Remaining Is More Important Than Receiving

Too many times in our Christian faith we focus on receiving.  Receiving salvation.  Receiving the Spirit.  Receiving a blessing.  Receiving favor, abundance, or miraculous healing.  Now listen, I’m all for receiving.  Receiving forgiveness and receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit are of utmost importance to our eternity and our every day living.

The problem I see is once we have received salvation we tend to focus on receiving more and more stuff from Jesus.  We’ll even quote Scripture to try and get it.

In John 15:7, Jesus says, “But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!”

Man, we Christians read that verse and we latch on to “ask for anything you want.”  So we shoot for the stars, don’t we!  We pray for a bigger house, a better job, a heftier bank account.  We ask for a better girlfriend, better-looking girlfriend or just any girlfriend for that matter.  We read verses like that and it becomes carte blanche on asking.  Nothing is off limits, right?

Now again, I’m not against asking God for stuff.  If I don’t ask, the answer is already no, right?  I do think we should be careful about what we are asking for.  What’s the motive of the ask?  And that’s my whole point.

The key word in this verse is not “receive” (granted).  The key word is “remain”.  When it comes to prayer, we tend to focus on the receiving part way more than the remaining part.  The reality is, if we focus on remaining in Him, we will learn to know His will and when we know His will we will ask according to His will and will receive what we ask for!

When my focus is receiving I’ll ask for what pleases me, in my humanness.  When I focus on remaining I will ask for what pleases God, in His holiness.  I want to focus on remaining.  How about you?