Of Freedom, Country and Vaccination

[Kammrath]

I agree with a lot of this Kam, and of course I'll spare you the Bible study, because I think you know the scriptures. But, while "not my will, but yours be done", and "being burried with Him..." are core and central, our Father also asks us to bring our needs to him. Not that he does everything we ask, like a genie, but that he's compassionate, he hears, he sees and he may very well intervene when we ask. I think you can see that in the scriptures without having a "God is a vending maching" mentality.

A few thoughts:

1) Jesus tells us not to "babble on" with many words in prayer because our Father knows our needs before we ask. BECAUSE of that he then gives us the Lord's prayer, which teaches us to demand God's will and has nothing about our will/desires within it. 

2) Yes, God wants us to ask/beg/seek/pray...but not by bringing our "wants" to the table, but by asking, begging, seeking, and praying for HIS will. 

3) Not only "might" God intervene, he WILL intervene if we ask, beg, seek "rightly" (as James 4:3 puts it). Hence Jesus can say "Whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give to you." No "might"...he WILL give it, when we ask rightly, when we are asking and seeking HIS will and not our own. Hence Elijah, a man just like us, can pray for no rain and it stops for 3.5 years and then he prays again and it rains. Asking in "Jesus's name" is not adding that phrase to our prayers, but asking in the image and pattern of Jesus, bearing his name and identity in our lives and approach.


I am not suggesting we cannot be honest about our wants before the Father (shoot, Jesus was in the Garden!) but we need to immediately pivot out of those wants to demand God's will. And as we see, God's will is the way of the cross which is the exact opposite of having "my desires fulfilled."