What are you asking God for?
Our Lord tells us that
whatever we ask the Father for
in Jesus' name,
He will grant us.
It sounds like
a licence to print money,
but you know that it's not.
St Paul is in prison.
If God would give Paul
whatever he wanted,
then he might be free from prison.
If God gives us what we want,
then why is St Stephen stoned to death?
If God gives us what we want,
then why does He not take
the cup of suffering from
His Only Son,
even when His Only Son
begs Him
to let the cup pass from Him?
[PAUSE]
We worship God
and that means
not treating Him
like a genie.
We may ask for
the things that we want,
but we cannot expect
our prayers to be answered
in the narrow prison
of our own desires.
We can expect
our prayers to be answered.
We should expect
our prayers to be answered,
but they will be answered in a way
that makes us more real.
St James tells us
that it is not enough
to say the words.
We have to do the work.
Doing the work
makes what we believe
obvious.
Doing the work
takes our faith from
the vague clouds
of fact and theory in our heads
and shows the world
that we do have faith in God.
We are not saved by faith alone,
because faith is never alone.
A faith that exists just in the mind
does nothing for the body.
And we are to be saved Body and Soul.
Faith is the gift of God.
Free will is the gift of God.
And free will makes
what is in our mind
become real.
Faith and free will go together.
And Faith also comes with
Hope and Charity.
And it is Our Lord present
in body and soul
Who saves us
Body and Soul.
If Faith saves
then it never saves us alone.
[PAUSE]
Whatever we ask God for
requires faith in God,
but faith must be worked out.
Faith is the paper on
which God has written
His covenant with us
in the blood of His Son.
That covenant needs working out.
We need to play our part.
And God will play His.
And what does God promise us
in this Covenant?
[PAUSE]
He promises
our hearts' desire.
He promises
the one thing
that will give us true joy
more than cars
or money
or health
or wine, women and song,
more than
freedom from prison,
freedom from persecution,
freedom from a painful, miserable death,
He gives us the one thing.
Himself.
And, in order to give us Himself,
He makes us more real
than we can know,
so that we can
enjoy his presence
for Eternity.
[PAUSE]
But this means
seeing the things that we desire
as not being the things
that will make us happy
but as being the things
which show us
what we really need from God.
If we want a fast car
then we might really want
a sense of exhilaration
of fresh air
and speed.
It's not really the car
we want,
it's the experience that
having a car might
give us.
If we ask Him,
God will give us
His Holy Spirit
to thrill us,
give us a blast of the clean air
from Eternity
and the sense of His power
rushing through Creation.
But this means
that we must
be prepared to go
wherever the Holy Spirit
leads us.
If we want to be healthy
then we might really want
a life free from pain.
But God can give us this life
through His Son
in our own resurrection
from the dead.
But this means we cannot
be satisfied with
our own relief from pain
and must work to relieve
the pain of others.
Their pain must become
our own pain.
If we want the company
of a pretty woman or handsome man,
then we might have a longing
for the company of someone
who truly loves us
and whom we find able to love.
God loves us
and, if we ask Him,
He will show us His beauty
which will go beyond anything
created.
[PAUSE]
Our Lord Jesus Christ says that,
if we ask,
we shall receive.
We can ask for the universe.
But we cannot be satisfied with that
because we can have
the Creator of the Universe
Himself.
What do you really, really want?
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