God Gives Us What We Seek

Judges 2:6-19, 21:25

Psalm 4

Matthew 7:7-14

Do you know how generous God is? Do you know that God has given you so much before you could ever deserve it, in fact, do you know that God has given you so much even when you have shown yourself to be undeserving? From the beginning of creation, God gave us his breath and life, he gave us his good creation, and he gave us purpose and leadership before we did anything. Even when we turned away from him, mistrusting him, seeking other things, even to the point of killing him and putting him on the cross, he willingly gave us so much, even his life as he died for us and new life as he invited us into his baptism and resurrection. Why would God do this? He does this because it is who he is. It is his character. He is love. To build the perfect world he longs to give us, he shows so much love, hoping we will love him even a fraction in return. He hopes that we will ask, search, and knock at his door so that he can look us in the face and give us the wonders of his love. He hopes that we might follow him so that he might lead us on the narrow road that leads to life.

Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened to you. This is a wonderful and amazing promise. Though, for most of us this doesn’t seem completely true to our experiences. We have asked for many things. Most of us here have asked for healing at least once or twice, many ask for wealth and success, peace and rest, and yet don’t seem to find it. To this experience there are three important questions we should ask: 1) Who are we asking? 2) What are we really asking for? And 3) How long do we ask, seek or knock?

So, first, who are we asking? This might seem like a trivial point, but it is really important that we know God and ask him for help. In life, we know not to ask our employees for a raise. We know not to ask our toddlers for a bigger house. Why? Because they aren’t able to give it to us. As much as we know this, we don’t practice it. In life, we often ask things, and people to give us the things we need even though we know they can’t provide them for us. If you are struggling to find rest, if there are a whole lot of things weighing on you, TV, video games, books, sports, and even vacations are not going to give you that. Sure they might offer an escape, a way of ignoring or forgetting the problems, but that doesn’t solve them. How easily can this seeming rest we seek disappear in a moment, or sometimes make our exhaustion even worse? If you are struggling with trust, or relationships, or connection, how easily we can turn to institutions or professionals when we know they have limits, or turn to the people around us when we know they will fall short? We know we can only depend on institutions and people to a point. We have turned all these good things and people into empty idols that can never fill the role of God. You see, God is the only one who can truly serve our needs: the more we turn to the actual source of rest and peace, the more we turn to the one who is trustworthy and knows us, the more we ask, seek, and knock after him, the more we will be given what is truly good. In fact, the more we will know what is truly good.

This brings us to determine, what are we really asking for? When we ask for fame, success, wealth, etc. We are asking for fickle things that don’t last. And our struggle often is that God gives us fickle things that don’t last. When we seek fame, we are asking for self-aggrandizing, so that’s what happens in our hearts, we puff ourselves up no matter what happens and lose ourselves in the pride. When we seek success, we overwork and stress ourselves out, because it must be by our hand and our definition. When we want wealth, we are given empty and lacking stuff. It might not be exactly what we are asking for, but it isn’t far from it. This shows us that we need to ask God for the lasting things that come from him. The thing God wants is that we should ask, seek, and knock after Him. He wants a relationship with us and as the source of all things, a relationship with him will mean everything else that is good too. That is why two Sundays ago Jesus said, seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be given to you. We also need to realize and trust that God knows better, so when we ask for healing or joy it might come in many forms. Depending on what will actually be good for us and those around us.

Our third question is, how long do we spend searching, asking, or knocking? You don’t knock on a door and run away before someone has a chance to come to it. If you are looking for your keys, you don't stop after looking for a few seconds. You don’t ask someone to get you something at a store, and then leave before they get a chance to get it. If that is what we do for the most basic things, why don’t we do at least the same or more when asking God? How often we can ask for something and when it doesn’t come tomorrow or next week, we forget about it or think that God won’t answer? And when it does come, we forgot our prayers, or put the cause somewhere else. I have a friend who keeps a prayer journal, where she writes down everything she prays for. She yearly goes back to what she has prayed for and guess what, she finds that almost all of her prayers have been answered in one way or another. But continuous prayer is more than just a reminder. As a kid, my continuous prayer was that I might have joy. Honestly, I don’t think I knew what joy meant. At the least, I couldn’t imagine the kind of joy God would have in store for me. Now God has leading me to joy and I continuously have gotten tastes of even greater joy, which has led me to a fuller and richer reality of it throughout my whole life.

So we need to be turning to God first for everything we need trusting and knowing who it is we turn to. We need to be asking for the things we actually need, that are actually good for us - The Lord’s prayer is a helpful place to look. We need to seek after God continuously knowing that he will fill our needs if we are patient and trust.

