What if you actually received everything you’ve ever wanted from family and friends this Christmas?
What’s on your Christmas List?
A new drill set?
A set of elegant dishes?
A new puppy?
Maybe your prayer request list is long and weighing you down and your true Christmas wish is to see some answered prayers…
Out of every possible thing you could ask God to do, which is most pressing on your heart and in your thoughts? To what lengths would you go to see it answered?
What if God answered: “no” or “not yet”?
One of the greatest challenges in following Jesus, is having faith like Jesus’.
In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, He speaks to us about how to ask our Heavenly Father for anything- in faith, a faith that believes that whatever the answer, “yes,” “no,” or “not yet,” that you can trust in God’s goodness as the One who oversees our lives. In the Bible, in Gospel of Matthew, chapter 7, verses 7-11, Jesus speaks to us about making prayer requests “in faith”:
7 “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? 10 Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”
Our humanity is like a coin with two sides. Sometimes we want to receive more than give and sometimes we want to outgive everyone around us. Perhaps the challenge for each one of us during this Holy Season, during which we celebrate the Advent of the Baby Jesus, is to practice asking God with persistence, for the desires we know that He has truly put into our hearts to be completely fulfilled.
Will you trust God’s “yes,” God’s “not yet,” and even God’s “no”?
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