Just Ask

 

When she was in middle school, one of our daughters enjoyed gymnastics until it became fiercely competitive.  It was no longer a matter of signing up for a particular class, but now auditioning for and trying to win a slot on the competitive team.  But our daughter did not want to compete.  She wanted to learn gymnastics and just enjoy it.  When she did not make the cut, she was sad.  “I just want to do the work outs,” she said.  I suggested that she approach the coach and tell her that.  “Just ask,” I said.

It didn’t even occur to her that she could ask.  That possibility was not even on her radar.

The outcome surprised her.  She was allowed after all to work out and train with the team.  But even more importantly, she learned to “just ask,” in so many situations at school and later in her career.

It never even occurs to us that we too can ask God, no matter how likely or impossible the situation or the possible results. Do we even think of asking? 

But it is in the very act of asking, the tectonic plates of the world begin to shift.  Our thoughts are changed, our hearts are changed, and we even begin to ask differently.  God may or may not alter our circumstances.  And He does not change.  But we do.

Jesus said, Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find.  Knock, and it will be opened to you.  Matthew 7. 7

This passage is not a magic formula to manipulate God.  God does not work that way, nor does prayer.  Note the sequence:  Ask and Seek and Knock.    Something always happens when we pray.  And God delights in surprising us.  We don’t always know what we are praying for.  We cannot know how God will respond.  Sometimes it never occurs to us to ask God about it.

In The Hobbit, Gandalf points out, “You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.”

One of the greatest things we can pray is not that God would give us everything we want and ask of Him, but that He would reveal Himself to us.  Praying not that we would get what we are looking for, but oh, so much deeper than that.

Ask, seek, knock.  Praying is about all those things.  God does not expect –nor want-- an elaborate boardroom presentation, spelling out our carefully planned justifications for needing something, wanting something, and how God should behave according to our vision in this situation.  Just ask. And listen.

God may provide an open door, or an exit, and maybe not, but always a strength that is not our own. God may enlarge our brains to think about something in a new way, coming at it from a different angle. (“Where did that come from?”)  And as an added “side of fries,” God also includes His great and mighty tweaking of our hearts.  Through praying, He trains us to trust Him more.

Because whether in the next ten minutes or six months or twenty years from now, we are going to need to know how to trust Him more, like knowing how to put on an oxygen mask in a matter of life or despair.  Praying is not just building our trust in God, but God multiplying His strength in us. 

In all our thinking, pondering, worrying, research and calculated plans, do we ask, “What do I feel God is saying about this?”  Have we neglected to ask Him about it?  There is a monumental gap between what if we prayed about it?  And what if we didn’t?

“Because you prayed to Me…”  Isaiah 37. 21

                Nothing can remain the same.

 And if we do not pray?  We are the ones who miss His wonders.

                                 We miss Him in this.

Ask.

Listen.

Expect.

Repeat.

Invite Him in.

When we finally come before Him, asking God to show us who He is, we recognize God is a lot bigger in real life than we ever imagined, so much kinder, gracious and merciful.  He does not just take our requests into His hands.  He holds us in His arms.  God has loved us all along.  It is not that we need to wait on the Lord.  He has been waiting for us.

When it comes down to it, just ask.  Pray faithfully.  Ask Me.  And watch what happens.