to be a certain way regardless of the actual logical truth of the matter, then we with that belief have no basis, in our own philosophy, to regard our belief as actually being correct.
So I'm having trouble being convinced to deny my direct experience of free will. Science disagrees with the mechanistic principle. Science disagrees that a non-trivial system could ever in principle be fully known, so no absolutely correct prediction of the future could be guaranteed. And the belief that your belief has no reason to be believed to be correct isn't that convincing either.
So, unconvinced, I'm going to believe my direct experience and assert that free will exists. If I'm wrong, I had to think that way, so I'm not to blame. But neither are you to be congratulated..
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I await more compelling arguments. --jd
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For info on my latest physics explanations (Mysics), use this link to the Google Document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RPgY3FROSTccvet0ahJ6P7NWSutqOlRzBohcN7HPwEI/edit?usp=sharing