by Dr. Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Jesus says, “Ask and you shall receive.” He encourages us to ask boldly and persistently through the story of the unjust judge and the persistent widow. But… I have often heard people say that they don’t want to trouble God with their petty needs and concerns…
Yet… Not only does Jesus often urge us to ask for what we need, but… He tells stories in which He showcases rude, relentless people who wake up their neighbors in the middle of the night.
My all-time favorite, though, is the story of the nagging widow who won’t give the judge a moment’s rest till she gets what she wants. The unjust judge simply… wanted the widow to stop bugging him. But God appears to want us to bug Him. And keep bugging Him.
Why? Maybe because He’d rather us look to Him for assistance than to the idols of this age… Perhaps because He is a loving Father…
When I was a teen, I thought that prayer was about asking for things but… We are often wrong about what to ask for, because we misidentify what will really make us happy. God knows us better than we know ourselves… And He loves us more than we love ourselves, because He is our Father.
So before talking to Him… we need to listen to Him… through Scripture. These words are guaranteed to be His, for they are inspired, breathed by the Holy Spirit, divine words in human words (2 Tim 3:16).
This… means that the Holy Spirit dwells in these words…These words… are food for our souls. Most of us don’t eat once a week. We eat daily. Several times a day in fact. So we should gather up the manna of God’s word at least daily, maybe even several times a day.
…You may not have time for a daily Thanksgiving feast, but I bet you snack a few times a day. There are scriptural, bite-sized snacks called the Psalms that… are God’s inspired word through which He speaks to us… they cover everything that we could possible want to say to God…
If you have time for three meals or snacks a day, you have time for at least three Psalms a day.
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