Faith Sees as Good Whatever God Has Given

I have a battered notebook that has been with me for so long that four of its pages date back to the birth of each of my sons. In this notebook, I write down the requests—big and small—that I bring to God.

Help my kids to be wise and godly parents.
Who gets my vote this time?
Lord, help my church family to impact our community.

Certainly, my notebook is a record of God’s faithfulness, but even after all these years, I don’t pretend to understand the pattern of scattered checkmarks or the replies from God that they denote for the notebook also chronicles my uneasy relationship with prayer.

At some point, it’s bound to happen to everyone who believingly follows the one who said “when you pray”: the bubble of predictability is pricked and horror comes rushing in regardless of prayers to the contrary. My notebook speaks into this tension.

• Fervent prayer for a missionary friend with cancer – dead six weeks from diagnosis.
• Focused supplication for a marriage to survive… and another… and another. All have dissolved, and are barely a memory now.

Even the Apostle Paul with his inside track to the third heaven never claimed to understand the ways of God.

Instead, he said, “I know whom I have believed.” (2 Tim. 1:12)

Therefore, he took grace — and the power of Christ — as glorious consolation prizes that came instead of the healing for which he prayed three times. (2 Cor. 12:8,9)

Paul took the grace that was given, and that’s where he most beautifully put the power and love of God on display in his life. I wonder how many times God has extended grace to me in the same way, but I missed it because I was busy looking for something else.

Ask, Seek, Knock

Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount may be one of the most mistaught and taken-out-of-context verses in the Bible:

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”
(Matthew 7:7-8)

We love this! It’s like a blank check for the First National Bank of Heaven!

Then, as a parent, I am all ears when Jesus compares God’s good gifts to the giving heart of a loving mum or dad:

"Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11)

Like our sister Eve, we wonder if God is holding out on us.
Like Israel, we wonder if God is for us.
Like a hormonally crazed adolescent, we see only our brittle, little world.

We persist in asking for things that look good to us, but are actually harmful or even dangerous.
We reject what has been given and pine away for the not given.

My thinking gets muddled, but this one thing is certain: God’s motives are above reproach. God has promised not to trick me with a stone when I’ve asked for bread or to scare me with a live snake on my plate when I’ve asked Him for a fish.

But is this evidence enough for me to be grateful for God’s gracious refusals? The truth is, mistaking stones for bread and serpents for fish, I ask God for stones all the time. God wants to give me a fragrant and nourishing loaf, but I ask for the wrong things. I don’t see what God sees.

Whatever Has Been Given

This, then, is the point at which my faith is tested: When the loaf God offers looks like a solid stone to me, will I trust Him and say, “Yes, Lord, I’ll take it. I’ll take it because it’s what has been given?"

When a “no” from God feels like gravel in the teeth, I remember again that prayer is a mysterious partnership. I will not give up on it. My questions do not diminish my belief in the promise and mercy, the forgiveness and welcome that flow from a living relationship with the God of the universe.

Words from an Orthodox morning prayer lend their strength to my frail asking:

“Lord, teach me to treat all that comes to me this day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that your will governs all.”

“Whatever has been given, Lord, if I believe that you are sovereign, I have to believe that purpose and goodness are coming along with it.” This learning sits heavy in the balance, countering my own vision, which is so often out of focus with God’s eye of wisdom.

When it comes to the deep wanting, to the “I won’t let you go unless you bless me” requests that keep me company at the kitchen sink and wake me up in the middle of the night, I’m trusting for grace to accept their outcome.

Praying Together

Lord, whatever the outcome of my prayers, whatever is given, help me to see it as that day’s portion of my daily bread, knowing full well that, in my short-sightedness, I may have been asking you for a stone.

Amen

Let's continue this conversation:

Think back to a time when God said, "No." Has time helped you to see the wisdom of his ways or are you still wondering?

Does the truth of God's sovereignty linked to God's goodness help you to accept his refusals alongside his gifts?