Monday, May 03, 2010
Do you believe that God would alway respond at the right time? If you ask me, my answer would be an absolute YES! We all face crisis at different times. However I am sure He is always watching over us and we are in His safe hands. I have experienced His salvation for so many times, in the right place, at the right time and I marveled with gratitude. Sometimes we are placing limitations on Him when the limitation is obviously on ourselves. We may be limited in certain ways, but He is never limited.
So yes, He will lift me up once again like He did. I will not be left un-restored. I will wait on You.
Ever wondered why some prayers are left unanswered? I used to ponder about this. Thanks to Joshua Goh for the audio sermons, I listened to Dr Bernard's the art of asking and I got it.
(1) For every effect there's a cause, whatever you are getting, there's a reason why you are getting it. If you don't like what you are getting, you have to identify the cause and change it.
(2) Conditions are effects. Thoughts are causes. Whenever conditions you are experiencing, your thoughts brought it all. Your conditions in your life are expressions of what you are thinking. Thoughts govern behaviour.
Believe that you receive.
1 John 5:14: This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ASK anything according to His WILL, He hears us. If we know He hears us, whatever that we ASK, we know that we have what we ASK of Him.
The question is:
'Is the real issue receiving or is it asking?'
If we ASK according to His WILL, the condition is always placed on ASKING, not receiving. If we ASK right, we'll receive. The issue is not on receiving, it will take care of itself. We can tell ourselves right in the face 'I believe I'll receive', but if we don't ask right, we won't receive. We need to change the way we ASK. It's always in the ASKING.
If we don't ask right, the application will be rejected.
One of the issues of asking is the TONE. It doesn't matter what we are applying for, the TONE must be right.
James 1:5, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously/liberally to all without finding fault and it will be given. When he asks, he must believe and not doubt. We must believe and not doubt when we ask. We need wisdom in asking.
Asking is the basis for receiving. The better we are in asking, the more likely we'll receive.
The attitude of asking determines the emphasis that we put on it.
Forms of asking:
(1) Ask intelligently
Our God is very intelligent. Education is different from intelligence, you can be educated but not intelligent.
When you ask intelligently, you have the understanding of the effects that you are asking for is going to have on the totality of your life. When you ask for one thing, you are asking a lot of other things that come with that.
A lot of times we ask God for something that would wreck our lives, and God in His wisdom puts it on hold. If we keep pursuing, quite often we will get something that will move us out from the perfect will of God into the permissive will of God. Then we have to deal with the consequences of His permissive will. It's not something He wanted us to have but something we insisted on, so He is allowing us to experience the consequences of what we asked for. He hopes that it'll teach us not to ask for it anymore.
(2) Be specific
As we mature in Christ, we become more specific in our conversations and prayers. When we were babes in Christ, we'd ask 'God bless me', but when we start getting things we are not asking for, we realise we cannot give a general term like that. Specificity affects me in the process of asking because when we are general and vague, we cannot be focused in our faith. Our faith loses intensity when we are too general. Like a lazer beam, when we get light concentrated like a lazer, it's more powerful and effective as opposed to it being diffused all over the place. We want our faith to be focused. The more specific we are, the more focused we'll be in our asking. How much, what colour, what kind, by when? The moment we put a deadline on it, it really impacts our activity. Of course when we ask we got to be realistic.
If we really ask begin to ask according to the will of God, it has a radical effect on our lives.
(3) Ask in faith, expecting to receive
What is faith? Faith is the willingness to take intelligent risk. Faith must not become ego. The question is do we have the faith to see through what we are starting? We would rather have a million dollar worthed of faith then a million dollars, because if we have a million dollars and we run out of money, we are broke! But when we have a million dollars worthed of faith and we run out of money, we'd get another million.
Four factors involved in asking:
(1) Attitude - our frame of mind, our way of thinking what we are asking.
We got to have the right attitude, attitude is everything. Our attitude can cost us to not receive what we are going for.
(2) Approach - our tone, how we approach people
Wrong approach will result us to not get what we ask for.
(3) Timing - are we ready to receive?
Faith is in essence the support of things hope for. If our faith cannot support it, to give it to me will create a crisis in our lives. God is not gonna to put on us what we cannot handle
Notice the time when we ask and there's quite a distance between when we ask and when we receive, God is strengthening our support. What happens between the time we ask and the time we receive is the time God deals with us. Quite often, it is to strengthen us in character so that we can support the thing that we are receiving.
(4) Appearance - how we appear
Dress for the right occassion. Appearance is part of asking.
One of the most important thing to ask is yourself. You must ask yourself what kind of person you must become in order to receive what you are asking for. If you don't become the person that you need to become, you won't get what you are asking.
This whole process of asking has an incredible effect on your life!
Monday, May 03, 2010