“So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”

Here, in v. 13, Jesus is concluding his teaching on persistent prayer. This is one of those passages where we see STRONG promises for God hearing and answering our prayers. I’m really familiar with this text. But I’m also very curious (it slows down my Bible reading a lot)!

So this time, when I read, “how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him,” I’m like, wow, that’s a non sequitur! Why “the Holy Spirit?” They weren’t asking for the Holy Spirit! They were asking for fish and bread. In the parallel story in Matthew (7:11), Jesus says “good things,” not “the Holy Spirit.”

And this raises the question of answered prayer, a question my kids have definitely struggled with. A question, if I am honest, I have struggled with too. (Oh, if you were an atheist, you’d struggle too over the ways I can point to circumstances that I see as answered prayer. The problem is not statistics here, it’s faith.)

So I found this excellent sermon text by J. Ligon Duncan called “Don’t Stop Praying.” You need to read it, at least the last half or so I quoted below, especially if you struggle with prayer. It really gets down to the heart-issues we experience when our prayers seem to go unanswered.

And because it’s a good expository sermon, it also answers the question of why Luke put “the Holy Spirit” in the direct object slot.

I know this is a LONG quote, but it’s about half a sermon, so it should take about half a sermon-length’s dedication to read. Here’s a link to the whole sermon, if you want, and there is an audio version on the site as well: http://bit.ly/pi48bB
————-
(from the Sermon text)
That is not what Jesus is saying here. He’s saying something infinitely greater, so listen to what He says. He tells you not only to be importunate, to beg, to plead, to appeal in prayer, He tells you not only to be persistent, that is to be regular, to be continual, to be constant in prayer, He tells you to expect God to answer your prayers and to know that none of your prayers will be unanswered.

Now here’s the trick – not as you pray them, but according to the Father’s goodness He answers all your prayer. Not as you pray them, but according to the Father’s goodness He answers all your prayers. That’s the basis of the story. Look at the story in verses 11 and 12. “What father among you?” – ah, here’s the Father’s Day tie in – the illustration is a fatherly illustration – “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?”

Here’s the story. The little kid says, “Daddy, I want a fish.” He doesn’t give him a snake that will bite him and hurt him. “Daddy, I’d like an egg for breakfast.” “Here’s a scorpion son!” And he’s stung by the scorpion. What’s the point? A father doesn’t give bad gifts to his children. He loves his children. Fathers, that’s something to think about. Sometimes the greatest gift that you can give your child is, “No, I’m not going to give you what you want because it’s not what you need.” Moms, whenever you’re in a store I know that you by principle are committed to giving our children anything they ask for, aren’t you? At the checkout line, “Mommy, I’d like fourteen Reese peanut butter cups!” You love them so you give it to them, right? No! You give them the answer they need because you love them and it’s not the answer they want.

And you know this illustration works the other way around too. You notice if a child asks his father for a serpent the father doesn’t give him something that’s going to hurt him. If the child asks his father for a scorpion the father doesn’t give him what’s going to hurt him because the father’s gifts are good. So Jesus is saying God’s answers are always good, even when you can’t see it. He is always answering your prayers, “Yes,” but for your good. I love the way that Calvin says this – “God does not answer our prayers as we pray them, but as we would pray them if we were wiser.”

Just a few illustrations of this. Genesis 37. Genesis 37:4 tells us the story of Joseph and his brothers, right? And it tells us in Genesis 37 verse 4 that they could not even talk to one another kindly. There was so much tension in that family the brothers could not have a cordial conversation. Now, let’s just suppose that Joseph one day had knelt down on his knees beside his mat and prayed, “Lord, would You somehow bring harmony into our family so that we love one another?” I don’t know whether Joseph ever prayed that prayer or not, but I do know this, God did that. But do you know how God did that? Well, He had his brothers first attempt to kill him and then throw him into a pit, and then sell him into slavery. And then he went into Egypt and he was false accused by his employer and thrown into prison. And then a famine came into the ancient Near East that killed thousands of people. Now that’s pretty rough, but in Genesis 50 – it’s either verse 18 or 19 – we’re told that Joseph and his brothers spoke to one another and cried on one another’s shoulders and embraced one another. And what God had done in that family, He had brought a family, where there was a wall a mile wide and a mile high between the people in that family, and He brought that family together, but boy, did He do it in a way that Joseph never would have thought. Look, here’s – “Lord, I’ve been thinking of a strategy whereby You could bring about unity in our family. Why don’t you have my brothers attempt to kill me, sell me into slavery, then me get thrown into prison in a foreign country and then send famine to the ancient Near East.” But that’s what God did. But you see, God’s answer to Joseph’s prayers we do know were in accordance to His promises to Abraham that He was going to bless Joseph and He was going to keep Joseph and He was going to be gracious to Joseph and He was going to give him peace and He was going to give Joseph the enjoyment of communion with Him.

