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.

Chasing Squirrels

 

While walking with one of our daughters in her Memphis neighborhood, her dog Loretta was suddenly attracted by a squirrel running towards a nearby tree.  The leash tightened, but instead of just fiercely pulling the dog back and shouting “No!”, our daughter very calmly said, “Leave it.”  Loretta looked at her prey for a moment more, but then just walked on down the sidewalk.  The situation was turned around not by a harsh command, or even by physical restraint, but by what they had practiced on many such daily walks around the block. 

Leave it.  Loretta immediately knew what to do, because she had been taught and trained how to respond.   She possessed a tool in her toolbox for such a situation as this.

We have no idea what is coming across our path.

We too are distracted by curiosities of all shapes and sizes, fascinating things that promise what they cannot fulfill.  It’s not God’s lack of guidance, nor familiarity, nor the scale of difficulty that throws us off, but the strong scents of comfort, power, desire, and the momentary happiness of chasing an elusive and sometimes imaginary squirrel through the neighborhood.

God does not scream “STOP!” for no good reason.  He whispers, “Leave it.  There is so much more that I can give you.”

Our problem is that we try to do life alone, as if there is no God at all, or that what He says makes no difference.  “That thing over there will make you happy,” the adversary promised Eve and continues to promise us.

We forget the brokenness of the past, and the impossible thickets we have tried to navigate on our own, even while carrying the back-breaking weight of unwieldy, self-multiplying burdens.  Our memory tries to minimize the heart-ache so we can justify this present squirrel-chase.  We no longer call it a “temptation” when we really want it that bad.  Excuses and justifications come in multi-packs at Costco.  Always available, always way more than we will ever use.

What do we need to leave and keep on walking? How is God trying to guide us in this situation?  Are we listening to Him or to our own excuses?  What are we practicing in our little everyday choices?  Turn off that show, close that book right in the middle of a sentence, don’t even look at that website, navigate a viral relationship in a gracious and unexpected way, wear something different, decide ahead of time how to respond and not react, and make choices that change our trajectory.

If we are Christ-followers, nothing can remain the same.

What do we need to leave, lay down, pick up, hold tight, and run with?  We have no idea the consequences of sprinting after that squirrel, and then next week, something even more evasive in heavy traffic.

But perhaps even more, what do we need to cover in prayer and leave it?  Not abandoning deep concerns on the gravelly side of the road, but leaving it in our Father’s hands and designs.  Cover it in prayer, not suffocate it with increasing layers of angst.  Anxiety is not a form of praying.  Worry never makes things better.

Are we trying to take on something that is not ours to solve or control?  Are we avoiding what we do need to do?  Are we trying to hold tight in our arms, or on a leash, our pet desires and our favorite beloved anxieties?  Or are we trusting what God says in His Word:

For My thoughts are not Your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55. 8-9

Saturate it in prayer.  But then, leave it.  Give God some elbow room and see what He does with it.  Look for God’s redeeming work, aware when He motions us to step in, and when to leave it with Him in His goodness and in His timing. Even if we don’t understand.  Even when we think we know better than God.

The way we learn to walk with God around the block on an ordinary morning profoundly impacts how we will walk a year from now, twenty years from now, how we will finish our course, and what we leave behind as a legacy or witness for those around us…. and even for those yet unborn.

Prayer does not put us into control.  Praying helps us realize God is God, and we are not.  Prayer puts God in His rightful place.  And allows us to acknowledge and recognize that reality.

Prayer empowers us to live that way.  Every moment of praying prepares us for the next spin around the block.  Not just avoiding the potholes or ignoring those enticing squirrels or scents, but responding to His amazing trajectory for our lives of which we are not aware

Praying is how we get there.  Daily, even moment by moment, God aligns our hearts with His.  God helps us practice not impersonal “do this” behaviors, but how to “be His” in our walk with Him.  No leash needed.  Just loving Him.

And listening to God whisper, “Leave it.  I’ve got something far better for you.  Trust Me.”

The Bulky, Scary, and Too Much to Carry

 

Last year, it was my privilege to meet the school bus on Tuesday afternoons and greet four of our elementary-age grandchildren.  One of our then first-graders would always beg for me to carry his backpack home from the bus stop.  And every week, I took the backpack and replied, “What do you have in here?  Bricks?”

After snacks, I always asked about homework, and this little one would say, “I don’t think I have any.”

“Let’s take a look.”  I lifted his stuffed heavy backpack to the kitchen table and looked inside. One item at a time, layer by layer, I began spreading out the contents, the treasured collections of a curious little boy.   Crumpled worksheets already graded, his school-supplied Chromebook, a partially eaten lunch undated, an empty metal water bottle, several library books (“I was wondering where those were,” he chuckled), notices about past school events, a couple beloved small stuffed animals, a wrinkled t-shirt, dirty socks, his jacket that had been lost, and at the bottom, well, there was his new list of spelling words for the week and a practice sheet for subtraction. 

It was all spread out on the table.  The bulky, the scary, and the too much to carry.   

One of the ways the Old Testament talks about praying is spreading out our personal stuff before the LORD -- the good, the bad and the ugly. 

Hezekiah received the letter from the hand of the messengers, and read it, and Hezekiah went up to the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD.  And Hezekiah prayed… Isaiah 37. 14-15

Like Hezekiah in the midst of panic-inducing turmoil, praying is our first response, not last resort.

Not laying before God our pre-conceived answers or carefully manipulated outcomes, but coming with hands spread out and open to receive what God lays before us.  Spreading out, clearing out, handing off our griefs, fears, and anxieties, and trusting Him instead. 

What does prayer have to do with all this?  Everything. A literal come-to-Jesus moment.

Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest….For My yoke is easy, and My burden in light.  Matthew 11. 28, 30

The tipping point, when we are so burdened and overwhelmed, is asking God for help, not shirking our responsibilities, but unloading twenty pounds of unnecessary rocks of anxiety in our backpacks that God never intended us to drag along in the first place.

We spread out before Him what appears as heavy baggage we have to carry, wounds still unhealed from the past, favorite grudges we just can’t let go, and even irritations, like pebbles in our shoes, the unseen, distracting, and the hurtful.  Spreading out allows God to reveal what is real and what is not, what is essential, and what is just toxic junk handicapping our hearts. 

When we pray and open up our hearts before God, the things that defeat us are not so insurmountable at all. Worries and frightful things are revealed to be as they are, imaginary dragons that occupy way too much brain space, clog up our emotions, take up a demanding residence for us to care for fulltime, and push us to our limits.

It’s easy to see what others need to deal with.  But we all have stuff in our heavy-laden backpacks that needs to be prayed through.  What do we need to spread out before the Lord?  The busy details of this overscheduled day, the accumulated layers of fears that weigh us down, and way-down deep in the bottom the fierce and overwhelming foes that we cannot even begin to face.  Let Me carry that for you.

When we spread out these things, we are not revealing anything new and mysterious to God.  He sees and knows already.  But spreading and praying out into the open where we can see them in the sunlight, we find them faded, broken and without any power over us.  When we spread them out, God always unfolds something new.