Ask and you shall receive.

“And this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” (1 John 5:14)

God never waits on us to give us anything. He doesn’t have to. He knows what we need and gives it to us at the time he sets. If God was to wait on us to give us anything we would have been the poorest of all creation. But we have to wait on Him to understand anything that He gives us. We have to wait on Him to know what He has given us.

Asking, and seeking, and knocking for what is within the will of God, the will of Christ, may seem like a desperate cry. But in the end we have to be proven desperate, not smart, to be hopeful in God whom we do not see. Asking, seeking, and knocking for the peace, and joy and endurance, and eternal life is acknowledging God as the source and provider. By asking, we announce the fact that we will welcome what we asked for.

When the disciples had asked to see the Father, Jesus said to them that the Father was right there in front of them, in the person that Jesus has been to them the entire time. I guess that their concern was that if Jesus is the Son then the Father has to be and do exceedingly more. I think, in our mind, that’s where we tend to struggle at welcoming Jesus for who He is. Culturally, we’d think, “He’s just the son. I want to be in touch with the Father.” Understanding this mindset, Jesus quickly affirmed, “I’m in the Father, and the Father is in me.”

Those things are not that easy to digest, but not impossible. We were misled by our senses, our culture, our traditional beliefs, but someone came to our rescue, and gave us an augmented reality. Despite what we’re seeing and feeling in the human reality, we also have God’s reality, his constant and consistent love for us.

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24)

You have received it because you ask for it in prayer. You didn’t ask for it in the hope that others will be able to do it or give it to you, but in the belief that for as long as the will of Christ guarantees it, it is already yours. And the Spirit guides us in prayer so that our heart is unjoined from anxiety and re-aligned with the will of God.

Whatever it is that you want to receive, whatever it is that you want to welcome in the name of Jesus, whatever it is that you want to welcome to your heart from the will of God, the will of Christ, ask for it in the name of Jesus.

“First he said, “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them”—though they were offered in accordance with the law. Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will.” He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10:8-10)