I’ve been contemplating lately what it means to ask and receive and the context of that promise when Jesus spoke it during His Sermon on the Mount. I think it’s really easy to take promises like that and twist them to fit into our own ideas rather than looking at what God’s heart is when He makes them with His people. Some of my thoughts on this topic are about how to declare with power the promises of God but also have open hands in everything (I touched briefly on this in a previous post and will probably write more in depth about that specific thought later), but for right now I want to focus more on the times that God has very clearly responded and given when I have asked in order to receive. Part of my problem, though, is that I sometimes ask for things without fully considering what it will look like to have my request granted, so when I get an answer that is not as simple as I was hoping for, I have a hard time recognizing that it really is an answer to prayer. For example, when I ask Him to make me a person of faith, why am I surprised when my life becomes a faith-building exercise in which the only option is to cling desperately to my Savior? Or when I pray for Him to increase my patience, that instead of handing me a neat little box of a strong dose of patience He allows me to go through a season of waiting to learn to be content and joyful and patient? I catch myself so often feeling frustrated with whatever situation I find myself in and God gently reminds me that He is teaching me and growing me in ways that I cannot see, and sometimes too in ways that I ask Him to. Isn’t He so patient and gracious and kind? I am so glad that He knows what He’s doing. And when He is cultivating those fruits in my life, He tends to be much more about the process than just the outcome and invites me to join Him fully in the growing. He invites me to not worry so much about when I’ll begin seeing the fruit but rather allow Him to finish the good work in me that He started (Philippians 1:6). Now, don’t get me wrong, I am often not as excited about joining God in the process as I am about getting to the end goal. It’s a daily struggle for me to intentionally shift my focus back to Him instead of getting caught up in the growing pains or the thought of “how good it will be when…” fill in the blank. But He’s teaching me, and helping me, and always inviting me. And when I do choose to ask Him to help me be fully present with Him, I’m reminded of how rich and delightful it is to see so personally the subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) workings of the Holy Spirit. And even though sometimes it’s scary to ask the Lord to grow in me things such as strength and courage and joy despite the circumstances, I would far rather be a person of strength and courage and joy in the Lord because He taught me through difficult situations in with each of those qualities could grow, than have the easiest life and be spiritually weak, timid, and joyless.
(Written during a very long, frustrating, and sometimes discouraging process of learning patience.)
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