A man will get from life everything he asks for, because he does not ask for that which his will is not in. If a man asks wealth from life, he will get wealth, or he was playing the fool when he asked. ‘If ye abide in me.’ says Jesus, ‘and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.’ We pray pious blether, our will is not in it, and then we say God does not answer; we never asked him for anything. Asking means that our wills are in what we ask.
You say, ‘But I asked God to turn my life into a garden of the Lord, and there came the ploughshare of sorrow, and instead of a garden I have been given a wilderness.’ God never gives a wrong answer. The garden of your natural life had to be turned into ploughed soil before God could turn it into a garden of the Lord. He will put the seed in now. Let God’s seasons come over your soul, and before long your life will be a garden of the Lord.
As I read though this devotion by Oswald Chambers last night, I thought a lot of different things. Initially, my gut response was to be repelled by what appeared to be fuel for prosperity preaching. But after allowing my mind to wander into all of the reasons I’m repulsed by this line of teaching, I realized Chambers had something in mind much deeper.
What slowly began to sink into me was the emphasis that Chambers puts into the word ‘will’ that Jesus uses. Before, I had always read
this passage by interpreting ‘will’ as what I wanted. Chambers deepens this by transforming ‘will’ into something that’s at my inner most being. It is my passion. It is my might. We cannot expect to receive things that we do not truly want. I cannot expect to lose weight no matter how hard I pray if I have an open bag of Oreo’s in my lap.
Now this does not mean I do not ask for things that are too hard for me. No, Jesus tells us to ask, seek and knock. Another time he tells us of the man who so desperately needs bread for his newly arrived guest that he continues to pound away at his neighbors door, even though it is the middle of the night, until the other man relents. It is like Lewis’ phantom with the red lizard. We cannot expect our inner most desires to be changed with the first halfhearted and often dishonest request. But it is with this constant repetition of asking that we begin to trust that our request can be answered. Then we begin to realize that God can take our oftentimes misguided request and transform it into something that is far more beautiful than we could have initially imagined. ‘By our prayers we come to discern the [heart] of God.’