meditations for an everyday relationship with Jesus

Ask

Matthew 7:7-11 "Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What man among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!

Does this mean that the first time we seek, or the first time we knock on God’s door, that we will be given everything we ask for and we will be completely satisfied? Or is there a suggestion that we must be persistent, and not tire of doing the right things, until we have results? We must be persistent, and the results will come at an appointed time. This timing will honor God and benefit us … that is His will.

If our lives are going to change it will be because of a process of steps we take each day, not because we have been involved in some “one-of-a-kind” supernatural event.

Inferior wine

John 2:7-11 Now six stone water jars had been set there for Jewish purification. Each contained 20 or 30 gallons. [about 150 gallons]

“Fill the jars with water,” Jesus told them. So they filled them to the brim. Then He said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the chief servant.” And they did. When the chief servant tasted the water (after it had become wine), he did not know where it came from though the servants who had drawn the water knew. He called the groom and told him, “Everyone sets out the fine wine first, then, after people have drunk freely, the inferior. But you have kept the fine wine until now.”

Jesus performed this first sign in Cana of Galilee. He displayed His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.

Our passage about the finest wine being left until “now” is a strong statement about God’s timing for Jesus Christ Himself. In Jesus He kept the finest wine (His only Son) until an appropriate moment, and then gave Him to the world: His blood a covenant.

While the world is drunk on itself, and enamored with all of its acquisitions (having consumed the inferior wine), God has poured out His Son (the fine wine) at just the right time: the “now” is truly “in this church age,” but sadly many of the most inebriated on the inferior product cannot taste the fine wine of salvation.

We are told time and time again in the New and Old Testaments to stay sober and vigilant so that opportunity does not pass us by in our drunken state. (see Luke 21:34)