Matthew 5:45 “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
God is merciful, for He blesses us with much that we do not ask for or need to exercise our faith for. In the passage of scripture quoted above our Lord taught us that it is the goodness of God that causes His sun to shine on us and gives us rain. No one asks Him to do this and no one exercises their faith for these things to happen. None of us exercises our faith to be able to breathe and yet God’s word teaches us that our very breath He gives to us (Isaiah 42:5). So does that mean that we can go through life just expecting God to take care of every aspect of our lives without us having to exercise any faith for our lives? The answer to that question is a resounding “no”.
Matthew 6:7-8 “And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. (8) "Therefore, do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.”
In the passage of scripture quoted above our Lord Jesus taught us that even though our Heavenly Father knows what our needs are before we ask Him, He still requires us to ask Him to meet those needs. In Luke’s account of this same teaching, the needs that our Lord is referring to here are our basic needs of food and clothing (Luke 11:1-13). And so if God requires us to ask Him to meet our basic needs then we can be assured that He also requires us to ask Him regarding every other need we may have. And so we learn a very important principle from this passage, which is that if we are going to receive anything from God for our individual lives we are going to have to ask Him. Jesus plainly taught us that everyone who asks receives (Luke 11:10). Conversely therefore, it can also be said that if we do not ask then we will not receive, and in fact the Holy Spirit teaches us that exact same truth when He says to us that we do not have because we do not ask (James 4:2). It is surprising to me just how many believers don’t even ask. Many believers go through life hardly ever asking the Lord for anything. They do what all unbelievers do. They go through life in their own strength trying to make ends meet and worrying about just how they are going to make it. This is not our Lord’s will for our lives at all, for it is the express will of our Heavenly Father that we ask Him to meet our every need. And so we see that in order for that to happen the very first step that every believer will have to take is to ask.
Michael E.B. Maher
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