Think of Job’s prayers. He prayed that his children would be kept from sin. They were all killed. Think of Elijah’s prayers. He prayed that he would see God’s glory in Israel and God’s temporal answer was “No, you’re not going to see God’s glory in Israel the way you are praying it, Elijah.” And then you get to Luke 9 and Elijah is looking into the face of Jesus in Israel. He answers his prayer, not as he prays it, but as if he would have prayed it if he were wiser. Jesus is telling us, and Luke is recording this fact that for the believer in Jesus Christ, God always answers our prayer. That does not mean that our lives are easy. It does not mean that we immediately have domestic tranquility and material prosperity. But it means whenever we pray for whatever we pray, God on high is saying, “Yes child, I will pour out My Holy Spirit on you. I will fulfill the promise of Abraham to you.”

If I could just direct you again very briefly to verse 13 so you can see this. “If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” Now, Luke constantly talks about the Holy Spirit and he’s already talked about the Holy Spirit in Luke 1, Luke chapter 1, as the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham. In Acts chapter 2, Luke will talk about the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as a fulfillment of God’s promises through Jesus in Acts chapter 1, but also as Paul elaborates in Galatians 3, the coming of the Holy Spirit is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. So when Luke tells us that whenever we pray God will give us the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him, he is saying that whenever we pray God always honors His promise to Abraham, and that promise entails the giving of the Holy Spirit so that we are blessed, we are protected, that we experience God’s grace and peace and communion with Him.

So that when there is a believer crying out, “Lord, I want to marry him. Lord, I want to marry her.” And the Lord is thinking, “Child, you have no idea what you’re asking for and I’m not going to answer that prayer the way that you want Me to answer that prayer, but here’s My answer, child, you will have the Holy Spirit. You will be blessed. You will be kept. You will be given grace. You will be given peace. You will be given communion. And I’ll give you something better than what you’re asking for.”

Or you may be praying, “Lord, could I just get along with my wife? Could we just get along? Could we just have peace here and just sort of like one another?” And the answer, it may be, “Child, I’m going to give you something better than you’re asking for.”

You know, it may just be something as simple as, “Lord, I’d like to pay the mortgage next month. I’d just like to pay the mortgage. Could we do that?” And again the answer may be, “Child yes, I’m going to give you something better than that.”

The answer is always “yes” — it’s just not always the “yes” that we were wanting. It’s the “yes” that we need but the answer is always “yes.” This is what Jesus is wanting you to see. Be expectant. God is going to answer this prayer. He’s going to answer it as if you would have prayed it knowing what He knows and being as good as He is. He is going to answer that prayer.

Now, why in the world would Jesus say this? Because He knows that you pray and you stop, and sometimes you stop because you don’t think it’s working, because you’re not getting what you’ve prayed for, because it’s not turning out like you’d expected or hoped. And Jesus is saying, “Don’t stop praying, and if you have, start again because blessed is he and she who starts to pray over and over and over again.”

If you were watching a movie or even viewing a really well-produced TV commercial that featured a character who was morally centered, self-controlled, patient, exuding genuine love, would you expect that character to be an evangelical Christian? Not likely. In my lifetime, icons of spirituality have been Mormon, Buddhist, Native American–but hardly ever biblical Christians.

