Ask for Good Gifts
Matthew 7:7 – “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. 8 – For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
verse 9 – Is there anyone among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 – Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 – If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 – In everything, treat others as you would want them to treat you, for this fulfills the law and the prophets.
Have you ever been frustrated with verse 7? Have you ever thought how untrue this verse must be, even threatening to dump the Bible altogether all because you’ve asked for things and it wasn’t given; you’ve sought but not found; you’ve knocked and the door remained closed? Yes, I’ve been frustrated too – until I read on and realized something. I’d been asking for all the wrong things.
James 4:3 says – you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions. 4 – Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world means hostility toward God? So whoever decides to be the world’s friend makes himself God’s enemy. 5 – Or do you think the scripture means nothing when it says, “The spirit that God caused to live within us has an envious yearning”?
Why would God give us things that would draw us away from Him instead of towards Him? Why would He give us things that would cause us to embrace the world instead of Him? There’s something He desperately wants to give us that we don’t ask enough of. It’s more specifically revealed in Luke’s version of this account. Luke 11:13 says – If you then, although you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Ask for the Holy Spirit and He will be given to you. Seek for the Holy Spirit and you will find Him. Knock on the door of heaven for the Holy Spirit and the door will open for you – and all of the fruit of the Spirit will be available to you: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. – Galatians 5:22.
Why does God want to give us this incredible gift? Look back at Matthew 7:12 – it is so we can treat others the way we would want them to treat us; not so we can treat others the way we’ve been treated. There is a major difference. It takes the gift of the Holy Spirit in order to live differently. James 4:5 says that the envious yearning within us is from God. In order to answer this yearning we must know what to ask for. The problem is – we think the Scriptures are meaningless because we’ve been asking for all the wrong things. Jesus has told us what to ask for! The path to satisfy this yearning within us is to ask for and receive the Holy Spirit, then we will be able to live amongst each other bearing all the Holy Spirit’s fruit. Let’s ask Jesus for the gift of the Holy Spirit today for the Scripture guarantees this: He will be given!
Where two are gathered 