The difference between wanting and demanding is quite clear when you are dealing with your children but seems nebulous when it is found in your praying. How can you be certain you have not run off the tracks as you make your way through your requests? Hezekiah saw nothing wrong with begging God for added years when told he was about to die and Hannah is renowned for her spiritual fortitude in frantically crying out to God for a baby. How can we know a desire is godly and not just a self-centered lust? Hezekiah took his added fifteen years and fathered a son who became the most wicked of all the kings of Judah and Hannah took her boy Samuel and turned him back over to God to raise and mold into arguably the greatest of all priests not named Jesus. We can pray for anything and feel quite justified in our praying. After all, Christ Himself told us to ask and keep on asking. God may grant our demands just as freely as our wants but as Israel regretted the longing she had for a king, we too may wish we never got what our fevered prayers demanded. Our drive must always move in this one direction, that we become so close to God that our wants become His. Then what we ask for in prayer will truly bless all it touches. Give the Holy Spirit space to reshape your wants into God given desires.
People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap... 1 Timothy 6:9 NIV
Why is it that so many who turn away from Christ and the salvation He alone offers do so because they want to be free? There is no freedom outside of the life hidden in Christ. Don't we see it in the laboratory of daily activities? The one who drifts away from God is not free of anger, not free of selfishness, not free of jealousy and craven desires! He is not free of self deception and mistaken longings. The one enveloped in the love of Christ loses her bitterness and prejudice and mad strivings and wounded ego and is no longer a prisoner of any desire or shattered want. Jesus Christ and only Jesus Christ can and does take the entire person and make her free to love and free to be at peace. The turn into Christ is always a turn out of bondage toward unpretentious freedom.
Have you thought about what it would really be like if you let go and let God? Would your mind collapse in a rubble of deserted dreams and desires? Would you feel the need to pick up the pieces after you went with God for a while and saw where it left you? Could you think clearly if you let your world be God's in every way? God does not have any interest in working with you. He only wants to live through you. Welcome Him into your kingdom! The Holy Spirit has never been your servant...our confusion is often tied to our hope that He is or might be. Let Him teach you how to pray and you will gain access to the bounty found only in Christ...a bounty limited only by your resistance to the working of God in your every day life as His child and beloved home.
Have you thought about what it would really be like if you let go and let God? Would your mind collapse in a rubble of deserted dreams and desires? Would you feel the need to pick up the pieces after you went with God for a while and saw where it left you? Could you think clearly if you let your world be God's in every way? God does not have any interest in working with you. He only wants to live through you. Welcome Him into your kingdom! The Holy Spirit has never been your servant...our confusion is often tied to our hope that He is or might be. Let Him teach you how to pray and you will gain access to the bounty found only in Christ...a bounty limited only by your resistance to the working of God in your every day life as His child and beloved home.