Here are three verses that, if taken to heart, would transform an individual into the type of spiritual example you would want to imitate. First, Peter says that our effort is a response to God’s promises, a supplement to faith, not the means of a relationship with him. Then, he begins his (ostensibly top-of-mind) list of virtues, beginning with moral excellence. Here is the holiness every Christian is called to and must pursue with “every effort.” Morality, however, is not an end in itself. For the Christian, The Good Lifeis not equivalent to the moral life. Christianity is not moralism.

Peter immediately adds knowledge to holy living, and we know that a biblical view of truth ties together knowledge and obedience (1 Peter 1:22). It is not enough to say, “I’m a doer,” or “I’m a thinker.” The real Christian is both; thinking and doing are two sides of the same coin. Note that knowledge does not lead to pride, but rather self-control, self-control to the ability to endure hardship. And that kind of character can be described as godly (God-like).

But these virtues could be attained and practiced individually, for the most part, in isolation except for the endurance of persecution. Peter does not let his (inspired) vision of the complete Christian end there. Like Paul’s practical applications of the Christian life unfolding in the context of relationships, Peter presses us to “brotherly affection”–the household of faith coming first–and love for everyone. Thus the virtues of true faith have their vertical and their horizontal dimensions.

Now, think of how the one just described would look to the world. Out of step? Yes, probably. But if truly potent and genuine, such a virtuous man or woman would be so useful, so productive (v. that their life would be worth imitating and imaging (in stories and movie characters).

Lord, we need Christ-followers like this. I need to be like this.

Ready?

You’ve been stopping by this site, hoping to read something new, for three months now. I’ve avoided posting anything, because I’ve been struggling. All the time pressures we constantly chat about on The Morning Cruise, my “five kids, two jobs” mantra, play a part in my absence. They’ve had a supporting role in my dramatic failure as a leader of this community of would-be Bible readers. But the starring role goes to something more personally involved.

Notice the gap in May's reading.

Here is the YouVersion chart of my Bible reading since the first of the year. Please notice the week’s gap in my reading in May. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t like gaps. When I was a kid, my parents used to talk about how beautiful Lauren Hutton is. With all due respect to Lauren and David Letterman, I’m just not into gaps.

Yet, there it is, the gap in my front teeth, the week in May when I got so off track in my Bible reading that there was no salvaging it, the week where the question was forced: “Do I hit reset?”

Now, there’s a backstory. First, the chart shows consistency. I didn’t quit. I’m still working through my daily Bible reading plan. That’s a good thing, and I sincerely hope it encourages you to keep doing the same. What the chart doesn’t show is the real story. It doesn’t show you how I really got off track in April, around Easter, very busy days for the show, the church and the family.

What you don’t see is how inconsistent I was for over a month, piling up days of readings and then trying to catch up, wrestling with emotions of frustration and discouragement, cheating my reading time to accomplish more pressing things. It doesn’t betray my sometimes indifference, sometimes negligence, my native procrastination. These were the real enemies during April and May.

Even more: I couldn’t hit reset. This is the really hypocritical thing. I told you and everyone else that perfection was not a high value in this community. I told you not to sweat if you missed a couple of days. “Just hit reset,” I pontificated, “and keep the daily habit going–that’s the point.”

But I had such a nice chart going. With each block of green, I was affirming my need to be an overachiever, gain (someone’s?) approval and cement my reputation as scholarly, accomplished. Dung.

Perhaps more insidious, more psychologically interesting at least, is the fact that I did not want to hit reset because I started my Bible reading plan on January 1, and I want to finish it on December 31. I like balance. As much as I don’t like gaps, I do love to color inside the lines. Hitting reset would have pushed my plan outside the lines.

So, I finally realized I wasn’t going to catch up, and it was completely missing the point to cram weeks of reading into a day. (And I couldn’t find the day to do so!) So, I decided, maybe like Jacob wrestling the angel, to accept my crippled condition and move on, weaker but stronger.

And I decided to tell you about it.

If you are wounded by your own imperfection, your inability to stick to a plan, your need for approval by pretense, like me, please take this as your official pardon, forgive yourself, and move on with me.

We all have gaps, sometimes as prominent as the gap in my front teeth.

And when you enter your neighbor’s field of grain, you may pluck the heads of grain with your hand, but you must not harvest it with a sickle.

