Daily Devo w/ Pastor Eric September 13, 2021
The Problem w/ “Name It and Claim it.”
Matthew 7:7-11, NLT - “Keep on asking, and you
will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on
knocking, and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to
everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. “You parents—if your children ask for a loaf
of bread, do you give them a stone instead?
Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good
gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts
to those who ask him.
A quick take on this teaching from
our Lord is that if we want something from God, just keep asking. If we want to
find something, just keep looking and we will find it and if we just keep
banging on the door, eventually God will open it. There are at least a couple of problems with
this simplistic view though, so let’s take a better look. The first problem is that this view suggests
that we can control God by mere persistence.
God will give us whatever we want if we “name it and claim it.” If that were actually true and carried to
it’s logical conclusion, it would mean that the real “God” in this equation is
us. If God has to give us what we ask,
then God is not actually God. I assure
you…that is NOT what Jesus is suggesting here.
The second problem that I will
mention is the things for which we ask.
As a teenager who was really angry, I once prayed for an enemy to
die. On another occasion, feeling especially
desperate, I suggested to God that it wouldn’t be the worst thing for me to
die. I’m really glad God didn’t answer
that literal death wish. Even now,
I find myself asking God for things that
later, I realize are foolish requests. I
am really thankful that God is actually God and I am definitely not. I now trust God to ignore foolish requests
AND to shed more light on the requests that I make that aren’t so foolish.
This is why Jesus adds the bit
about being decent parents. Most parents
realize that you shouldn’t give kids everything they ask for and most parents
also want to give good things to their children. My Dad used to say to me as a kid something
to the effect, “you watch, Eric; as you get older, I will get smarter.” I now realize that he didn’t actually think
he would get smarter (although I think that he has). He knew that I would begin to see the
intelligence of his actions towards me as I got older and wiser. He was right.
I’m glad about some of the decisions he made that, at the time, I
thought made no sense. Maturity allows
us to see wisdom is former “foolishness.”
A mature relationship with God
gains the same kind of wisdom. We keep
on asking God for what we want. However,
at the same time, we trust God to help us see the foolishness of some requests
and the wisdom of NOT getting what we want in the moment. We trust in God’s nature in the same way a
child children can trust parents to want good things for them.
Question: Are there
some prayers that you have prayed in the past that you are now glad God did not
do what you desired?
Prayer: God, we trust
you to give us what is good even though we don’t always recognize it as
such. Thank you for not only enduring,
but encouraging our sometimes ill-conceived prayers, for in praying them, we
learn over time of your wisdom and goodness.
Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for teachers today.
Song: Unanswered
Prayers - Garth Brooks
No comments:
Post a Comment