Does God want us to have what we desire? Yes. Does God say we can have anything we want? No.
Sunday School All Week continues here today, and I can’t go a step further without responding to an entry in the Comments Section Wednesday by Deb Reilly. Here is her post…

Matthew 7:7
“Ask, and you will receive. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you.
Luke 11:9
So I say to you: Keep asking and it will be given you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened for you.
CWG Book 1, page 11
“You will not have that for which you ask, nor can you have anything you want. This is because your very request is a statement of lack, and your saying you want a thing only works to produce that precise experience–wanting–in your reality.”
Which of these sounds like God? Which of these sounds like a spirit who hates God?
Posted by: Deb Reilly | August 20, 2008 5:31 PM

My dear Deb…pulling one sentence or a single paragraph out of 3,000 pages of material is always a sure road to misunderstanding and confusion. Is it your intention to confuse people about what the Total Message of Conversations with God is?
I am sure it is not. I believe you when you say you are “not offering my opinion, just asking a question.” But when you ask a question, shouldn’t the information you provide as part of the question at least be complete? Then the question — “Which of these sounds like God? Which of these sounds like a spirit who hates God?” — could be answered more fully, more accurately, don’t you think?
So, let’s indeed look at Conversations with God-Book 1, Page 11 and see what this passage says in its entirety…
It begins with a question to God from me. We were talking about “wanting” things, and I said…

Does that mean I cannot ask for anything I want? Are You saying that praying for something actually pushes it away from us?
God replied…

This is a question which has been asked through the Ages–and has been answered whenever it has been asked. Yet you have not heard the answer, or will not believe it.
The question is answered again, in today’s terms, and today’s language, thusly:
You will not have that for which you ask, nor can you have anything you want. This is because your very request is a statement of lack, and your saying you want a thing only works to produce that precise experience–wanting–in your reality.
The correct prayer is therefore never a prayer of supplication, but a prayer of gratitude.
When you thank God in advance for that which you choose to experience in your reality, you, in effect, acknowledge that it is there. . .in effect. Thankfulness is thus the most powerful statement to God; an affirmation that even before you ask, I have answered.
Therefore never supplicate. Appreciate.

But what if I am grateful to God in advance for something, and it never shows up? That could lead to disillusionment and bitterness.

Gratitude cannot be used as a tool with which to manipulate God; a device with which to fool the universe. You cannot lie to yourself. Your mind knows the truth of your thoughts. If you are saying “Thank you, God, for such and such,” all the while being very clear that it isn’t there in your present reality, you can’t expect God to be less clear than you, and so produce it for you.
God knows what you know, and what you know is what appears as your reality.

But how then can I be truly grateful for something I know is not there?

Faith. If you have but the faith of a mustard seed, you shall move mountains. You come to know it is there because I said it is there; because I said that, even before you ask, I shall have answered; because I said, and have said to you in every conceivable way, through every teacher you can name, that whatsoever you shall choose, choosing it in My Name, so shall it be.

Yet so many people say that their prayers have gone unanswered.

No prayer–and a prayer is nothing more than a fervent statement of what is so–goes unanswered. Every prayer–every thought, every statement, every feeling–is creative. To the degree that it is fervently held as truth, to that degree will it be made manifest in your experience.
When it is said that a prayer has not been answered, what has in actuality happened is that the most fervently held thought, word, or feeling has become operative. Yet what you must know–and here is the secret–is that always it is the thought behind the thought–what might be called the Sponsoring Thought–that is the controlling thought.
If, therefore, you beg and supplicate, there seems a much smaller chance that you will experience what you think you are choosing, because the Sponsoring Thought behind every supplication is that you do not have now what you wish. That Sponsoring Thought becomes your reality.
The only Sponsoring Thought which could override this thought is the thought held in faith that God will grant whatever is asked, without fail. Some people have such faith, but very few.
The process of prayer becomes much easier when, rather than having to believe that God will always say yes to every request, one understands intuitively that the request itself is not necessary. Then the prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving. It is not a request at all, but a statement of gratitude for what is so.

The message here is very clear, Deb…and sounds very MUCH like God. It says that…

…whatsoever you shall choose, choosing it in My Name, so shall it be.

Why would you not choose to quote that, Deb? That is just a few sentences down from the sentence that you took completely out of context. Did you fail to quote the sentence just above because it might “ruin your case”? Or make it seem strange that you had any confusion at all around this material?
Hmmmm….
If we’re going to quote from CWG, Deb, let’s quote more than a line or two. Let’s at least give enough of the passage to help a person who is new to the material to understand where it is going, yes? Wouldn’t that be fair?
(Ahem.)
Okay, now…to be clear, class….
Conversations with God says very directly in a hundred places that faith in God and faith in your True Identity as One with the Divine is what will allow you to experience the Power of Creation that is yours, that always resides within you.
CWG makes the point that “asking” for something, or “wanting” something, is a direct statement that you do not now have it. (People do not ask for, or want, what they are holding in their hand; what they already have in their possession.)
The message of God in CWG is that “even before you ask, I will have answered.” In other words, all things are yours now, in this moment. You simply do not know it. You do not believe it. And so, you cannot experience it. In this sense you may not have what you say you want. “Wanting” something actually pushes it away from you.
It is like the person who has love and who keeps saying she wants someone to love her. She cannot even see that she is already loved, right here, right now. By declaring that she wants to be loved, she disowns and disavows the love that is right in her hand, that is all around her. Or that, in fact, she IS.
When you say that you “want love,” what you are doing is disowning your Self. For you ARE love, and all of that which love is. That is Who You Are. That is your true identity.
There is more to all this, as well. Elsewhere in the 3,000 pages of dialogue CWG says that everything that has ever happened, is happening now, and ever will happen, is happening right here, right now. There is no such thing as Time. Time is a figment of our imagination; a tool used by use to allow ourselves to see “one thing at a time.” The cosmological implications of that are significant — and explained with equisite clarity in Home with God.
My point here, Deb, is that pulling a single sentence or paragraph out of the Bible, out of the Bhagavad Gita, out of the Qu’ran, out of the Talmud or the Book or Mormon or the Upanishads or out of any larger spiritual message, and asking people to draw conclusions about the Whole Message based on that one sentence or two, can be not only misleading, but unfair.
Yes?
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Oh, and “T”, who is actually a person posting as “LLB”…thanks for your long post. I think that you should go against your decision not to purchase Happier Than God right now, and get it anyway. And I think you should read it thoroughly. Two or three times. It is exactly what the doctor ordered at this point in your life. Make it easy. Make it simple. Just scroll to the right on this page, follow the link at the Happier Than God icon, and grab a copy now. Your missive in the Comments Section is far too long for me to answer here. Why, I’d practically have to write a book. (Which I DID! Grab a copy by scrolling over to the right this minute! You’ll be glad you did! Unless you aren’t…in which case you need to read the book a fourth time! Heh-heh…)