25 June 2007 Devotion for Today “Supplication” Matthew 7:7-11
In 1981 I was working at as a bagger and a stock clerk at Food Lion grocery store on Tidewater Dr in Norfolk, Virginia, when a harried mother wheeled her cart up to the check out line while her 5 year old son, sitting in the grocery cart, pestered her for chewing gum, asking, “Mama, can I have some chewing gum.” “No!” “Mama, I want some chewing gum!” “No!” “Mama, can I please have some chewing gum?” “No.” “Aw! Mama, why can’t I have some chewing gum?” “No, you don’t need chewing gum, that stuff will make the teeth fall right out of your head.” “Please mama, give me that gum?” In the meantime, a whole bunch of people were listening to the conversation at the check-out line until that kid finally started crying and then said, “In the name of Jesus, please give me that chewing gum!” All the sympathetic listeners heard that appeal, and next thing that kid knows, he’s got 50 packs of chewing gum thrown into his mother’s shopping basket! You have to hand it to that child, for he was practicing what Jesus said in Matthew 7:7-8
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9
Today I want us to continue on the series on prayer that I began a few weeks ago with the Acrostic ACTS. A- was for adoration. C- was for confession. T- was for thanksgiving. Today we come to the letter S- which means supplication- here is a word that is almost lost to us because it is a word that was used in the KJV. But to supplicate simply means to ask, to make a request, to make a petition for something (and in this case in prayer to God) on our own behalf. Asking is always from someone who is in a lower position making a request of someone in a higher position, such as a child to a parent, an employee to an employer, a player to a coach, and in this instance, man asking God. Inherent in the asking is the realization that the person you are asking has the ability and the resources available to make good on the request. Jesus says that if you ask, it will be given you. We must also understand the language that Jesus was using. What Jesus is saying is, Continue asking. To ask, ask, ask- to keep on asking. In the original language, this word is a continuous action verb.
In the book of James 4:8 he says, “You have not because you ask not, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.” In other words, you don’t have because you ask for the wrong things for the wrong reasons. But just as wrong as asking for the wrong reasons is not to ask at all. Like the man who whose house was overtaken in Hurricane Katrina. And he gets up on his house and he prays knowing God will save him. In a moment, a Red Cross worker comes by in hip boots! No, God will save me! The water rises higher, and a sheriff’s deputy comes by in a jon-boat, Come on, get in! No, God will save me! The flood waters reach the roof of the man’s house, and a helicopter comes by and announces, “This is the Coast Guard! We’re lowering a ladder down to you. Get on it!” The man hollers back, “No thank you, God will save me!” So the helicopter flys away. The man drowns. He’s standing before God very disappointed, “I don’t understand I prayed and you didn’t save me, what’s up with that? And God said, “I sent you a Red Cross worker in a rowboat, a sheriff’s deputy in a bigger boat, and the Coast Guard- how much did you expect me to do?”
Ask and it shall be given you, but we have to take it whenever it is offered!
Have a blessed day!
Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@embarqmail.com
jcrussell@liberty.edu
Church website: http://25621.lifewaylink.com
Devotion Archives: http://www.msnusers.com/DevotionforToday
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