Hello! Hope you all are having a great Thursday so far! It’s a beautiful day here, although it still seems strange for the weather to be so warm in October. I won’t complain. We are officially moved in to the new place…as in I finished unpacking all the boxes yesterday afternoon! Praise the Lord. Seriously, it finally is starting to feel like home around here, and I love it:)
I know I’ve been talking about prayer a lot lately, but it is something God has been laying on my heart. He keeps bringing up different scripture on the topic, and when that happens it is usually a silent queue for me to pay attention, and learn something. So, here is something I read this morning…
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
Mark 11:24
Whatever I ask for? Well, not exactly. See, so often we ask God for the things that WE want, and expect him just to drop it into our laps. We ask for different things out of our own selfish desires, and are then surprised and angry when we don’t receive. I mean the Bible tells us to ask and receive, right? Actually, we are forgetting one key component. Jesus talks about this component later in Mark on the night he is to be crucified. He asks God to take his cup from him (or to take his suffering away), but then he backs up a step and say, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
We may think we have a pretty good idea of the things that we want and need, but in reality, we don’t—only God does. He knows what we need, and he wants his will to be done in our lives. Instead of asking him for whatever our selfish hearts desire, we need to first ask that his will be done in our lives. Then, when our will lines up with his will for our lives, we can ask him for the things he wants to give us (according to his will), and expect to receive them through faith.
Let me put it this way. We can ask for anything we want, but if it doesn’t line up with what we need to fulfill his will in our lives, we won’t receive it. This is where a lot of people become frustrated, and start to believe that God doesn’t answer their prayers. He does answer them—in his perfect timing, and in accordance with his will in our lives. If we are diligently and honestly seeking his will to be done in our lives, then he will grant us the things that we ask for, because those things will be within his perfect will.
On the night he was to be crucified, Jesus would probably have liked to have the suffering and pain taken away. It would have been easy for him to ask God to take him from the scene. But, he knew that leaving was not God’s will, and that he had to follow through with his imminent death so that later he could be resurrected, and in doing so save us from death by our own sinful nature. The point? Seek God’s will to be done first in your life before you ask him for the things you think you need—you might be surprised by what he shows you.
Hope that makes sense—it’s just what God has been really speaking to me about this week. Hope you are having a great day! God Bless:)
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