Matthew 7: 7-11 (The Message version) “Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?”

        I like these verses of Matthew explaining what Jesus taught the disciples.  For the fathers who are, in fact, decent dads, you do your best to guide, discipline and answer those “asks, seeks, and knocks” that your children bring to you. (Some dads are abusive and derelict in the father-role. I think our Heavenly Father is well aware of those fathers and opens His loving heart and arms even farther to accept and guide the children of those dads.)

       As I think back to when my children were young, I remember quite clearly, “Mom and or Dad, I want….please!” “May I have…?”  Will you give me…?” The repetitive asking, seeking and knocking at our minds and hearts could literally seem non-stop some days! The Parable of the Persistent Widow. Luke 18: 1-8 “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary. For some time he refused. But finally, he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says.  And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off? I tell you; He will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

Keep asking, seeking and knocking in your prayers.  God will answer.  It might not be exactly your “ask”, it might be even better or He might answer like He did to Paul. Paul was plagued with a “thorn in his side,” that he pleaded for THREE years to have removed. God answered Paul after three years and replied, “My grace is sufficient.” Trust your Father, He wants to give you the very best and loves you unconditionally.

Jill