SUMMER REBOOT – this podcast was originally published on 25 September 2018.

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Welcome to Tuesday’s podcast. I hope this week has started well for you? Wherever and whenever you are listening to this podcast, thank you for joining us for this podcast; our prayer is that these short times together help us as a church put Jesus as the centre of our days, weeks and lives.

REFLECTION:

Today we are reading from Matthew 7 as we continue our week looking at Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount. Throughout the week we are particularly focussing on the theme of provision and what it looks like to believe in God’s provision, ask for his provision and receive it. Today I’m going to read verses 7 – 11 of chapter 7.

‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
‘Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though 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!’

I wonder if you can recall when the last time was that you asked for help? I wonder how you feel about asking for help? Maybe you are someone who find it’s quite easy to name your needs and ask for help when you need it. That’s awesome, and something I absolutely struggle to understand! I (I imagine like many of the people listening) find asking for help very difficult. Maybe it’s a very English thing but I don’t really want to put anyone out. I don’t want to assume anything of anyone. But the more honest, root cause of my problem? It’s that I don’t want to admit I can’t do something. I don’t want to have to say ‘I need help’, ‘I can’t do this alone’. To me that sounds a lot like ‘I’ve failed’ and I particularly hate that! Since having children I’ve realised that I can’t keep this position and my sanity. Because I do need help, I can’t do it alone. No matter how much I like to have it all together, all sorted, all in order our life doesn’t work without me being willing to admit my own limitations and ASK. FOR. HELP!

Being willing to ask for help acknowledges two things, firstly: that I need help, in other words that I can’t do this thing alone. And secondly: it admits a need for the other person, it says you have something I need, you possess the means to help me.

The passage today tells us that it’s no different with God. God longs for us to ask for the things that are on our hearts, he wants us to present our requests before him. I wonder how many of us feel the same emotions when it comes to asking something from God. We think ‘this is too small – I won’t bother him’. Or we don’t want to admit that we’ve come to the end of what we can do, in short, that we need him.

There are three truths about asking for help that I’ve been thinking about as I’ve prepared this podcast and they are:
1. It’s hard to ask for help
2. It’s humbling to ask for help
3. God wants us to ask for help

I know that the first two of those points are true in my life but I desperately want the final point to be something I believe deep in my heart. That the God of heaven and earth wants me to talk to him, wants me to put my requests before him (let’s face it, he knows the deepest places of our hearts anyway!).

To help cultivate this kind of heart and hope in my life I’ve recently started a new practice of being way more specific and intentional about how I pray. At the beginning of September I wrote down specific things I wanted to ask God about or for, under headings such as family, community, the world, my work, healing etc. I was really specific and it’s been so good to name the things that often just flit around my head. Each day I’ve been praying for one area and three weeks into September and I’ve already experienced answers to nearly all of the things I originally wrote down. I probably need to write some more audacious things down in October! I share this not to impress you with my prayer life, I have such a way to grow in this stuff, but to say that I’m learning that asking is indeed what God wants from us. Asking specifically for God to be active in different areas of my life has helped me change my posture of control and allowed me to say ‘well, over to you God’.

God is bothered! He wants us to bother him! Like a child who walks confidently to his parents and requests something without a moment’s thought as to whether his wish will be granted, God wants us to approach him with confidence. God wants us to ask, expects us to ask. God wants us to give space for him to provide in ways we could never imagine!

PRAYER:

Thank you God that you invite us to ask. You invite us to approach you, confident that we are loved by you. Help us to lay down any desire to have control, but to position ourselves before you and surrender the things that we are holding tightly to. To ask our heavenly Father for the things we need, trusting that you are good on your promises and faithful to the end. Amen.

READING: Matthew 7:1-14

‘Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way as you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

‘Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

‘Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

‘Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though 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! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.