This is a great chapter (Deut. 23) to illustrate the relevance of the Old Testament to New Testament believers. It gets pretty real. Not only do we have the verse about “nocturnal emission” above (v. 10), a verse which by using the adjective “ceremonially” invites us to think about a distinction in God’s law between ceremonial and moral; further, invites us to reflect on the distinction between sin and physicality, but also we can see in the present verse a principle which explicates the New Testament emphasis on love of neighbor (Matt. 22:39).

In our relationships, especially in the family of Christ (Gal. 6:10), we may glean from each other but not presume upon each other in ways that violate the other’s resources or possessions. This is true Christian communalism. The text assumes the validity of private property. Our land and produce belong neither to the state nor our neighbor. The fruit of our labor belongs to us, but we’d better not keep it all to ourselves!

Think about how this principle applies to all the relationships we have: my time and money are mine, but my neighbor is free to take a little of it. In loving my neighbor, I am not permitted to impose upon him or her, nor may they take advantage of me in that way.

What if we learned to practice love this way? We might actually come to enjoy sharing with others and be delivered from the fear of becoming a doormat, fear that, driven by a guilt-intuition makes us feel we must allow ourselves to be dominated by the requirements of love rather than freed by them.

I wonder how many godly wives and mothers could make use of this freeing principle, set forth in an “obscure” Old Testament text.

It was three months after the shipwreck that we set sail on another ship that had wintered at the island—an Alexandrian ship with the twin gods as its figurehead.

These were the gods Castor and Pollux, Greco-Roman deities who, according to myth, were the offspring of Zeus (Jupiter) and Leda, the figures that eventually formed the constellation Gemini. (Read Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan” some time, but not if you’re easily offended.) They were depicted as great horsemen, but were also venerated as the patron-symbol for sailors, a talisman promising fair winds. This, of course, is pure superstition. Still, what Christian would want to be associated with such un-Christian symbols and ideas?

Sometimes Christians view holiness in a false way, seeking to separate themselves from unbelievers or the world in a spatial sense, like Colossians 2:20-23 says (The Message):

So, then, if with Christ you’ve put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it? “Don’t touch this! Don’t taste that! Don’t go near this!” Do you think things that are here today and gone tomorrow are worth that kind of attention? Such things sound impressive if said in a deep enough voice. They even give the illusion of being pious and humble and ascetic. But they’re just another way of showing off, making yourselves look important.

A really religious person would have refused to get on this ship because of the twin gods on it.* Just like that refusal, we sometimes think that God is calling us to “boycott” the world, use only Christian businesses, remove ourselves from any traffic and truck with worldly people, symbols, or anything “secular,” a stance which props up religion, but does no good for us or the cause of Christ.

Just like Jesus was accused of being worldly and irreligious (Matthew 11:18-19), the follower of Christ who pursues true holiness and is smack in the center of God’s will may sometimes be misunderstood. True holiness is circumcision of the heart: loving God more than anything, dying to yourself and living by doing everything as unto Christ (Colossians 3:3-11 / 12-25).

*(I know Paul, prisoner, had no choice, but the text voices no objection.)

I love, love, LOVE to read your posts, comments, insights (not looking for profound here, just engaged!), encouragement, complaint, whatever! Your conversation-starting, your question-asking, your journal-esque (brief) sharing, these are the interactions that make us a community!

I love sincere reflections, struggles and questions the best–not preachy primers or cause crusades–just ordinary attempts to apply what we are reading together to our lives. (I have a license for preachy posts, btw )

Here are a couple of examples of comments left on the Bible forum:

…just started today with Acts 1. God has shown Peter that regardless of the race or nationality of person, they can be included in God’s Kingdom and filled with the Holy Spirit.

And:

…I like what I’m seeing here. I am reading The Message, because it takes what I’m familiar with, and makes it new for me. Here it says to use adversity to stimulate creative survival. I think of myself as a generally optimistic person. I have used adversity to my advantage in the past, and I’m looking forward to the challenges I see ahead of me to see what God can bring about in my life for his purposes.

And another:

For the first time in my life I am enjoying reading the Bible and amazed at the new things that jump at me that I never remember reading.

