God is our heavenly Father, and as our heavenly Father He gives us good things. There are times when God asks, “What do you need? What do you seek? What do you want?” We reply, and He takes from His abundance and gives it to us – like a bucket dipped into the ocean. Then there are times when God comes to us and says, “This is for you.” He has something – one particular thing – in His hand, and the implied question is, “Will you receive this?”
What is the disposition and attitude, the inclination and desire, the direction and decision of your heart? Is it to participate in God’s control, to enter into God’s action, to respond to God’s initiative?
In Jesus Christ, we have been saved from a life that is self-centered, from a selfish heart irreversibly bent in upon itself. Having been saved, we are now set free from ourselves, but more importantly set free to pursue God, to obey God, to love and to worship God. Our selfishness is killed and we are resurrected; we are now made new and are being made new with new desires and new ambitions that bow before the victorious cross of Jesus and look up towards His everlasting throne.
Before a prayer is heard in the mouth it is formed in the heart.
There is a way of praying, a way of seeking and serving God, that rejects God. When Israel asked Samuel for a king, they were asking God for a king (1 Samuel 8:1-9). In reality, they were asking God for something they wanted at the expense of Himself: “God, we want what you can give, but we don’t want you” (1 Samuel 8:7). Yes, we can ask for and receive what God gives, yet that doesn’t mean we love and serve Him. Such a person, such a people, will be dominated by self and not by God. But as Christians, as the Church of Jesus Christ, we should have no personal agenda but that of the Master.
The heart of our praying is either to choose for ourselves, or to choose God for ourselves.
We can ask God for anything. But let us remember He is the answer to all our praying and all our prayers. He doesn’t want to give us anything that will cause us to love Him less. If what we receive diminishes rather than multiplies our love for Jesus Christ, either we have asked and received with the wrong motives or it’s not the One, True, Living God whom we are seeking and who is answering us.
When God gives us what He wants, He’s not always giving us what we asked for. But if every request and every answer to every request at the end leads us to Himself, then He has given us Himself; and what more could we be after?
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