Don Young, of Bern, Kansas, talks about a time when his oldest daughter was old enough to understand what saving money was all about. His wife and he sat down with her and explained the value of money. They explained how you save, and when the piggybank was full, you take the money out and deposit it in the bank so that it might draw interest.
They thought they had done a thorough job. She seemed to understand and couldn't wait to open a savings account in their local bank by herself. Don called the banker in their little town and told him their daughter was on the way to open her savings account. They would stop in later and sign the necessary papers.
What a thrill! She got the president of the bank himself to wait on her. She handed over her savings, and he gave her a receipt and thanked her for her business. But she wouldn't leave. She just stood there like she was waiting on something else. “Is there anything else that I can help you with?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, “I want my interest.” (Don Young, Sr., Bern, Kansas; www.PreachingToday.com)
Isn’t that like a lot of people? They want their “interest” now! They want what they want immediately, but that’s not the way life works. That’s not even the way prayer works. God surely answers prayer, but He does it in His time and in His way.
So how do you get what you need from God? How do you receive good gifts from your Heavenly Father? How do you obtain the treasures for which you seek? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Matthew 7, Matthew 7, where Jesus tells you how to receive what you need from your loving Heavenly Father.
Matthew 7:7-8 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. (ESV)
Jesus couldn’t be more clear. If you want to receive good gifts from God, just ask, just seek, just knock.
You ask for what you wish. You seek for what you miss, and you knock for what’s closed to you, but you don’t do it just once. The original language suggests that you keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking. In other words, if you want to receive precious treasure from your generous Heavenly Father...
PRAY WITH PERSISTENCE.
Continue in prayer. Persevere in your supplications. Keep on coming to God’s Mercy Seat to receive help in your time of need.
First of all, Jesus said, “Keep on asking.” Keep on presenting your urgent requests, and don’t give up until you receive what you ask for.
Tim Keller, the recently retired pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, says he discovered prayer in the second half of his adult life. He says, “I had to.” In the fall of 1999, he was teaching the Psalms, and it became clear to him that he was “barely scratching the surface of what the Bible commanded and promised regarding prayer.” Then came the dark weeks in New York after 9/11, when the whole city sank into a kind of corporate clinical depression, even as it rallied. Keller says the shadow was intensified as his wife, Kathy, struggled with the effects of Crohn's disease. Then he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
At one point during all this, Kathy urged him to do something with her they had never been able to do regularly before. She asked him to pray with her every night. Every night! Then she used an illustration that crystallized her feelings. She said:
“Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine—a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? No—it would be so crucial that you wouldn't forget, you would never miss. Well, if we don't pray together to God,” Kathy said, “we're not going to make it because of all we are facing. I'm certainly not. We have to pray, we can't let it just slip our minds” (Tim Keller, Prayer, Penguin Group, 2014, pp. 9-10; www.PreachingToday.com)
Do you know? She’s right! We HAVE to pray. We can’t let it just slip our minds. We HAVE to pray all the time to make it through these dangerous and challenging times. Do you want to receive what you need from God? Jesus said, “Keep on asking.”
Second, Jesus said, “Keep on seeking. Keep on looking. Keep on pursuing what you lack.
Three summers ago (2017), 53-year-old Jeff Murphy was hiking in Yellowstone National Park when he disappeared. Park investigators found his body on June 9, 2017, where Murphy had fallen 500 feet from Turkey Pen Peak, after accidentally stepping into a chute.
But he wasn't on just any hike. He was looking for a treasure box of gold and jewels worth up to $2 million, buried somewhere in the Rocky Mountains by an eccentric millionaire named Forrest Fenn.
Fenn, an art dealer and millionaire in his 80s, lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In his self-published memoir, Fenn included a poem that supposedly leads to the treasure he hid in the mountains.
“The ornate, Romanesque box is 10-by-10 inches and weighs about 40 pounds when loaded,” NPR's John Burnett reported in 2016. “Fenn has only revealed that it is hidden in the Rocky Mountains, somewhere between Santa Fe and the Canadian border at an elevation above 5,000 feet. It's not in a mine, a graveyard, or near a structure.”