A lot of it comes down to trust and that’s what God tries to inspire in us with the next silly questions. If your child asked you for a loaf of bread, would you give him a stone? If your child asked for a fish, would you give her a serpent? No, that would be ridiculous. We try to give our children what is good. Even if we didn’t have bread or fish, or we thought bread and fish weren’t good right now, we would give them something else good. If we, who are often so unable to determine right from wrong, who have our vision clouded, who have that great big plank in our eyes, know how to give good things, shouldn’t we trust God to do the same and more? Remember he is without fault, he knows what is good, he is the creator of all things, and he is our loving Father in heaven that surpasses every earthly parent. Shouldn’t we trust him with everything? Too often it is easy to ignore this simple and amazing fact that God is good, powerful, and loving. We ignore it so much that we try to do everything ourselves or seek refuge in that which doesn’t protect us or forget about him before we give him a chance to respond in his time and with what he knows to be right. We must keep stepping out in trust.

Do to others as you would have them do to you. Up till now, you may have been thinking that we ask, seek, and knock through prayer. This is a really important part, but it is more than that. We also ask others to love us, by loving them first. We ask for forgiveness, by forgiving others. We seek a greater community by inviting them into ours. We knock on doors, hoping that others will let us in. We are called to live out for others the things we are asking for ourselves. In terms of God’s kingdom, this makes absolute sense. As we live out Kingdom principles and Godly trust, we are literally creating it in our midst, we invite others into God’s Kingdom. Notice, that there is no guarantee that they will respond well. But if they do accept and live with God as their king, then the kingdom we long to live in has grown and expanded. When we ask by giving, God will usually respond with more than we give, so we get more than we deserve.

This statement, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you”, goes even deeper though, when we realize that this is exactly what God has been doing for us. God has given to us, to the point of sacrifice time and time again. God has walked with us, guided us, protected and loved us, even when we didn’t deserve it. God has been loving us and doing good things for us, hoping that we would give him back even a measure of that amazing sacrificial love and trust.

Finally, we get to the narrow road and the broad path. This is a scary image because it testifies to how singular the path is to eternal life and how dangerous it is to live anything else. If we think about the broad and narrow path like a circle. Only one single line is the path to salvation, yet there are practically infinite options for going on other paths. That is scary. Think of it in terms of driving, if we vear anywhere off-road especially on the highway, the likelihood is disaster or if we go off course, we know it becomes harder or impossible to get to where we need to go. Yet, with Jesus, this road is a little different, because the narrow road always lays before us. We always have the choice to turn to him, even if we have veered wildly off course. Salvation always lies before us if we simply choose Jesus and follow him, who is the way, the truth, and the life. It is our call to follow this path and call others and help them do the same (as we were reminded last week we must be careful how we judge others on this path, though we still must help them).

So, today we have heard some incredible news. We have heard that God’s amazing love and generosity always lay before us. We have heard that he longs to give so much to us. We have seen at the same time that there are far too many things that we can turn to that don’t give us what we need. In fact, we have heard that there are far too many things we can follow that lead to destruction, but this shouldn’t surprise us because we have experienced it. Yet, the amazing part is that at any time, no matter how far we have fallen, we can always turn back and put our trust in God, living like him, we can ask for his gifts and he will give them, we can seek after him and he will come, we can knock at his wonderful and perfect Kingdom and he will let us in. AMEN

Notes:

What do we seek? - God gives it to us - maybe not always a million dollars, or fame, but if we seek after fickle things, God gives us fickle things

If we throw off God and seek other things to worship, to guide us, so will we be guided and so will God walk away (though not entirely).

We become kings in our little worlds, and so we live in a conflictual world of our own devising

We need to have God as our king

We need to hand that world over to our children and those around us

Though the elders did this while they were alive to some degree

It is always left to the next generation to decide

Ask, seek, knock - A great promise (timing?)

There is a too late (I do not know you)

Ask - Charity?

Seek - Knowledge?

Knock - Welcome?

We need to ask though, and seek and knock. - too often think what good will it do - all the good

We all know how to give simply good things - though we have complicated it in our world today

It is almost silly in its comparison

You would have to be really evil to do such things, yet how often do we justify ourselves by comparing ourselves to such examples?

How much more will your Father in heaven give you?

Why more? Because he is actually good and our Father in heaven

What is that more? Ask, seek, knock, but ultimately the narrow road

Do to others? Not Karma, because you are only hoping they will do it in return - though God will.

No demand of return, means you are doing it for God and His Kingdom

Giving them trust and an opportunity to live into a new reality that is the Kingdom

This is what God does - Anything we may do, he is already doing for us - Our seeking and doing it, allows us to find it even more

The wide road - there are a lot of things to turn to that lead to destruction - the passage from Judges is a testament to this

It’s the asking, seeking, knocking, and doing. These are all action terms, even if they are acts of dependence on something.

Destruction is scary, but anything that isn’t life, or peace or God is destruction, even if God so often holds it back - judges, patience, etc.

Leads to life!!