My kids and I are walking through the book of Exodus right now. After we read Exodus 3 one morning, I asked my 7 year old to pray for us. I had a feeling that he would not want to. As assumed, he squirmed away from this suggestion and offered dozens of other ideas as to whom should do it. My initial thoughts were of frustration and disappointment that I must be doing something wrong since his walk with God is now seeming more distant. My insecurities turned into accusations running through my head that look a bit like a person pointing a fire hydrant hose at a child, trying to wash him off. It doesn’t work real well without making him lose his footing, and will probably cause some destruction to his delicate skin.
As Jimmy Evans puts it, Jesus simply fills his hands with water and very gently pours it over our heads, he does not hose us down. So I hesitated from speaking the words that were circling in my mind and I paused.
I told my child, son, to follow Jesus is to know Him. If you can have conversations with me, then you can also have them with Him. Do you always know what to say to me? His response caught me off guard when he responded with NO.
So I responded that when we don’t know what to say to a friend, we can ask him what HE wants to talk about. Why don’t you try that?
So he did. “God, what do you want to talk about?”
I paused and we sat there in silence for several moments. I then asked my son what was running through his head. He responded, CHURCH.
Confused once more, I told him to ask God another question.
“God, what do you want to talk about regarding church?” So he did.
We sat in silence again. I then asked him what he was thinking about. He responded that he was thinking about “talking to people in church”. I asked him what he felt like this means and he immediately had an answer.
God is telling me that HE WILL BE WITH ME when people talk to me at church.
Everything inside of me was leaping for joy. We had just read in Exodus about Moses, when God was calling out to him from the burning bush. The scriptures read “WHO AM I, that I should go to Pharaoh”. You see these are the words from an insecure man that does not believe he has the qualities or qualifications to do something so big and so scary. And do you know how God responds to him? “I WILL BE WITH YOU”.
We are all just trying so desperately to take each day and each step. Each of us has a mountain of hurdles that we are working to leap over, and each of them look different from one person to the next.
For my 7 year old, it has become a great task to respond to people as they speak to him. He becomes nervous and anxious and if I do not prompt him beforehand, he will often look at them without speaking a word.
The God of the universe cares about my 7 year old and each hurdle that he is facing each and every day. There is no problem too small. He also cares about you and your struggles.
The Bible reads that “YOU HAVE NOT, BECAUSE YOU ASK NOT”. It only took 8 words spoken through the mouth of a child to prompt the Lord to give to my son. Through his personal invitation to let the God of heaven into his day-to-day, my child received a special response prompting him to have confidence in climbing his mountain, because God told him I WILL BE WITH YOU.
And through this experience, I have seen the Lord show up in his day in special ways just about every day since.
He is and will constantly show up in our lives.
ASK.
You Have Not, Because You Ask Not. James 4:2-3
Jacob's Ladder 