Faith Sees as Good Whatever God Has Given

Faith Sees as Good Whatever God Has Given

Posted on by Michele Morin

I have a battered notebook that has been with me for so long that four of its pages date back to the birth of each of my sons.  In this notebook, I write down the requests—big and small—that I bring to God.

Help my kids to be wise and godly parents.
Who gets my vote this time?
Lord, help my church family to impact our community.

Certainly, my notebook is a record of God’s faithfulness, but even after all these years, I don’t pretend to understand the pattern of scattered checkmarks or the replies from God that they denote for the notebook also chronicles my uneasy relationship with prayer.

At some point, it’s bound to happen to everyone who believingly follows the One who said “when you pray”:  the bubble of predictability is pricked and horror comes rushing in regardless of prayers to the contrary.  My notebook speaks into this tension.

  • Fervent prayer for a missionary friend with cancer – dead six weeks from diagnosis.
  • Focused supplication for a marriage to survive… and another… and another. All have dissolved, and are barely a memory now.

Even the Apostle Paul with his inside track to the third heaven never claimed to understand the ways of God.

Instead, he said, “I know whom I have believed,” (II Tim. 1:12).

Therefore, he took grace —  and the power of Christ —  as glorious consolation prizes that came instead of the healing for which he prayed three times, (II Cor. 12:8,9).

Paul took the grace that was given, and that’s where he most beautifully put the power and love of God on display in his life. I wonder how many times God has extended grace to me in the same way, but I missed it because I was busy looking for something else.

Ask, Seek, Knock

Jesus’s teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount may be one of the most mistaught and taken-out-of-context verses in the Bible:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”
(Matthew 7:7-8)

We love this! It’s like a blank check for the First National Bank of Heaven!

Then, as a parent, I am all ears when Jesus compares God’s good gifts to the giving heart of a loving mum or dad:

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11)

Like our sister Eve, we wonder if God is holding out on us.
Like Israel, we wonder if God is for us.
Like a hormonally crazed adolescent, we see only our brittle, little world.

We persist in asking for things that look good to us, but are actually harmful or even dangerous.
We reject what has been given and pine away for the not-given.

My thinking gets muddled, but this one thing is certain: God’s motives are above reproach. God has promised not to trick me with a stone when I’ve asked for bread or to scare me with a live snake on my plate when I’ve asked Him for a fish.

But is this evidence enough for me to be grateful for God’s gracious refusals? The truth is, mistaking stones for bread and serpents for fish, I ask God for stones all the time. God wants to give me a fragrant and nourishing loaf, but I ask for the wrong things. I don’t see what God sees. 

My thinking gets muddled, but this one thing is certain: God’s motives are above reproach. God has promised not to trick me with a stone when I’ve asked for bread or scare me with a live snake on my plate when I’ve asked for a fish.

Whatever Has Been Given

This, then, is the point at which my faith is tested: When the loaf God offers looks like a solid stone to me, will I trust Him and say, “Yes, Lord, I’ll take it. I’ll take it because it’s what has been given”?

When a “no” from God feels like gravel in the teeth, I remember again that prayer is a mysterious partnership. I will not give up on it. My questions do not diminish my belief in the Promise and Mercy, the Forgiveness and Welcome that flow from a living relationship with the God of the Universe.

Words from an Orthodox morning prayer lend their strength to my frail asking:

“Lord, teach me to treat all that comes to me this day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that your will governs all.”

“Whatever has been given, Lord, if I believe that you are sovereign, I have to believe that purpose and goodness are coming along with it.” This learning sits heavy in the balance, countering my own vision, which is so often out of focus with God’s eye of wisdom.

When it comes to the deep wanting, to the “I won’t let you go unless you bless me” requests that keep me company at the kitchen sink and wake me up in the middle of the night, I’m trusting for grace to accept their outcome. Whatever their outcome, whatever is given, I am learning to see it as that day’s portion of my daily bread, knowing full well that, in my short-sightedness, I may have been asking God for a stone.

Holding You in the Light,

When a “no” from God feels like gravel in the teeth, I remember again that prayer is a mysterious partnership. I will not give up on it.

See all my Given—One Word 2024 posts here.

This post is part eight of a series about Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.
You’ll find part one on the Beatitudes HERE, and part two on Salt and Light HERE. 
In week three, in light of Jesus’s warning to teachers, we wondered what motivates teachers to take on the heavy responsibility of communicating the truth.
Then, in part four, Jesus answers the question, “What does it really mean to be righteous?” Part five carries Jesus’s warning to believers about the subtle pull of public displays of righteousness, and part six explores the connection Jesus makes between our culture’s pervasive anxiety and our attachment to our “stuff.”
Part seven challenges parents to tend to the logs in their own eyes before attempting “eye surgery” on their kids.

I invite you to join me each Sunday for the next few weeks as we sit under the teaching of Jesus together and consider how his words and his life should be impacting the way we live, work, think, and pray.

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Published by Michele Morin

Michele Morin is a Bible teacher, writer, reader, and gardener committed to the truth that women can become confident Christ-followers and students of God's Word. She has been married to an unreasonably patient husband for thirty-plus years, and together they have four married sons and a growing fleet of adorable grandchildren. Michele loves hot tea and well-crafted sentences, poems that stop her in her tracks, and days at the ocean with the whole family. She laments biblical illiteracy and advocates for the prudent use of “little minutes.” She blogs at Living Our Days, and you can connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.

