A Sermon by Dan Calvo
Pittsburgh New Church
November 27th, 2025
Sometimes when we really want something, we pray to the Lord and ask Him to give us what we want. We may ask the Lord to help us get our dream job, a relationship with someone we really like, or even a vacation trip to the Caribbean. We ask the Lord to please help us achieve our goals, and when we achieve them we are very grateful, and we say thank you to the Lord for giving us all the wonderful things that we wanted. But sometimes, even if we pray to the Lord for something that we really, really want, we still don't get it. Sometimes we don’t get the job, the person that we wanted to start a relationship with was not interested, and we can’t go on that trip to the Caribbean.
In the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord promised us that we could always reach out to Him asking for what we want, and He said:
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or what person is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf of bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? So if you, despite being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! (Matthew 7:7-11)
The Lord told us we could ask Him for what we wanted and He would provide for us. So, when we reach out to the Lord, and we pray for the things that we want, and we don't get them, a lot of times we may feel betrayed. Maybe we worry that we have done something wrong to make the Lord angry at us, or maybe we think that He's ignoring our prayers or that we don't deserve any good things and that the Lord is not going to help us because He doesn't like us and He doesn't really care about us, and doesn't want us to be happy, and we get all of these crazy thoughts. When this happens, it can make us feel very sad, because we want to have that connection with the Lord and we want to feel that we are being taken care of, and when we pray for something and we don't get it, it can be pretty hard to believe that the Lord is taking care of us.
There is an old song by this band called The Rolling Stones, and this song it's called “You can't always get what you want.” And the chorus goes “you can't always get what you want but if you try sometimes then you just might find you get what you need.” And it may not be a religious song but there are very few songs that describe so perfectly how the Lord takes care of us.
What the Lord wants more than anything in the entire universe is for us to be happy, and everything that happens in our lives is being guided by the Lord to lead us to the happiest possible result. And sometimes that means that we don't get exactly what we want but we get what we really need. For example, who here would like to eat pizza, ice cream, cookies and cake for dinner every single day? That sounds great, right? But if we did that, we would probably get pretty sick, pretty quickly. So even if it is what we want it isn't what we need. What we need is healthy food. That's what the Lord is providing for us all the time. The Lord isn't always giving us what we want but He's always giving us what we need.
And even when it feels like the Lord is not listening to our prayers the truth is that He is always listening to our prayers, but He responds to those prayers based on what we really need in our lives. This passage from Secrets of Heaven says this:
Little attention is paid to the prayers of those in the middle of temptation; for the Lord desires the end in view, which is a person's salvation. The Lord knows that end, but a person does not, and the Lord does not do what prayers ask for if that is contrary to the end, which is salvation. (…) In prayer, when inspired by God, there is always the thought and belief that the Lord alone knows whether what is sought would be beneficial or not. Therefore, the one who prays leaves the Lord to decide whether to listen to what he asks for, then accordingly pleads that the Lord's will may be done, not his own, in keeping with the Lord's words. (AC 8179)
This is why when we say the Lord's prayer, we say “give us today Our Daily Bread.” We ask the Lord to provide us with the things that we want, and the things that we need, but we also have to say “Thy will be done” meaning that while we may ask for things, the Lord is the only one who knows for sure what we need and we have to trust that even when we don't get the things that we want every single time we ask for them, the Lord always knows exactly what we actually need in our lives.
The Lord is constantly providing us with the things that we need to be happy, and He does it every single moment of every single day. This is why the Lord told us in the sermon on the mount:
“Do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky, that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather crops into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more important than they? And which of you by worrying can add a single day to his life’s span? And why are you worried about clothing? Notice how the lilies of the field grow; they do not labor nor do they spin thread for cloth, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you. (Matthew 6:25-33)
So, when we are feeling frustrated when we pray for something but don’t get it, we can deal with that frustration by accepting that the Lord is in charge of everything good that happens in our lives, and He always knows better when it comes to what we need. When we don't get something that we really wanted, chances are that it wasn't going to be that good for us, and the Lord is making some space for us to get the things that will make us actually happy. For example, maybe we didn't get the job that we really wanted but we got a new offer for a job that is even better. Maybe the person that we were interested in was not available for a relationship but then we meet someone else who is just perfect for us and is interested. Maybe we didn’t get that trip to the Caribbean, but if we had gone on that trip we would have gotten caught in the middle of a hurricane, so it actually worked out that we didn’t go on that trip. Sometimes we don't get the things that we think we really want in the moment so that we can get the things that will make us the happiest in the long term later down the line.
Even if we don’t get what we want every time, we can still be grateful to the Lord for all the wonderful gifts that He has given us and all the ways in which He provides for us. And if we make it a point every day to say thank you to the Lord and be grateful for all the good things that He is already giving us, our whole outlook on life is going to change. When we live every day with gratefulness, it becomes a whole lot easier to see all the good things that we already have in our lives, instead of focusing on whatever things we don’t have. Having a grateful attitude helps us to be much happier and much more connected with the Lord. In fact, this is why the Lord tells us to be grateful to Him for all the good things that He does for us. He doesn't tell us to be grateful to Him for His own sake, He tells us to be grateful for our own well-being.
This passage from Secrets of Heaven which you can find in the back of your handout goes into this in more detail by saying this:
The Lord does, it is true, demand humility, worship, thanksgiving, and much else from a person, which seem like repayment, so that His gifts do not seem to be free. But the Lord does not demand those things for His own sake, for the Divine derives no glory at all from a person's humility, worship, or thanksgiving. It is completely inconceivable that any selfishness should exist within the Divine, causing Him to require such actions for His own sake. Rather, they are required for a person’s own sake, for if someone possesses humility he is able to accept good from the Lord, since in that case he has been parted from selfishness and its evils which stand in the way of his accepting [that good from the Lord]. Therefore, the Lord desires a state of humility in a person for that person's sake, because the Lord can flow in with heavenly good when that state exists in [a person]. The same applies to worship and thanksgiving. (AC 5957)
The more we focus on being grateful to the Lord for all the good things that He gives us every day, the easier it is for the Lord to bring even more happiness into our lives. Let's test that theory right now. Let’s share what we are grateful for.
DO EXERCISE
Do you notice how you instantly feel better when you focus on being grateful for the things that you have? The more we focus on being grateful the easier it is for us to see all the good things that the Lord is already doing for us. The Lord is always taking care of us, He's protecting us, He's providing for us, He is leading us to all the things that will make us the happiest that we can possibly be, not just for this life on earth but also for Heaven. Sometimes when the Lord is providing for us, we will not get every single thing that we want, but the Lord is making sure that we are getting everything that we need to be saved and closer to Him. So today as we go home and spend time with our loved ones and share a delicious meal, let’s take a moment to look around and be grateful to the Lord for providing us with all these wonderful blessings. Let’s be grateful for our family, for the food, for our community, for the gift of being alive. Let us take a moment and say thank you to the Lord, because when we didn't get what we wanted, He gave us exactly what we needed. Amen.