SUMMER REBOOT – this podcast was originally published on 25 September 2018.

—

Welcome to Tuesday’s podcast. I hope this week has started well for you? Wherever and whenever you are listening to this podcast, thank you for joining us for this podcast; our prayer is that these short times together help us as a church put Jesus as the centre of our days, weeks and lives.

REFLECTION:

Today we are reading from Matthew 7 as we continue our week looking at Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount. Throughout the week we are particularly focussing on the theme of provision and what it looks like to believe in God’s provision, ask for his provision and receive it. Today I’m going to read verses 7 – 11 of chapter 7.

‘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; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

‘Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 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 good gifts to those who ask him!’

I wonder if you can recall when the last time was that you asked for help? I wonder how you feel about asking for help? Maybe you are someone who find it’s quite easy to name your needs and ask for help when you need it. That’s awesome, and something I absolutely struggle to understand! I (I imagine like many of the people listening) find asking for help very difficult. Maybe it’s a very English thing but I don’t really want to put anyone out. I don’t want to assume anything of anyone. But the more honest, root cause of my problem? It’s that I don’t want to admit I can’t do something. I don’t want to have to say ‘I need help’, ‘I can’t do this alone’. To me that sounds a lot like ‘I’ve failed’ and I particularly hate that! Since having children I’ve realised that I can’t keep this position and my sanity. Because I do need help, I can’t do it alone. No matter how much I like to have it all together, all sorted, all in order our life doesn’t work without me being willing to admit my own limitations and ASK. FOR. HELP!

Being willing to ask for help acknowledges two things, firstly: that I need help, in other words that I can’t do this thing alone. And secondly: it admits a need for the other person, it says you have something I need, you possess the means to help me.

The passage today tells us that it’s no different with God. God longs for us to ask for the things that are on our hearts, he wants us to present our requests before him. I wonder how many of us feel the same emotions when it comes to asking something from God. We think ‘this is too small – I won’t bother him’. Or we don’t want to admit that we’ve come to the end of what we can do, in short, that we need him.

There are three truths about asking for help that I’ve been thinking about as I’ve prepared this podcast and they are:

1. It’s hard to ask for help

2. It’s humbling to ask for help

3. God wants us to ask for help

I know that the first two of those points are true in my life but I desperately want the final point to be something I believe deep in my heart. That the God of heaven and earth wants me to talk to him, wants me to put my requests before him (let’s face it, he knows the deepest places of our hearts anyway!).

To help cultivate this kind of heart and hope in my life I’ve recently started a new practice of being way more specific and intentional about how I pray. At the beginning of September I wrote down specific things I wanted to ask God about or for, under headings such as family, community, the world, my work, healing etc. I was really specific and it’s been so good to name the things that often just flit around my head.