Ask Not What God Can do For You, Ask What You Can Do For God - Be Holy

My Utmost For His Highest

 

Everyone who asks receives… —Luke 11:10

 

“‘If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God…’ (James 1:5), but be sure that you do lack wisdom before you ask. You cannot bring yourself to the point of spiritual reality anytime you choose. The best thing to do, once you realize you are not spiritually real, is to ask God for the Holy Spirit, basing your request on the promise of Jesus Christ (see Luke 11:13). The Holy Spirit is the one who makes everything that Jesus did for you real in your life.  “Everyone who asks receives….” This does not mean that you will not get if you do not ask, but it means that until you come to the point of asking, you will not receive from God (see Matthew 5:45). To be able to receive means that you have to come into the relationship of a child of God, and then you comprehend and appreciate mentally, morally, and with spiritual understanding, that these things come from God.” CHAMBERS

 

If I had to guess, I would say what when most people think about asking and receiving their minds go to worldly concerns immediately.  God is primarily concerned about your spiritual, eternal wellbeing.  OK, here we go.  Jesus came to the earth why?  Uh-huh, to save us from the consequence of our sin.  To restore us “spiritually” to the Father. And what did Jesus say, a number of times, about worrying about worldly matters, like food and clothing?  He said “Don’t”, instead trust the Father.  He said the two things that you need to love more than anything else was … yep .. God and others … but not the things of this world.  We are told not to be anxious about anything, but pray, and what will happen?  We will be at peace with respect to  the “anything” that is making us anxious.  I am trying to influence how you look at prayer.  You know of course that because God is Holy, we cannot approach Him with unconfessed sin, right?  That includes prayer. We tend to trivialize our sin .. ignore it really .. and focus on what we want.  Pray to God whenever we want.  I mean the Bible says to pray without ceasing, right?  We are often encouraged to pray as one of the disciplines of our faith, but not to the exclusion of having clean hearts. We were created for God’s good pleasure, not the other way around.   ELGIN

 

Holiness.  “Holiness, holiness is what I long for.  Holiness is what I need.  Holiness is what You want from me.  Take my heart and mold it, take my mind transform it, take my will and conform it to Yours, to Yours, Oh Lord.”