37 thoughts on “Faith Sees as Good Whatever God Has Given”

  1. WOW! This…..These anointed words of truth and faith reach deep into my spirit and invite me to come to our Heavenly Father with an humble heart open to trust Him in a deeper way than ever before. Thank you for sharing the insight and wisdom you’ve found when you ask, seek and knock. Blessings and Peace

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  2. Prayer for me is a tough one. Knowing how to structure the prayer, which I think is silly because he is listening all the time, but I seem to be a recorded pray-er asking daily for my children and their families. As you point out, I am to trust that whatever happens to my children, God knows best. With the loss of my sweet hubby 5 years ago, I can say God has been with me throughout or I wouldn’t have made it as well as I have. We were married 56 years, and the dark days were eventually lightened (although not easy some days) because God loves us all and is there. I ask, I seek, and as your post says it so well, sometimes what appears to be a stone is in reality from God a jewel we could not see. He surprises daily. Thanks for a great message this morning.

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  4. Good thoughts. It can be confusing when some of the prayer promises sound like blank checks, but the answers don’t always come like we want. Some of the requests don’t seem stony, like prayer a few years ago when our pastor, who had a thriving church, a love for God and people, and who was actively engaged in bringing them together, was diagnosed with cancer in June and was gone by August. The better we know Him, the more we can trust His character and answers or lack thereof.

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    1. I don’t want to encourage a cynical reading of Jesus’s words, certainly, and I think my goal is to educate myself (and anyone else who wants to come along for the ride) about the context for Jesus’s prayer promises. He reallly set the stage for a new set of values in the Beatitudes. I have so far to go and grow in becoming more like him in character and values.

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  5. Michele, THANK YOU! This is such a timely reminder to me as I struggle to find contentment with joy lately in circumstances not likely to change… God knows my deepest needs. His gifts are good through and through. Thank you for holding us to the light of truth. I have also shared this post with a struggling sister in Christ. It’s so timely.

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    1. I always LOVE hearing from you, Linda!
      And I’m saddened to hear that you are dealing with difficult circumstances. Thank you for your commitment to receive what God has given and to affirm God’s love, even in the unwanted “given.”

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  6. “This, then, is the point at which my faith is tested: When the loaf God offers looks like a solid stone to me, will I trust Him and say, “Yes, Lord, I’ll take it. I’ll take it because it’s what has been given”?” Good words. Faith continues to believe God is and is a rewarder of those who seek Him because it is “the conviction of things not seen.”

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  7. Michele, this post made me think back and remember the many “no’s” for which I thank Him 🙂 It helped me this morning as I think on my current prayers. Bless you!

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  8. More, more, more of God Himself. And way far less of me and my opinions, plans, posturing, and maneuvering. His ways are not my ways and that is a very blessed gift in and of itself. I have no choice but to trust Him fully. And that will be enough.

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  9. Some “NO” answers are SO hard to accept. I wonder why he allows some things to happen that make no sense to those of us who prayed so hard for the opposite to occur. And then in the next breath I realize, by the time we’re all in heaven, it won’t matter anymore. And that old song comes to mind: “It will be worth it all when we see Jesus!” Then we’ll understand.

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    1. I agree, and have even asked God for some bit of insight into his reasoning behind some of his refusals. But then, when all is said and done, we have to trust his heart. (Another good song…)

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      1. Yes, that is another a good song! (What was the first part of that line–when you can’t trace his hand, trust his heart?) You just brought back a delightful memory of a favorite soloist singing that song at a former church, back in the 90s!

        Liked by 1 person

  10. Thank you for writing your thoughts about prayer, and the angst that sometimes comes with it in our growing relationship with Christ. I have many journals full of prayers and thoughts, praises and struggles.

    I’m so glad to read that you won’t quit!

    Lisa

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  11. While it’s never easy not receiving the specific answer to prayer we requested, I think the blessing is not in the answer, but the asking-what an amazing privilege to be invited by the King of the Universe into His Throne Room to ask for whatever we want, welcomed no less. And the comfort in knowing that as a good Father He will not give us what want when it will only harm us in the end. This is Love.

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  15. Thanks for this post. It is excellent all the way through. I nodded in agreement when I read about your checkmarks. It is a mysterious symbiotic relationship that we have with God through prayer and reading his word.

    I am much less regimented about my prayers than I used to be. Fill in the blank forms, don’t work well for me. However, I do have a routine for my prayer journal. I start by responding to his word, whatever it was that I read and I ask him to show me something beneficial. Many times it seems like a stretch when I am reading Numbers or Kings, but surprisingly, I have learned a lot. I try to include a praise. After that I pour out my heart concerning whatever is bugging me for the moment. Sometimes I take the time to read through some of my previous narratives, and put in checkmarks.

    I also have my instant prayers. Whenever I get a prayer request, I pray at the time I get it. It may or may not make it to my journal, but it usually comes by email, so I have a list that I update occasionally. My other instant prayers are as things happen – as we all probably do. I include my thanks, too because he is so GOOD.

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    1. I appreciated reading about how intentional you are in your prayer life, both with worship and intercession. I recently heard someone say on a podcast that they had simplified their prayer life by thinking about two categories: what’s bugging me and what’s giving me joy. It sounds as if you’ve got that just right!

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  16. You are tackling a very difficult topic, Michele. But it’s one that many of us wrestle with again and again at different points in our lives. Learning to be content with life as it is (even just accepting life as it is) can be one of our most difficult lessons to conquer.

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    1. We really do have to examine and do major surgery on our definition of “good.” Amy Carmichael said, “In acceptance lieth peace,” and she put her finger on one of our biggest unresolved conflicts in the Christian life.

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