The Fathers Gifts

My thanks to Austin Conner for the following:

I was reading Luke 11:9-10,13 which says, “So I say to you: 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; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened…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 the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (NIV). I think this verse gets taken out of context a lot. People read this and use it as a resource, example, and or evidence to think that God will give them whatever they want. But I think we all realize that is untrue because that philosophy is selfish in its nature, and Christianity does not call us to be selfish. What then is this verse trying to get across? Verse 13 explains how God is our Father in heaven. If you think about the nature of a loving father, they for sure want what is best for their children. Loving fathers often do not give their child something if they know it will harm them; they might also withhold something from their children because they know it will be better for them in the long run. God is our Father. We were created to worship Him and we are happiest and fulfilled when we let Him rule over our lives. When we let God rule over our lives, I think there is a want for our desires to become more like God's desires. We want God to take out our own selfish desires and replace them with what He wants. For this to happen, we have to humble ourselves and admit that we have such selfish, deceitful, wicked, and evil desires within us, and that we need something greater than ourselves (God) to take out those desires for us. For us to want God to do this means that we put all our reliance on Him to provide for our needs. This takes an ENORMOUS amount of faith in the person of God himself...and that is exactly what He wants from us. So connecting all that back to the verse--once we have faith solely on Christ and see our need for Christ, God will not let us down. When we ask God in humility and empty handed, it will be given to us. When we seek, we will find. When we knock, the door will be opened. Not so that we can get all our selfish desires met, but so that God may be glorified.