Murphy was the fourth man to die while searching for the chest. (Laurel Wamsley; “Search For Buried Treasure Linked To Illinois Man's Death At Yellowstone,” NPR, 2-20-18; www.PreachingToday.com)
People search for what they think will make them happy, but all too often the search destroys them. Make sure you are searching for the right thing. “Seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, for to seek Him leads to life! All other pursuits lead only to death.
Besides when you find the Lord, you find everything you need! So if you want to receive precious treasures from your generous Heavenly Father, keep on asking; keep on seeking.
And 3rd, keep on knocking. Keep on banging. Keep on hitting that door of opportunity until it opens for you.
In a preseason game against Washington last August (2019), Cleveland Browns rookie receiver Damon Sheehy-Guiseppi returned a punt 86 yards for a touchdown. Not only were fans celebrating, but so were all his teammates, because they knew his story.
Just four months prior, Sheehy-Guiseppi was homeless and destitute. He was sleeping outside a gym in Miami where he’d spent his last $200 training. In order to talk his way into getting a shot at the spring practice, he convinced officials that he was an acquaintance of Browns’ vice president of player personnel Alonzo Highsmith, which wasn’t true. Yet, upon meeting him in person, Highsmith was impressed enough to offer Sheehy-Guiseppi a chance to catch a few balls and run a 40-yard dash. That led to another practice, and eventually, a rookie contract.
Afterward, Highsmith was clearly pleased with his decision. “To be out of football as long as he's been out, and still have that type of speed? That means he's fast. And now he's eating three square meals a day, sleeping in his own bed. The sky's the limit for him.”
Sheehy-Guiseppi said, “I'm just blessed to be healthy and be in the position that I am. I just try to stay in the moment and just think about what's to come next. I'm super proud to be able to take advantage of moments like that.” (Gabriel Kinder, “A guy who talked his way into a tryout with the Browns scored an 86-yard touchdown” CNN.com, 8-10-19; www.PreachingToday.com)
Sheehy-Guiseppi refused to give up despite being homeless. He kept knocking on that door of opportunity until it finally opened for him.
Now, I wouldn’t recommend lying as part of that process. But if such persistence pays in this world, think about how your persistence can pay with your generous and loving Heavenly Father.
If you want to receive precious treasure from Him, keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking. In other words, pray with persistence. Then...
PRAY WITH CONFIDENCE.
Be certain in prayer. Keep on trusting God to give you good gifts.
Matthew 7:9-11 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! (ESV)
If evil fathers are good to their children, you can be sure your Heavenly Father will be good to you!
I like the way William Barclay put it in his commentary on Matthew: He said, “God will never refuse our prayers; and God will never mock our prayers. The Greeks had their stories about the gods who answered people’s prayers, but the answer was an answer with a barb in it, a double-edged gift. One of the Greek myths described Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, falling in love with Tithonus, a mortal youth. Zeus, the king of the gods, offered her any gift that she might choose for her mortal lover. Aurora very naturally chose that Tithonus might live forever, but she forgot to ask that Tithonus might remain forever young; and so Tithonus grew older and older and older, and could never die, with the result that the gift became a curse (William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol.1).
That’s not the way your Heavenly Father gives His good gifts to you. He’s delighted to provide when you pray, but He never mocks your prayers. He’ll never give you anything which would become a curse.
Earthly fathers don’t give their children a stone when they ask for bread, but they could if they wanted to mock their children. The little, round limestones on the seashore were exactly the shape and color of the little loaves of bread their mothers baked, but to receive such a gift would break their teeth. Fathers just don’t give their children such gifts!
They also don’t give their children a serpent when they ask for a fish. No father would mock their children with such a gift, because that serpent could bite and kill them. In the same way,
Your Heavenly Father will never mock you with His gifts. He will never give you something which could harm you. So when you ask for something He knows will harm you, He withholds it from you.
Tim Keller describes praying for an entire year about a girl he was dating and wanted to marry when he was in his early twenties. The only problem was she wanted out of the relationship. All year Keller prayed, “Lord, don't let her break up with me.”
