Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Matthew 11-13
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 7:7-8
Jesus: Just ask and it will be given to you; seek after it and you will find. Continue to knock and the door will be opened for you. All who ask receive. Those who seek, find what they seek. And he who knocks, will have the door opened.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
Jesus moves back to the topic of prayer. He tells us to just ask, but does He mean we can get anything we want? Does He portray the Father as a cosmic Santa that will give us whatever we want? “Just ask and it will be given to you…” It might sound like it if you lift that verse out of His sermon like a lot of name it and claim preachers try to do. But go back and look at the model prayer He gives us earlier in His sermon and remember that He never contradicts Himself.
Ask and it will be given to you. Ask for what? Remember Jesus’ model prayer? Father in heaven, I ask that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek after it and you will find it. Find what? Find the Father’s will. You see, I think we get the wrong idea about what to ask for in the first place. We get ourselves mixed up into the equation and let that selfish desire poke its head up and try to grab all the attention instead of listening to what Jesus says to us in the rest of His discourse.
Remember what He told us just a few verses before this? “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Don’t worry about all that other stuff. God knows what you need and He’ll see that all that other stuff is taken care of. Just seek Him first. Don’t let your greedy self get in the way of looking for Him. Be like David and “let your soul pant for God like a deer pants for water,” he writes.
We get too anxious to snap up this one verse and let it manipulate our selfish desires instead of putting it back into the sermon where it belongs and understanding that God must be first. Seek first God. Seek first His will. That means don’t even worry about what His will is for your life. Just find His will and then go get on board with it. You’ll find your place in the world, just by going and doing His will, not yours. Did you ever think about doing things on those terms? Jesus did.
Jesus went about not asking what God’s will was for Him, but asking what is the Father’s will and doing it. Period. Maybe it’s time we start asking that question. What is the Father’s will? Stop the question right there. Don’t add any other identifiers to it. Don’t ask what is His will for my church or my life or my organization or my family or my anything. See, when we put “my” in there, we begin to let self get into the equation and open the door for something other than God’s will.
Just ask, “God what is your will?” Then go jump on board. Do whatever you can do to further His will. Now what does Jesus’ command mean. Let’s think about it a little deeper.
Just ask for God’s will and it will be given to you, He’ll show it to you. Seek the Father’s will and you will find it. You won’t have to look hard, but you’ll need to look because Satan and the world’s clamor will try to drown it out. But look for it and you’ll find His will in His word. Continue to knock and the Father will open doors of opportunity for you to walk through so you can be a part of furthering His will on earth when you ask Him earnestly and sincerely.
All who ask Him what His will for humankind really is will know what His will is. He doesn’t hide from you. He wants you to know Him, just ask and He’ll tell you. And everyone who wants to work for Him in furthering His purposes and His plans will find doors of opportunity opened for them. All you have to do is be obedient to His voice and walk through them. But understand they are His plans, not yours. Those doors progress His purposes, not yours. The opportunities provide for His glory, not yours. The will you seek and the doors of opportunity all belong to the Father, not you.
Until you begin to operate with that frame of mind, don’t expect to find the Father acting as a cosmic Santa. He’s not. He cares about you, but He is God. We are not. It’s His will we should long for, seek out, grab hold of, spend as much energy and effort as we can muster following His will.
In that frame of mind, Christ shared His sermon. Totally sold out to the Father, Jesus made His statement. Committed wholely to His heavenly Father, Jesus tells us a truth we can stand on, “Just ask and it will be given to you; seek after it and you will find. Continue to knock and the door will be opened for you. All who ask receive. Those who seek, find what they seek. And he who knocks, will have the door opened.” Find the Father’s will, not yours.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved. In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.