Stop Begging and Start Believing!

Yesterday I read a phrase in the bible that I’d NEVER read before. David in Psalms 131 talks about calming and quieting himself and then makes this bold statement that he will quietly trust the lord. 

“Quietly trust”…I’d never heard that phrase and it kind of made me think….Do I “quietly trust” the lord? What does “quietly trust” even mean?

I looked up the word quietly and found stuff like minimal noise, patient, peaceful, and saying little.

Then it sort of hit me…I don’t really “quietly” trust God. I’m not patient and I definitely don’t say little. If I don’t get it when I think I’m supposed to have it, I ask multiple times JUST in case the first time I asked He didn’t hear me or He didn't think I was being serious. I mean…I was taught to keep asking until you get it. Keep knocking until it’s open…In other words…..I was under the impression that I had to BEG!!!

See, begging is one level of faith. It, at most, requires you to believe that God is capable of meeting your need. The down side is, it requires no belief that He ACTUALLY will meet your need.  

See, begging is a system where you wear somebody down until they give “it” to you in order to shut you up. A biblical example comes from Luke. In Luke, Jesus tells this parable of a man asking his friend for some bread at midnight. The friend responds like, “Man, it’s late, my children are asleep, the door is locked…go away.” The man keeps knocking on the door asking for the bread and eventually the friend gives it to him. Why? Because of his persistence. Eventually, to shut him up, the friend gave the man the bread like...

Now taking that story and attempting to apply it to my relationship with God….God would have to be the friend with the supplies that I need and I would have to be the man knocking on the door, right? Here’s the thing though….God doesn’t get annoyed with the idea of blessing us. His door is never locked!

Romans tells us that He gives us alllll things FREELY! Psalms tells us that if we delight ourselves in the Lord He will give us the desires of our hearts! There’s no BEGGING required. Matthew 21:22 says that we can pray for ANYTHING and if we believe and have faith, we will receive it!

See, it’s one thing to beg, but it’s another thing to believe. Begging leaves too much room for doubt. Begging comes from a place of “maybe He will….then again maybe He won’t.” We can’t quietly trust the Lord and beg at the same time.

Yes, ask the lord to meet your needs. Yes fervently pray, but the minute you start begging is the minute you start making a lie out of His deity. David said in ALLL the days of his life he never saw the righteous forsaken nor God’s seed BEGGING for bread. If you are TRULY God’s seed, STOP begging and start believing!!!!

Practically, that means a few things. First, when we come to God, we have to quiet and calm ourselves. You ever seen a little kid run up to their parent and ask them for something but the kid is so excited or overwhelmed that the parent has to tell them to calm down because they’re either making no sense or getting themselves worked up? It’s the same with God. We have to quiet and calm ourselves in the presence of our Father. He’ll do it...but calm down so YOU can actually ask Him.

Second, while we're waiting for the thing that we prayed for, we have to take our focus off the gift and focus on the Giver. Instead of making our prayers "begging" sessions, let's turn them into faith-refueling sessions where we praise God for what He's done and worship Him for who He IS!

We serve the LORD of lords!

We serve a God who is MORE than capable!

We serve a God who split seas!

We serve a God who made water come from rocks!

Stop begging...and start believing that if He met your needs before...He not only can, but WILL do it again!!!