Be honest. When you walk up to your parents, what are you usually about to say?

Most of the time it probably starts with “Can I...?” Can I have a snack? Can I go to my friend’s house? Can I stay up? Can I get that? And parents love giving good things to their kids! That’s not wrong at all!

But how often do you walk up just to say, “Hey, thanks for driving me to practice yesterday”? Probably not all the time, right?

We do the exact same thing with God. Most prayers start with “please.” Please help me on this test. Please let me make the team. Please help Grandma feel better. And those are good prayers! God wants to hear them. But think about how many reasons you have to be thankful. If you actually counted them up, your thank-you’s should outnumber your please’s by a mile.

King David understood this. When he brought the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem, he set up a group of people (called the Levites) whose entire job was to stand there and thank God. That was it. That was their job.

Take Action: Try a “no-asking prayer” today. Find a quiet spot, set a timer for two minutes, and pray with one rule: you’re not allowed to ask for a single thing. Thank-you’s only. If you run out of ideas, look around the room and keep going: maybe it’s your bed, your eyes that can read this, your dog, the friend who made you laugh. Two minutes is longer than you think!