SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/25/2021 11:39 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “God’s
Promise to His Children Demands It”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matt. 7:7-8
Message of the verses: “7 "Ask, and
it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened
to you. 8 “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him
who knocks it will be opened.”
I
mentioned in our last SD that we had two more points to look at that John
MacArthur brought up in his commentary on this section of Matthew. He writes “Second, the one who claims this
promise must be living in obedience to his Father. ‘Whatever we ask we receive from Him,’ John
says, ‘because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in
His sight’ (1 John 3:22).
“Third,
our motive in asking must be right. ‘You
ask and do not receive,’ explains James, ‘because you ask with wrong motives,
so that you may spend it on your pleasures’ (James 4:3). God does not obligate Himself to answer selfish,
carnal requests from His children.
“Finally,
we must be submissive to His will. If we
are trying to serve both God and mammon (Matt. 6:24), we cannot claim this
promise. ‘For let not that man expect
that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man,
unstable in all his ways’ (James 1:7-8).
As John makes clear, ‘This is the confidence which we have before Him,
that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us’ (1 John
5:14). To have confidence in answered prayer on any other basis
is to have a false and presumptuous confidence that the Lord makes no promise
to honor.”
I
think that we can understand that this is not a kind of blank check that are in
these verses. We are told in this passage
to ask, seek, and then to knock and the idea is that of continuance and
constancy as it should probably read “keep on asking; keep on seeking; keep on
knocking.” Be consistent with your
prayer requests to the Lord. I might add
another thing here and that is you seem to be doing all the right things in
praying for something and still not getting an answer then fasting could be
something that you do in order to have the Lord answer your prayers. If your request is so important then fasting
should be something that you desire to do.
Look at the following passage from the 58th chapter of
Isaiah: “3 ’Why have we fasted and You
do not see? Why have we humbled ourselves and You do not notice?’
Behold, on the day of your fast you find your desire, And drive hard all
your workers. 4 “Behold, you fast for contention and strife and to strike with
a wicked fist. You do not fast like you do today to make your voice
heard on high. 5 “Is it a fast like this which I choose, a day for a man to
humble himself? Is it for bowing one’s head like a reed And for spreading out
sackcloth and ashes as a bed? Will you call this a fast, even an acceptable day
to the LORD?” (Isaiah 58:3-5). Isaiah
speaks of the wrong motivation for fasting and then in verses 6-7 he gives nine
proper ways to fast. “6 “Is this not the
fast which I choose, To
loosen the bonds of wickedness, To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free
And break every yoke?
7 “Is it not to divide
your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into the house; When you see the naked, to cover
him; And not to
hide yourself from your own flesh?”
MacArthur
writes about these three words ask, knock, and seek: “We also see a progression of intensity in
the three verbs, from simple asking to the more aggressive seeking to the still
more aggressive knocking. Yet none of
the figures is complicated or obscure.
The youngest child knows what is is to ask, seek, and knock.”
He
continues in the final paragraph: “The
progression in intensity also suggests that our sincere requests to the Lord
are not to be passive. Whatever of His
will we know to do we should be doing.
If we are asking the Lord to help us find a job, we should be looking
for a job ourselves while we await His guidance and provision. If we are out of food, we should be trying to
earn money to buy it if we can. If we
want help in confronting a brother about a sin, we should be trying to find out
all we can about him and his situation and all we can about what God’s Word
says on the subject involved. It is not
faith but presumption to ask the Lord to provide more when we are not
faithfully using what He has already given.”
In
conclusion I believe that prayer is lining up God’s will with my will and so as
I continue in my own life to pray for revival in my life, in my family’s life,
in my Sunday school’s life, our country and our world I must believe that this
is what the Lord desires me to do, and I am coming to the conclusion that
fasting has to be involved in this process too.
1/25/2021 12:16 PM
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