One of the many changes that we saw take place in the twentieth century … is the manner in which we do our shopping. […] Now … you walk into a department store or a supermarket and walk around taking off the shelves whatever you want. […] The problem with that sort of shopping is that you tend to take off the shelves whatever you want. You don’t necessarily walk in with a list of the things that you really need. […] Now this sort of thinking can very much permeate our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

[…] The other model of shopping… still goes on in many … Indian shops; you walk in and you ask the shopkeeper for this or that, and depending on whether her has it in stock, he will give it to you … That … is not exactly the situation we are in when we are talking about the things the Father has in store, but it is getting much closer to the picture. […]

…the passage where the Lord Jesus Christ says, “Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you” - … many people, and we ourselves sometimes, feel that Jesus is teaching that whatever we ask for, we’ll receive. […] Let’s read on —

“Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?” (Matthew 7:9-11)

He  won’t give bad things to them that ask Him, He’ll give good things because He is a loving and wise Father. So, so often in our lives it is the case that when we do seek things from God we are in fact asking for stones. We find … we think something is bread, that it will be good, that is will sustain us; but God knows that that thing that we think is bread is in fact a stone that will hang around our neck and drag us down in our walk to the kingdom. Se when we ask for a stone in our foolishness, He gives bread.

Sometimes we ask for bread; we do ask for the right things, and He will give it. But there are many times I am sure that, both in our big and small wrong perceptions, we ask for wrong things; we ask for stones, and the loving Father withholds the stones and gives us brread instead because that is a good thing. We ask for things that may be serpents in our lives, that would end up stinging us with the sting of death, and cause us to go back into the way of sin. And we are told that He doesn’t give serpents to us. He gives us that which will sustain us, the fish of his providing.

So there’s the key — the good gifts that He will give to His children, that’s what He has in His store. Good gifts.

Tim Galbraith, Caution! God at Work (Hyderabad: Printland)

Image: courtesy of lu_lu