All I Had to Do Was Ask

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)
I stepped into the small room and closed the door. I trembled as I picked up the black receiver and dialed the all too familiar phone number. It was going to be the hardest call I had ever had to make. My heart pounded as I waited to hear the voice on the other line.

“Daddy, I want to come back. Is there any way I can come back to school next year?”

My parents had given me the gift of one year away at school for college. They weren’t wealthy and one year of tuition plus room and board was about all they could afford. My year was up. I had completed my first year of college and it was time to go home. It was the end of my last semester and I was gathered with some of my closest friends in our dorm lobby making donuts for the last time, when they looked at me and said, “Kim, we have figured out a way for you to come back to JBU next year. We want you to come back. Why don’t you call your parents and ask?”

Asking is not easy for me. I am a pleaser by nature and to ask for something means inconveniencing someone else, and I don’t like to do that. Asking means making myself vulnerable to the response of someone else. Calling my parents and asking my dad if I could return to school 1,200 miles away from home was a big deal for me. I really wanted to go back to John Brown and my friends knew it, but I hadn’t asked.  Their intervention was the push I needed to ask for what I wanted.

God instructs us in Matthew 7:7-11 to ask for the things we need. We don’t have because we don’t ask. We don’t find what we are looking for because we don’t seek. We don’t have doors opened to us because we don’t knock.

The voice on the other line listened to my request and then asked:

“Honey, do you want to go back? Is this what you really want?”

“Yes, daddy.”

“Then we will make it work, don’t worry about it. If you really want to go back, we will find the money. ”
That spring night in Siloam Springs, Arkansas changed my life. It set me on a path of faith that required me to walk closely with my God. I met my husband, found my calling, and surrendered my life to my Lord. All I had to do was ask.

The same thing holds true for asking God for what we need. Just like my dad was willing to do whatever it took to give me what my heart desired, God desires to give us good things as well. All we have to do is ask.
 
Is there something you want or need? Have you asked for it? Have you sought after it? Have you knocked on God’s door requesting it? Ask Him today. You may find the answer you have been looking for, just because you asked.
 
 

---