Welcome to Day 164 of the “Manna for the Mind” devotional! This series is about finding nourishment in the Word of God to get us through the day. In each devotional, I take a variety of scripture passages (typically 1-3 verses each) and build our understanding of what they teach via their context and connecting scripture. My goal is to help you understand how to be the type of human God created you to be. Today’s passage is Matthew 7:7-8 .

Matthew 7:7-8

NASB	NLT	VOICE
7 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.	7 “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.	7 Just ask and it will be given to you; seek after it and you will find. Continue to knock and the door will be opened for you.
8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks it will be opened.	8 For everyone who asks, receives, Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.	8 All who ask receive. Those who seek, find what they seek. And he who knocks, will have the door opened.

Jesus encourages us to stay persistent in our prayer life. Just because God doesn’t respond in the time you want, in the way you want, doesn’t mean he’s ignoring you. God is always listening. God is always ready to hear from us. His response to our requests may not be the response we hoped for. We often want to pray for a response that God will affirm, instead of praying for a situation and trusting in God’s response. Communicating to God in prayer is something that takes faith, focus, and follow-through. Having faith in who we’re talking to, focusing on what we’re asking, and following-through on what God’s response will be. Jesus assured us that we will be rewarded as will continue to develop a relationship with him.

Stay on your path with God. Stay invested in your relationship with God. Continuing to find knowledge, patience, wisdom, love, and understanding through him found in different sources he’s given us through the world. The more we talk to him, the more we will be able to hear and recognize his voice. It won’t be an audible voice most likely, but it will be a nudge, a person, a sound, a song, or something you’d never expect. God will use whatever he needs to let you hear him.

Matthew 21:22

NASB	NLT	VOICE
22 And whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive it all.	22 You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it.	22 If you believe, whatever you ask for in prayer will be granted.

Jesus IS NOT saying that we’ll get anything we want just by asking God and believing really hard. We can receive wisdom from the Holy Spirit whenever we pray. We don’t always immediately receive our answers to that prayer, whether it be healing, wealth, or physical rescue, but we do receive God’s word and wisdom that will lead us on the path that he has set for us. God doesn’t follow through on requests that hurt us or others or violate the principles of who he is. There are proper things to ask. How do you know if it’s proper? One question: does this align with the principles of God’s Kingdom? The more it aligns, the more answers you will receive. The less it aligns, the more complicated it will be to hear God’s answers

Mark 11:24

NASB	NLT	VOICE
24 Therefore, I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted to you.	24 I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.	24  So listen to what I’m saying: Whatever you pray for or ask from God, believe that you’ll receive it and you will.

Our prayers are often motivated by our own interests and desires. We read this, hear we can have anything, and rejoice louder and higher than ever before. Yet. Jesus didn’t have what HE wanted as the priority. Jesus prayed with God’s interest. Think back to the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus didn’t want to have to go through the intense pain, hurt, and grief of the crucifixion process. He stressed so badly about this, he sweat drops of blood. Yet there’s key words he said that we need to embrace and remember: “…not my will, but yours be done.” God, I’d love to see XYZ done, but not my will, but yours be done. This forces us to, again, check to see if our prayers focus on our interests or his own.

1 John 3:21-22

NASB	NLT	VOICE
21 Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;	21 Dear friends, if we don’t feel guilty, we can come to God with bold confidence.	21 My loved ones, if our hearts cannot condemn us, then we can stand with confidence before God.
22 and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.	22 And we will receive from him whatever we ask because we obey him and do the things that please him.	22 Whatever we may ask, we receive it from Him because we follow His commands and take the path that pleases him.

If your conscience is clear, you can come to God without fear, confident that he will hear us. John reaffirms this. Often though, our conscience is not clear. It’s full of our anxious thoughts. It’s full of our past. It holds our mistakes, our issues, our past actions, our shame, our guilt, our hurts, and more. We can go to God with all of that. We can go to God with all kinds of baggage. God takes it all. God holds on it all for us. We give it all to God, and we rest. We learn to carry the things that God wants us to carry. The things that are light. The things that are easy to bear. The things that don’t hang on us and weigh us down. We take his yoke and go out in the world trusting him with his strength, confidence, and wisdom to do what he asks.

1 John 5:14-15

NASB	NLT	VOICE
14 This is the confidence which he have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.	14 And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him.	14 We live in the bold confidence that God hears our voices when we ask for things that fit His plan.
15 And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.	15 And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.	15 And if we have no doubt that He hears our voices, we can be assured that He moves in response to our call.

When we pray, we should pray for what pleases God, not what pleases us. When we go to God in prayer, we shouldn’t go demanding what we want but instead go in asking him what he wants for us. Remember Jesus’s words, “…not my will, but yours be done.” What we want may not be the best thing for us. It may be harmful to us in the long run. So, if we go asking God’s will for us instead of our demands, then the rejection of our ask is assumed as “God said no because it’s not he has planned for me.” If we go with our ask being our priority, then God’s rejection is, “Why didn’t God let this happen for me?” The former allows for God’s guidance to be acceptance; while the latter says God must not like me or doesn’t want the best for me.

Next slice of Manna: Manna for the Mind #165