What is it you are looking for? What is it you desire? What do you long for and perhaps have been working several years to acquire? How have you gone about it? Are you going it alone or have you asked for help?
We all desire something. There is something at the top of a list of things we want that far exceeds all others. Perhaps we know exactly what it is. Perhaps we haven’t identified it consciously yet.
Some may read the first part of today’s passage and interpret it mean we can ask for anything and God will grant it. That viewpoint makes God out to be a genie that merely granting wishes. Yet, that isn’t what the passage says. Notice the reason why God gives us what we ask—we keep His commands.
Continue reading the passage and we see His commands—believe in Jesus and love one another as He commanded. Those last three words are often forgotten. To love as He commanded means to love unconditionally, just as He loves us. It also includes loving everyone. That means the person at work who is undermining you. It means the family member who consistently offends you. It means the person in office you voted against.
But John doesn’t stop there, he goes on to say that keeping His commands brings God into our lives. We know that He lives in us by the Spirit of God who lives in us. In other words, as we commit to do our best to follow His commands, His Spirit lets us know He is there and guides us.
As we listen to the Holy Spirit guiding us, we ask for what God desires. When we ask for what He desires, He gives us what we ask for. See how this all circles around? When we follow God’s guidance our minds are renewed or changed to be in concert with Him, we follow His commands, we ask for God’s will to be done, and He grants it.
I pray we all follow Jesus’ commands. I pray we listen for the Holy Spirit who lives in us. I pray each one of us will have our minds renewed and ask according to God’s will. Be confident in God. Obey His commands. Believe in Jesus. Love one another. Know the Spirit lives in you. Ask according to God’s will.
1 John 3:21-24 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
Marty Pressey 