God Gives Good Gifts Always
Daily Scripture
Matthew 7:7-11
7 “Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks, receives. Whoever seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door is opened. 9 Who among you will give your children a stone when they ask for bread? 10 Or give them a snake when they ask for fish? 11 If you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
Scholar N. T. Wright knew how these verses may make you feel. “When I read a passage like this I find it very hard to believe…. Does Jesus really mean that God is going to answer every request we make?” * Maybe you’ve been disappointed: “I tried it—it didn’t work. I really needed that job I prayed for, and I didn’t get it.” Maybe it seems absurd to pray for impossibilities, like the student unready for a geography test who prayed, “Lord, please make Bogota the capital of Poland!” Jesus was not giving us a formula for getting whatever we want but teaching that God is a generous Father.
- William Barclay knew why prayer may seem to “fail”: “God will always answer our prayers… in God’s way, which will be the way of perfect wisdom and of perfect love. Often if God answered our prayers as we… desired it would be the worst thing possible for us. In our ignorance we often ask for gifts which would be our ruin. Jesus tells us, not only that God will answer, but that God will answer in wisdom and in love.” ** Can you say of any of your letdowns, as Garth Brooks sang, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”? ***
- Is disappointment a reason not to pray? Wright said no, calling this “one of the most sparkling and generous sets of promises anywhere in the Bible.” He noted that James 4:3 has “stern warnings about asking for the wrong sort of things,” and any full discussion of prayer needs to consider this. But Jesus taught us to pray for God’s will AND for what we need here and now. Wright asks: “So: what’s stopping us?” **** Can you trust God’s goodness enough to keep praying? What would it be like to view prayer as a relationship rather than a transaction?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, you promised that when I ask, God will give “good things” in answer. I realize there are times when I define “good” differently than you do. Grow my trust so I keep an ongoing, honest prayer conversation with you always active, even when answers don’t come as I expect. Amen.
GPS Insights
Ginny Howell
Ginny Howell, who serves as the Worship Experience Director for Resurrection, wrote today's Insights. She leads the church’s efforts to provide radical hospitality and an excellent worship experience across all of our locations. She’s a mom to three, g-momma to one sweet little boy, and shares much of her time with her closest companion, a rescued Pit Bull named Lola.
It feels like we are living in the Anxious Age. You know, like the Ice Age or the Stone Age, a significant enough span of history that we’ve attributed a descriptive name to it so we can make sense of what was going on at that time. I would define the Anxious Age as a period with an overwhelming amount of external stimulus that has a major impact on the mental and physical health of generations. Characterized by influencers and social media comparison as well as a lack of adequate community mental health resources and meaningful face-to-face social connections, even our retail interactions have taken us away from small moments of human contact and now customarily force electronic engagement instead of personal attention.
As we live out this history in real time, I wonder what future generations will think of us. Are we over sensitive? Do we care too much what other people think? Do we just need to get used to this is how it is, or will we take actions that change the status quo? Only time will tell.
I think all of the external noise in our lives moves us away from living life as today’s Scripture teaches us. In verse 7 we read, “Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.”
For every scenario my brain can ponder, I can come up with three ways it could go wrong before I think about what could go right. I can describe in detail why I should not be the one to receive, or how no amount of searching will lead to what I hope to find. And I’m an optimist!
Maybe this is a me problem, but I bet you have some idea of what I’m talking about. How are your shoulders–would they come down just a bit if you exhaled and stopped trying to be productive for a minute? How do you feel when there is silence? Does it make you want to drink it in or does your brain fill that space with this thing and that thing and the next thing and the next thing?
I find today’s Scripture a refreshing reminder that I don’t hold it all together. This invitation to ask and seek and knock offers a different way to be. One where I don’t have to hold the weight of what comes next, but where I can relax in knowing that the God of grace and the God of love is at work for and through me.
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Wright, N. T., Matthew for Everyone, Part 1: Chapters 1-15 (The New Testament for Everyone) (pp. 71-72). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.
** William Barclay, Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Matthew—Volume 1 Chapters 1–10 (Revised Edition). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976, p. 272.
*** Click here for the story behind the Garth Brooks song.
**** Wright, ibid., pp. 72-73.
