On YouTube listen to O praise the name (Anastasis)
How deep the Father love for us, how vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son to make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss, the Father turns His face away,
as wounds which mar the Chosen One bring many sons to glory.
Stuart Townend © 1995 Kingsway's Thank You Music
Thank God for his gift of Salvation
We continue to read ‘the Sermon in the Mount’ Matthew 7: 1-13
And so Jesus says ‘Ask’ Father God and he will respond, but often our experience of asking doesn’t seem to result in what Jesus says will happen. Our experience often feels like we haven’t received or found and the door doesn’t always seem to open. So how do we reconcile Jesus statement and our experience of asking God?
I’m just going to share 3 things which have helped me:
When we think about who God is, we often look at creation and think how amazing God is - we sing about the One who put stars in space, but we don’t often remember that God is also the one who set laws in place to keep the universe functioning. Laws we might have learnt about if we had paid attention to our science teachers in lessons about physics, chemistry and biology. We are all aware of one of those laws, the law of gravity - thing fall – heavy things always fall, apart from one occasion when an iron axe-head floated to the surface of a river, but that account in 2 kings (6:5) is the only occasion I know of when that law of physics was broken.
Rarely does God break the laws of nature, if he regularly did so life would be chaotic. Image if he answered every prayer that was prayed to him about the weather – those praying for the hot weather to remain, while the vegetable growers among you are praying for rain - and many others praying for the temperature to drop. God can and does very occasionally break his own laws of nature, but generally he lets the universe carry on within the rules he set up at the beginning of everything. So sometimes we ask, but the rules of nature mean the answer we want is unlikely to happen.
What if God answered every prayer he received which said ‘Lord help me to pass this exam – I know I haven’t done the revision, but please let me pass it’ (I’m sure I’m not the only one to have prayed that prayer) If God was to answer all of those prayers, I certainly wouldn’t want to be treated by a Christian doctor who had just prayed their way through their exams and had no knowledge about how to mend my body. Neither would I want to be a passenger of a Christian taxi driver who never bothered to learn the highway code, but prayed his way into his job. So sometimes we ask and it just isn’t the right thing to be asking for.
Then on other occasions we know we are praying for something good and right - but when we ask – there doesn’t seem to be any response from God. Well, just as God rarely breaks his laws of the universe, so he never over-rules a person’s free will. A crucial part of being human – of being made in the image of God - is our ability to make our own decisions. We might be praying a prayer where we know we are not asking for the wrong thing but if the answer to that prayer depends on another person making decisions God will prompt them – nudge them – even shout at them. but it always has to be their decision to do things.
So sometimes when we come to God in prayer and we ask – the laws of Nature mean that it is unlikely our prayers will be answered in the way we hope they will. Sometimes we just ask for the wrong thing. And sometimes we ask, but because God values another person’s free-will, we don’t see the outcome we hope for.
Those things should never stop us from asking, because at other times we will see our prayers answered in just the way we hoped, or we see God do something much better than we ever imagined!
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that often our response to unanswered prayer is ‘Why God aren’t you doing anything to answer my prayer.’ God seems to rarely give an answer that question, but if we learn to ask him ‘Where are you God in this situation? We will often find an answer.
Hold that thought and look again at what Jesus said: Ask, seek, then the door will be opened. Seek - don’t seek the answer to ‘why’ – Seek the answer to ‘where’ and then the door will be opened for us to have a better understanding of who God is
On YouTube listen to: If all I had was Christ – We The Kingdom
My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly trust in Jesus’ name.
Christ alone, cornerstone, weak made strong in the Saviour's love.
Through the storm He is Lord, Lord of all.
© 2011 Hillsong Music Publishing
Ask God to reveal to you more of who he is, and how he wants to bless your life.
I will write again on Wednesday - Stephen