Yes, you can "annoy" God!

[TominAdelaide]

From “A Treatise on the Knowledge and Love of Our Lord Jesus Christ” by Fr Jean-Baptiste Saint-Jure SJ:

Let a man ask with faith, says St James, nothing wavering. Our prayers are ordinarily ineffectual, because we are wanting in this confidence; while the prayers of the Saints were omnipotent, because they were animated with it; hence God, when He wished to punish sinners, told the Saints not to impede Him by their prayers in the execution of His design. Thus, He warned Moses to desist, saying, Let me alone (Exodus 32:10); because prayers full of confidence cause the arms to fall from His hands. It is, then, very advantageous before, and even after, our prayers to form acts of heroic confidence in God, believing that we shall certainly obtain what we ask, if it be expedient for us: we should even, after the example of the Saints, be as sure of it as if we had already received it. Lord, said the Royal Prophet, let Thy mercies be upon us, distribute Thy gifts to us, according to our hope in Thee; that is, as Theodoret explains, according to the greatness of our hope in Thee, that our hopes may be the measure of Thy liberality: regulate according to it Thy acquiescence in our demands. We must ask of God great things for ourselves and for others, because they cost Him no more than little things, and, besides, the greater the things we ask, the higher become our ideas of His goodness and power. We can ask Him, for instance, to make us very noble instruments of His glory in this life and in the next, to give us grace to do great things for His service, to give us deep humility, founded on our knowledge of His greatness and our nothingness, heroic patience to bear up under our afflictions, unutterable meekness to support injuries tranquilly, perfect submission of will and judgment to our superiors, a great spirit of prayer, but of that kind of prayer which will render us better, more mortified, more detached from creatures; above all, an ardent love for God and our neighbor; that he would make us die to the movements of corrupt nature, and be most submissive to those of His grace. Let us tell Him, as we make each petition, that we expect this favor of His goodness, and though He may not accord us the high degree of virtue we ask, because this might not be what His Providence has designed for us, our confidence will, nevertheless, oblige Him to give with greater abundance than He had otherwise done.

 

[Beryllos]

I read it but still don’t understand your title. How can we annoy God? Do the quotation marks mean it is not annoy, but rather persist in prayer, or some other sense of the word annoy?

 

[TominAdelaide]

Thanks for replying to my post Beryllos. I should clarify that I certainly don’t think anyone can really annoy God. I just posted that quote as I thought it was humorous that Moses had such great power with God that it’s as if God had to ask Moses to leave him alone because he was thwarting the Divine Will (as if Moses had better judgment and was more powerful than Almighty God, who holds the entire universe in the palm of His hand as if it were nothing! (cf. Isaiah 40:12-17)). The parable of the unjust judge (Luke 18:1-8) makes it crystal clear that God loves His children to importune Him with their requests, and grant them their requests too!

From St Alphonsus Liguori (A Short Treatise on Prayer):

Prayer must be confident: No one has hoped in the Lord and been disappointed (Ecclus. 2:11). The Holy Ghost assures us that it never has happened that anyone who placed his trust in God has been deceived. He once said to St. Gertrude that a person who prays to him with confidence does him, in a certain way, such violence that he cannot but listen to him and grant all his requests. “Prayer,” said St. John Climacus, “is a pious way of forcing God” (Scal.28). Prayer does violence to him; but a violence which he loves and delights in. “This violence is pleasing to God” (Apolog.). In the “Our Father,” which is the prayer which Jesus Christ himself taught us as a means whereby to obtain all the graces necessary for our salvation, how are we made to address God? Not as Lord, not as Judge, but as Father, “our Father,” because he wishes us to ask God for grace with the same confidence as a son, when he is hungry or ill, asks his own father for food or medicine. If a son is famished, he has only to tell his father, and he will be immediately fed; if he has been bitten by a venomous serpent, he has only to show the wound, and his father will apply the best remedy that he has. For this cause, our Savior has told us: All things whatsoever you ask when you pray, believe that you shall receive, and they shall come unto you (Mark 11:24). We have, then, only to pray to God with confidence in order to obtain all that we desire.

From St Alphonsus Ligouri (Sunday Sermons):

Men feel annoyed at being frequently and importunately asked for a favour. But God exhorts us to pray frequently; and, instead of being dissatisfied, he is pleased with those who repeatedly ask his graces. Cornelius à Lapide says, that “God wishes us to persevere in prayer, even to importunity." (in Luc., cap. xi.) St. Jerome says: “This importunity with the Lord is seasonable.” (in Luc. xi.) That God is pleased with frequent and persevering prayer, may be inferred from the words of Jesus Christ: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.” (Luke xi. 9.) It was not enough to have said ask but he added, seek, knock; in order to show, that, during our whole lives, we should be as importunate in supplicating the divine graces as beggars are in asking alms. Though they should be refused, they do not cease to cry out, or to knock at the door; they persist in asking relief till they obtain it.