These are all responding to my post, which is good. I’m hoping someone can start a new topic on the forum. When you interact like this, not only can you learn something, you feel like you’re not on this journey alone.

Start a discussion on the “Read the Bible with Bill” forum page. Click here.

-Bill

If you’re reading along in the First Steps Reading Plan, you’re about halfway through the book of Exodus with only a couple of readings to go. (Remember, the First Steps plan doesn’t track through every chapter of the Bible in a year.) So far I’ve been able to keep up with the daily readings, but I’m not doing so well in keeping up with you in this community. There are so many gems in the Old Testament, particularly in the books of Moses (the Pentateuch, Genesis through Deuteronomy), and it would bring me great joy to know that I got you thinking a little more about this often-neglected part of the Bible, seeing an old familiar passage in a different way, opening up more of the Bible’s message as a whole. The first five books of the Bible have the power to do that.

For instance, we passed right over the calling of Moses, the plagues, the Red Sea crossing: momentous events in our history. Yes, I said “our” history. As Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 10:1-3 (NLT),

¹ I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. ² In the cloud and in the sea, all of them were baptized as followers of Moses. ³ All of them ate the same spiritual food, ⁴ and all of them drank the same spiritual water. For they drank from the spiritual rock that traveled with them, and that rock was…

What do you think will be the last word in that sentence? Notice that Paul, writing to a predominantly Gentile church in Corinth, calls the Exodus generation of Israel OUR ancestors. Because we Christians are children of Abraham (see Galatians 3:28-29), the history of Israel is OUR history. And their source of spiritual water, their rock was the same as ours.

The last word is “…Christ.”

The Exodus story gives us not only our history but our identity, vividly portraying a generation of those who walked by faith through the wilderness toward a promised land described in hyperbole (“flowing with milk and honey” because it ALWAYS pointed toward the new heaven and the new earth), demonstrating the need for perseverance from those who journeyed, guaranteeing the presence and support of the One whose very name expresses His essential nature to always BE, revealing the ground of a personal relationship with the LORD who is here for us (see Exodus 3:14-15).  Exodus is important to Christians because we can see in its shadows and types the dynamics of our lives as followers of Christ.

Besides the narrative as a whole, there are so many significant and memorable events in Exodus. We read of several in the First Steps Reading Plan: the birth of Moses and his adoption by Pharaoh’s daughter (Ex. 2:1-10), Moses’ calling (Ex. 3), Moses’ weakness (Ex. 6:1-12), The ministry of Aaron (Ex. 7:-17), the threat of plagues and the hardening of Pharaoh (Ex. 8:16-19; Ex. 11), the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover (Ex 12), the pillar of cloud and of fire (Ex. 13:17-22), escape through the Red Sea (Ex. 14), the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20), the Tabernacle (Ex. 29:44-46), apostasy and the intercession of Moses (Ex. 32), the revealed glory of God (Ex. 33), and that glory filling the Tabernacle (Ex. 40:34-38). These are just a few snapshots in the portrait of Israel in Exodus, an outline that is filled-in and color-saturated only in the fullness of Christ’s coming and the filling of the Spirit in the church, resulting in OUR sonship (Galatians 4:4-7).

A Christian who remains ignorant of his or her roots in these ancient stories is like a tree that can easily be blown over by storms. This perspective is just a glimpse of the rich, deep biblical landscape, a vista where we can see ourselves in a larger story as we have followed along in this journey of reading the Bible together. And we’re just getting started.

Please check back here, as I will be posting some of my own Bible reading notes and devotional thoughts. I might even highlight a note or comment from a member of our Bible reading community. The goal here is to use the interactive technology the internet provides to encourage daily Bible reading and devotions among imperfect people. Even if you’ve NEVER been successful in daily Bible reading before, now you can be.

If you’ll just start a good habit and take the emphasis OFF of the illusion of perfection.

Speaking of perfection, let me end this first post with one of my favorite verses. You should memorize this one. Really.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6, ESV).

As a recovering perfectionist, I can tell you that learning the truth has liberated me, the truth that perfection is HIS work, and it comes at the END of the journey, not along the way. Where self-defeat formerly reigned, Christ now has full access. Open up your heart with me and come on the journey.