In hindsight, Keller realized she was the wrong girl for him, but at the time he did everything he could to help God out with his prayer. One summer, near the end of their relationship, he got in a location that made it easier to see her. He was saying, “Lord, I am making this as easy as possible for you. I have asked you for this, and I have even taken the geographical distance away.”
But as Keller looks back, He realizes God was saying, “Son, when a child of mine makes a request, I always give that person what he or she would have asked for if they knew everything I know. (Tim Keller, Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering, Dutton, 2013, pp. 301-302; www.PreachingToday.com)
No matter how badly you want something, God will not give it to you if He knows it’s not good for you. He is a loving Heavenly Father, who delights in giving GOOD gifts to His children. not harmful ones.
After all, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God gave the world the gift of His Son, so that those who trust Him could live forever with Him.
Please, if you haven’t done it already, trust Christ with your life. Depend on Him for eternal life; and then, keep on trusting Him for the lesser things you need in this life. The Apostle Paul put it this way: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Sure, He will, because He’s a good and generous Father, who delights in giving good gifts to His children.
Steve DeNeff, in his book Soul Shift, talks about the time his dad wanted to congratulate him on something he had accomplished in the sixth grade. Steve’s dad took him to K-Mart and made a wide sweeping gesture with his hand toward the whole store from the entrance. He said, “To congratulate you, I'll buy you anything in this whole store tonight.” Steve’s eyes widened as he thought of the possibilities.
At the time, Steve didn't have a full grasp on how money worked or how much money his dad had, so he put limits on things in his mind. Steve didn't even look at the huge stereo systems, the expensive bikes, or anything else that cost more than a hundred dollars. Instead, Steve chose a cassette tape case that was less than fifty dollars. He was content with just that case. It was more than he could afford himself, for sure, so he chose that one. It was nice.
It wasn’t until years later that his dad told him he had 1,000 dollars in his pocket that night. What’s more, Steve’s dad had brought his checkbook just in cast that wasn’t enough. When his dad wanted to give him the store, Steve asked only for a case to hold his cassette tapes. (Steve DeNeff and David Drury, Soul Shift, Wesleyan Publishing House, 2011, p. 55; www.PreachingToday.com
Please, don’t do that to your Heavenly Father! Don’t put limits on His generosity, because He wants to give you the store! Your Heavenly Father wants to give you everything that’s good for you, starting with His only Son, going all the way to your daily bread. So pray with persistence and confidence in Him!
In 1949, George Roy and Elizabeth Wood, an American missionary couple serving in northwest China and Tibet, were forced to leave the area. A local leader named Pastor Mung took over the church of 200 people. The Woods returned to America and by 1985 both had passed away without ever knowing what had happened to the church they started.
In 1988 Roy and Elizabeth’s son, George, returned to China and met with Pastor Mung and his wife, who were then in their 80's. For 28 years the Communist government had done their best to extinguish the church. Pastor Mung wasn't allowed to preach, and he spent nine of those years in prison for his faith. It was illegal to baptize or “indoctrinate” anyone under 18. When the government finally allowed Pastor Mung to reopen the church in 1983 there were only 30 (mostly older) people in attendance.
Assuming that the church was on its last leg, George Wood asked, “Pastor Mung, how many believers do you have today?” Pastor Mung's wife brought them a cardboard roll held together by yarn. The first page was filled with writing—five columns: name, age, gender, address, occupation. There were around 20 names. George Wood continued turning over page after page with the names of the baptized. Finally, he asked the Mungs, “How many believers do you have now?”
Pastor Mung said, “One thousand five hundred baptized believers.”
In disbelief George Wood asked, “How did this happen?”
Pastor Mung smiled as he shared his secret for church growth. It wasn't a technique or a program. He simply said, “Oh! Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And we pray a lot!” Then he went on to describe what the Lord had done.
Pastor Mung died in 2006 at the age of 96. But when he passed, the number of baptized believers stood at over 15,000! (Dr. George Wood, The Assemblies of God Minister's Newsletter, January 2012; www.PreachingToday.com) My dear friends...
If you want to see God do the unimaginable in your life, then do what Pastor Mung did. PRAY A LOT! Pray with persistence and confidence in a Heavenly Father, who delights in doing far more than you can ask or even think!
