Many times we find ourselves in a box of small thinking. How will this outcome affect me? How will others perceive me? What will happen to me if I ask and don’t get the response I want? These types of questions hinder us from asking God and responding in obedience.
None of these questions matter.
God holds the outcome of our miracle in His hands. The Bible says that the heart of the king is in His hands and He can direct it any way He chooses (Proverbs 21:1). The outcome is His to worry about; the courage to ask is our part in the process.
Your courage will have a ripple effect in the lives of those around you. The courage to ask will trickle its way down from the feet of Jesus, where it originates, into the lives of others. I’m positively certain the woman in 2 Kings 4 asked God privately for her needs.
There are most likely volumes of unwritten prayers to be found between the lines of scripture.
Let’s get real together. The courage to ask took this woman beyond making her request known before God. It meant asking her friend the prophet and eventually getting the entire community involved in her miracle. You’ve got to push past discomfort to get the miracle destined for your future.
The unnamed woman in 2 Kings knew this; in fact, God directed it. He could have done a miracle in the secret places, but He involved others and that required the courage to ask on her part. She went from house to house collecting as many empty jars as she could. God used their gift to provide a miracle in her life.
It’s one thing to make requests to God in the quiet stillness of your solitude, where no peering eyes can see. It’s still another to let a close friend in on your situation, but this woman needed the entire neighborhood for her miracle! The courage to ask can sometimes mean discomfort in the moment for a miracle in your future.
To ask means we need to push past discomfort. The courage to ask takes brutal honesty and
a desire to change no matter the cost. No more masks. I can imagine the woman wanted people to think she was okay. To look at her story and her family and see the hand of God. She was married to a prophet, after all. She would simply believe God and He would come through; no one else had to know about her destitute situation.
She wanted to be strong and capable. But there came a point and time in her life where the miracle she needed mattered more than the perceptions of others.
We all must reach this point in our relationship with God.
If we are ever going to have the courage to ask, we’ve got to embrace honesty and be truthful about our situation.
We need to have the courage to come before God and ask for the miraculous. Then we need to be willing to ask others.
Let me tell someone out there that being honest about your situation doesn’t mean you lack faith in the God you love—it simply means you are acknowledging your need for His miraculous power in your life.
It means, with the help of God and others, your joy and strength will only increase. If you’re going to carry an impossible vision for your life, you’re going to need trusted, creative, talented, gifted people to help assist along the way. You can’t do it on your own. It’s too big. Too hairy. It’s more than you can handle. You need a Savior who can sweep down, assist you and do above what you could ever hope or dream. And let me tell you, that is God’s
specialty.
God has a miraculous road before you.
The courage to ask makes you fight past your feelings. The unnamed woman could have felt like she was being ungrateful. She could have argued, she didn’t have enough faith. If she had more faith, God would have already come through. Yet, she pushed past her feelings and grabbed hold of the courage to ask. She collected her empty vessels and waited obediently for God to fill them.
"So what does the courage to ask look like for you? In this season, what is God burdening on your heart to have the courage to ask for?"
Photo Credit: Tara Winstead from pexels.com | Photo Design: Milan Klusacek, milanklusacek.com
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