You ever hesitate—or fail—to pray because you just didn’t believe that God would answer your prayer?

I do. More often than I should.

He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. (Matthew 17:20 NIV)

Maybe we hesitate to pray because the request just seems too big: something that would require a miracle to answer, and we worry that it could never come to pass.

Or maybe the prayer request is too small or trivial, at least in our eyes.

Or maybe the prayer request is both too small and too big to us: too small to bother God with, but too big for us to believe He would ever answer it.

We forget that nothing is too big or too small for God.

A few weeks ago, my family was in San Francisco, enjoying the last few days of our boys’ summer break by taking in some of the sights. Both boys brought their digital cameras to capture every moment.

And I mean every moment—not just the Kodak ones. Pictures of us in the car. Pictures of us in the hotel. Pictures of an elbow pinched up to make it look like someone’s rear end. Stuff like that.

On our first full day in San Francisco, we visited the California Academy of Sciences, where we took a ton of pictures and spent time afterwards exploring Golden Gate Park, right outside the museum. There, we took more pictures, sat on a bench for a snack break, caught some Pokémon, took a peek at the Japanese tea garden, strolled through the Shakespeare Garden, and explored the music concourse before heading back to the car.

Just as I was about to pay an extravagant parking fee at the ticket machine, my youngest son exclaimed, “My camera!”

He couldn’t find it in any of his pockets.

“Where’d you last use it?” we asked him. He didn’t remember.

We’d have to retrace his steps. All. Over. The. Park.

We searched everywhere for that camera. It was pretty old and not worth that much money, but it did have sentimental value: almost every photo my youngest son had taken ever since he inherited the camera was stored on its memory card. It’d be sad for him to lose them all—plus, God forbid the camera fall into the wrong hands and someone started messing with our family photos, creating mean memes or whatever it is evil nerds do. 🤓 🖥

I checked the bench we sat at. There was another family sitting there now. I asked them if they had seen a small, black-and-chrome Fuji camera. They replied no. I wasn’t sure I believed them.

Throughout this trip, we had read multiple signs warning visitors not to leave valuables in the car due to a rash of car break-ins. I even saw a picture on Facebook that a local friend of mine posted, showing his car window smashed in by a thief. If theft was that widespread in San Francisco, how would we ever find a digital camera in the middle of a huge, busy park? “This isn’t Japan,” I huffed at my son. “When you lose something here, it won’t be waiting for you to come back and pick it up.”

At least, that’s what I thought.

As I simmered in frustration at my son for not taking care of his belongings better, I got this nudge in my spirit: “Don’t get angry. Pray instead.”

“Really?” I thought. “Pray about finding an old camera?” I didn’t think it’d be something worth bothering God with, but since I got the impression to pray, I prayed. It wasn’t a very bold prayer, though. I sort of meekly said, “God, please don’t let that camera fall into the wrong hands.”

It was a mustard-seed-sized prayer: I believed that God could answer it but wasn’t confident that He would.

We continued the search and retraced all our steps, all the way through the gardens and back. No sign of the camera.

Defeated and exhausted, we schlepped back towards the parking lot, with me fighting the temptation to give my youngest son an earful for losing the camera. Having served in healing prayer for years taught me that words said in anger to a child can haunt them well into adulthood, so I did my best to tame my tongue. Still, I could feel aggravation leaking out of my pores.

My bristling and brooding were interrupted when my oldest son shouted, “There it is!”

Directly in front of us, lying neatly on a lush pad of grass like a tiara presented on a green satin pillow, was my youngest son’s digital camera—the one we had just searched the park for—just a few steps away from the parking garage.

I was astonished that it had not been run over by a Segway, fetched by a dog, or taken by a legendary/mythical San Francisco thief.

Finding the camera seemed impossible to me. It also sounded like too silly of a prayer request to bother God with—like asking a mountain to throw itself into the sea or something (Matt 21:21).

Yet, there it was, just waiting for us to pick it up on our way back to the car.

My point here isn’t to say that we should treat God like our magical lost-and-found. I’m not suggesting that we ask God to help us every time we misplace our keys (although I did once pray to recover a set of keys dropped in the snowy hills of Japan—and they were found months later, after the snow thawed out in the springtime).

Instead, I believe this incident reminded me to let God decide what prayers to answer.

It’s not for us to determine beforehand, “Oh, this prayer request would be too outrageous/trivial to lift up to God,” or conversely, “God should answer this prayer because it seems right.” Seems right to whom? To us or to God?

Throughout Scripture, we’re encouraged to pray persistently and boldly while surrendering the results to God. When Jesus was about to be arrested, tried, and crucified, he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26:39).

Jesus wasn’t afraid to make a bold prayer request, but he surrendered the outcome to God the Father.

Right now, I sense a need to pray about something that has been on my mind and heart to do, but part of me is afraid that my request is too self-serving or not spiritually significant enough. Another part of me is worried that God might not answer the prayer the way I’d hoped.

Instead of debating myself on whether to pray about this or not, I should just pray about it and let God decide how He will answer.

After all, He is God and I am not.

What are you hesitant about lifting in prayer these days?