Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Greatest Gift

Which of you, if your son asks you for a fish will give you a snake or if he asks for an egg will give him a scorpion? If you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Spirit to those who ask him?




Choosing the right gift for the right person is a difficult process. Should we always give people what they ask? What if it is bad for them? Should we give people what makes them happy right now, or what be useful to them in the long term? What message are we sending by the gifts we give?

It is not just us who struggle with these questions. So does God. “Struggle” may not be the right word, since God knows even before we ask what is best for us. Nevertheless, the same consideration that we give to gift giving are the same ones that God Himself must ask as well.

That is why when we pray, we don’t always get what we want. God’s concern for us is too great for Him to simply be a gift-giving machine. He takes our whole lives into consideration when he answers a prayer.

In this passage, we see three issue that God considers when He answers prayer.



Is it what we want?

“Which of you, if you son asks for a fish, will giver a snake instead?” this passage actually exists in two textual forms. One says “stone” and the other says “snake.” There is a big difference between a snake and a stone—one will bite us and the other will not. But whether we are talking about snakes or stones, the are poor substitutes for a delicious fish dinner.

God wants to give us what we want, just as we want to give our loved ones what they want. It is our joy and pride to do so. If we could, we would give more to those we love because they are special to us, and want them to be happy.

Nevertheless, there is a school of thought that suggests that God is different, that he makes us take what we need, not what we want. It is the belief that whatever we get we ought to appreciate because God gives it.

When I was a child, I did not like to go to church, just as many children don’t today. The music was boring, the seats were hard, the people seemed unfriendly, and the preaching was boring. Nevertheless, when I went to church, we always began by saying “I was glad when they said to me, ‘let us go into the house of the Lord.’” Talk about mixed messages! Not only was I supposed to go and put up with all this, but I was supposed to be glad about it!

As I grew up and became a pastor, I also became aware that many people had not really outgrown this dislike of church, not even the people who attended. Their parents drilled into them that God wanted them to be here, whether they enjoyed it or not. In truth, their parents didn’t like it either. They just grew up with a sense of duty that said they should go, and that they should pretend that they enjoyed it. So their hearts were far from God, even when their bodies were in His house every day.

Unfortunately, they had developed an unhealthy picture of God. God was a person who punished us for telling the truth about what we do and do not like. Instead of a God who wanted us to be happy, we have often pictured God as someone who wanted us to be unhappy, unless we did things absolutely correctly. He was a God of discipline, not love.

This is not the real God. The Catechism says that our chief end is to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” God want us to enjoy his company and his presence, without pretense or hypocrisy. It Is His desire to give us what we want, not to make us want what He gives.

God will not give us what hurts us. “Or if he asks for an egg, will give Him a scorpion?” The first rule of His gift giving is that He will not harm us. He will give us nothing that will bring us to harm. We would not give a baby a set of steak knives, nor would we give a blind man a car. He knows what will and will not give us the greatest long-term benefit.

Let us suppose that a man prays to win the lottery. A sudden fortune can ruin a man a surely as sudden poverty. Many lottery winners have found that it only brought pain. Marriages are put under strain. They are besieged with con artists and beggars. Relatives and friends fight over the winnings. Many have even gone on to die in poverty, because they could not handle newfound wealth they did not know how to manage.

There is a secret to giving that God knows, and few others. You cannot give anything to anyone without taking something else away. If we lift a person out of poverty by giving him what he needs, we take away his responsibility of earning it. If we give advice, we take away a person’s need to figure things out for themselves. If we give people everything they want, we take away their right enjoy what thy earn. If we give people leadership, we take away their freedom.

God is capable of giving us everything. But God knows that we are better off when we learn responsibility and self-reliance. He protects us, but he will not work for us. This is not because he hates us, but because He lobes us and wants us to be happy. He does not overprotect His children.

Third, God give th4 Holy Spirit, the greatest gift of all. This verse also exists in two forms. In Matthew 7, Jesus sasy “How much more does your Heavenly Father know how to give good gifts to His children.” Here it says the Spirit, not good giftd. This is not a contradiction, but an expansion of interpreta6tion. The Spirit is the best gift of all.

Think how rare and beautiful this statement must have been, especially to the Jews who first heard it. Having the Holy Spirit was an extremely rate commodity to them. The first person who had it was Moses. Anyone who wanted 6o know God had to go to him. Then, he shared it with Aaron, and then with the elders. But the average person could not even get near the spirit. Later, a few other people had the Spirit—Joshua, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, and the prophets, but it was never more than a very few people at any time. Most people knew God indirectly, not directly.

That was all about to change. The prophet Joel predicted it.

The time is coming says the Lord When I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh And your sons and your daughters will prophesy,

And your old men will dream drieams, and hyour yound men will see vision

Evern upon your maid an your manswervant wil I pour out my spirit, says the Lord.

In Jesus day, they all agreed that John the Baptist was a prophet and that he had the Spirit. Many ebelived that Jeus had the spirit. But how could an ordinary man or woman have the Spirit. Would God let everyone know the Spirit.

Think of what the Spirit meant. It meant that they could talk to God, and hear from Him. It meant that God himself wiould comfort them, that He would empower and direct them.

Think of a world where everyone has the Holy Spirit. There wouldnot need to comfort or encourage one another, because all comfort and encouragement would come form God. There would be no noeed for teachers, sinsce all teaching would come from God. There would be no sorrow, because the Spirit could cause us to understand. There would be no error, becauwe the Spirit wuld keep us from it. No one would ever be lonely, because we would have God with us always. We would be powerful an successful, because we woul have the power of God.

Most of all, God would be with us. That is the greatest blessing of all.

There was story in the news last weak about Ryan Smith, an officer in a national Guard unit who was coming home from Iraq aft4r a month’s deployment. He was told that his eleven year old son Colemen was having a concert at his school in Colorado Springs. He arranged to come home two days early. He contacted a friend who was a helicopter pilot. The pilot flew him to his son’s school just in time for the concert. The children of the school were given a surprise assembly outside. Then the helicopter landed, and Coleman’s father steppedout. His son rushed to his arms.

What was the greatest gift Colemen received that day? Was it the sight o the helicopter? Was I the present which his father had in his backpack? No, it was his father. His father was the present.

When we come to God, God gives us the greatest gift of all—the Holy Spirit. His presence is the gift. It ist the blessing that surpasses all others.

And it is free to anyone for the asking.

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