#51: BEFORE ASKING

By -

Do not give what is holy to dogs-they will only turn and attack you. Do not throw your pearls in front of pigs-they will only trample them underfoot. Matthew 7:6 (GNB)

We are all familiar with the famous bible verse: ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. The following verse makes it more interesting: for everyone who asks will receive, and anyone who seeks will find, and the door will be opened to those who knock. It paints a picture of an action-reaction relationship between asking and receiving. It appears that the natural reward for asking is receiving. However, even in our few years on earth, and our years as believers in the faith, it doesn’t seem to work as easily as the verse paints it to be. God will be helping us this week to see one of the reasons why this is often times the case.

Even before our LORD would talk about asking, in form of preliminary introduction, he clearly stated that dogs do not deserve what is holy, and pigs do not deserve what is precious. I can hear the LORD saying emphatically that: should a “dog” ask for something holy, or should a “pig” ask for something precious, the request will land on deaf ears.

Are we “dogs”? Are we “pigs”? The little gifts and talents the LORD has already bestowed on us, do we trample on them underfoot? Do we use the gifts of God to attack God and His church?

THOUGHT: Before asking, we must certify these characteristics in our lives. The King does not want to suffer loss. The virtues of God are too holy to be given to dogs, they are too precious to be lavished on pigs.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#126: The Story behind the Hymn I: When Peace, Like a River

By -
Author: Horatio Gates Spafford  (1873) In November, 1873, Horatio Spafford sent his wife and four daughters on the French ship  Ville du Havre  from their home in Chicago to a vacation in France, planning to set out a few days later himself. Somewhere in the Atlantic, the  Ville du Havre  collided with a British ship coming the other way, and sank in just 12 minutes. Of his family, only Spafford’s wife survived.  Spafford took the next boat over, and as he passed the spot where the ship went down, began to write, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll,” and continued until he had the text, “It is well with my soul.” His good friend, Philip Bliss, composed the tune for his words, naming it after the ship, VILLE DU HAVRE.  In this hymn, Spafford has given all of us words of comfort and assurance in times of physical and spiritual crisis, paraphrasing those familiar words of Julian of Norwich: “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all m
Read more

#152: FIRE

By -
Image
“I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Mathew 3:11) I’ve been going through the book of Mathew for a while now and you won’t believe what I saw. Well, you may have seen it before, but as for me, I had just seen this for the first time in my life. I sure had read this verse a couple of times in my lifetime, but I just never saw what I had just seen. This was what I saw, “…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. The word that struck me was the ‘and’ between the Holy Spirit and Fire. Questions began to run through my mind like; Is the baptism of the Holy Spirit different from that of Fire? But Isn’t The Holy Spirit fire Himself? For days I looked upon this verse; I couldn’t forge ahead until I got light.  In the midst of my search, I fell ill; seriously ill that I couldn’t do anything, not even to pray or stu
Read more

#147: THE FORGOTTEN ONE'S 1

By -
Image
“But you shall receive power (ability, efficiency and might) when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.” (Acts 1:8 [AMP]) I once heard a preacher say that the reason his church was not growing in size over the years was because the members were not living right; if they lived right, many would see the evidence of Jesus in their lives and follow them to church. That’s partially true, but not 100% true. I once heard another preacher say that the reason they were depreciating in number was because evil was looming around the church and preventing new members from coming in. Well, that could be true to some extent, but not 100% true. I sat wondering year after year why it was the same people I saw in church every Sunday. There was no single new member and the only difference was that these people were getting older and dying while children were born to others to rep
Read more