 

[TominAdelaide]

From St Alphonsus Ligouri (Sunday Sermons):

If, then, we wish to obtain from God the gift of perseverance, we must ask it from him continually and with importunity. We must ask it when we rise in the morning, in our meditations, in hearing Mass, in our visits to the blessed sacrament, in going to bed at night, and particularly when we are tempted by the devil to commit any sin. Thus, we must always have our mouths open praying to God, and saying: Lord, assist me; give me light; give me strength; keep thy hand upon me, and do not abandon me. We must do violence to the Lord. “Such violence," says Tertullian, ”is agreeable to God." The violence which we offer to God by repeated prayers does not offend him: on the contrary, it is pleasing and acceptable in his sight. “Prayer,” according to St. John Climacus, “piously offers violence to God.” Our supplications compel him, but in a manner grateful to him. He takes great complacency in seeing his mother honoured, and therefore wishes, as St. Bernard says, that all the graces we receive should pass through her hands. Hence the holy doctor exhorts us “to seek grace, and to seek it through Mary, because she is a mother, and her prayer cannot be fruitless.” (de Aquæd.) When we ask her to obtain any grace for us, she graciously hears our petitions and prays for us: and the prayers of Mary are never rejected.

From St Claude de la Colombiere (Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence):

It is a strange fact that though Christ repeatedly and solemnly promised to answer our prayers, most Christians are continually complaining that He does not do so. We cannot account for this by saying that the reason is because of the kind of things we ask for, since He included everything in His promise—All things whatsoever you shall ask. Nor can we attribute it to the unworthiness of those who ask, for His promise extended to everybody without exception—Whoever asks shall receive. Why is it then that so many prayers remain unanswered? Can it be that as most people are never satisfied, they make such excessive and impatient demands on God that they tire and annoy Him by their importunity? The case is just the opposite. The only reason why we obtain so little from God is because we ask for so little and we are not insistent enough. Christ promised on behalf of His Father that He would give us everything, even the very smallest things. But He laid down an order to be observed in all that we ask, and if we do not obey this rule we are unlikely to obtain anything. He tells us in St. Matthew: Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice and all these things shall be given to you besides.

 

[TominAdelaide]

More on the same topic from St Claude de la Colombiere (Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence):

If you want all your prayers to be answered without fail and oblige God to meet all your wishes, the first thing is never to stop praying. Those who get tired after praying for a time are lacking in either humility or confidence, and so do not deserve to be heard. You would think that they expected their requests to be obeyed at once as if they were orders. Surely we know that God resists the proud and shows His favors to the humble. Won’t our pride allow us to ask more than once for the same thing? It shows very little trust in God’s goodness to give up so soon and take a delay for an absolute refusal. Once we have really understood just how far God’s goodness extends we can never believe that we have been refused or that He wishes to deprive us of hope. Rather, the more He makes us keep on asking for something we want, the more confident we should feel that we shall eventually obtain it. We can begin to doubt that our prayer has been heard only when we notice we have stopped praying. If after a year we find that our prayer is as fervent as it was at the beginning, then we need not doubt about the success of our efforts, and instead of losing courage after so long a delay, we should rejoice because we can be certain that our desires will be all the more fully satisfied for the length of time we have prayed. If our first attempts had been quite useless we would not have repeated them so often and we would have lost hope; but as we have kept on in spite of this, there is good reason to believe we shall be liberally rewarded.

As a final word I address myself to those faithful souls kneeling in prayer before the altar and asking God for the graces He is so pleased to hear us asking for. … You who burn with desire to love God and serve Him as He would be served, you who intercede with God for the sake of one who is dear to you, do not grow weary of asking, be steadfast and tireless in your demands. If you are refused today, tomorrow you will obtain everything; if this year brings nothing, the next will bring you abundance. Never think your efforts are wasted. Your every word is numbered and what you receive will be in the measure of the time you have spent asking. Your treasure is piling up and suddenly one day it will overflow to an extent beyond your dreams. Consider the workings of Divine Providence and think that the refusal you meet with now is only God’s stratagem to increase your fervor. … The more He seems to be unwilling, the more you must insist. … I do not deserve the grace I ask, but I do not ask You to give me what I deserve; I ask it through the merits of my Redeemer. … Do not lose courage when you have begun so well to struggle with God. Do not give Him a moment’s rest. He loves the violence of your attack and wants to be overcome by you. Make importunity your watchword, let persistence be a miracle in you. Compel God to throw off the mask and say to you with admiration: ‘Great is thy faith, be it done as thou wishest. I can no longer resist you, you shall have what you desire, in this life and the next.’