“[Faith] is about building our lives and moving forward with confidence fueled by commitment to God’s truth. At the same time, the focus of our prayers must shift away from trying to get God to do what we ask or even asking God what He wants us to do; like the early disciples in the books of Acts, we are to ask God to give us courage to do what we already know.”

One of the reason’s I can be a slow reader in finishing a good book is because of deep and profound statements like the above. I go back end re-read chapters, and paragraphs that really resonate, that words are so well put in explaining these things about God.

In “Chasing Daylight”, Erwin, speaks so much encouraging truth about our destine, about living out this adventurous life for God, truly just seizing every moment God gives us.

I think for any Christian (or any religion for that matter) our faith is based off of feelings and emotions. We measure faith by how strongly we believe something will happen. Isn’t this true? The assumption is the greater our faith it will happen. We ask and we will receive.

It’s a bit of what I like to call naive faith. A lot of times adults will teach children to pray and ask God for things the want. So we develop this “Santa Claus God” who if we’re good and we ask nice, he will give us gifts. And we care that in mentality into adulthood and tell ourselves that when we pray and ask and it doesn’t happen it just means we simply didn’t have enough faith.

It is almost as if we have this false promise that if we ask in the name of Jesus that we should expect to receive. I admit my part of my spiritual up bringing and my prayer life was up helds with this “ask and receive” idea.

Here is the big BUT; Rick Warren puts it best in the first page of his book, IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU. I love that, its so clear our faith is not based around us but on God himself. So the promise of Jesus:

If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
Matt 21:22

God wants us to ask him, but really God wants us to ask of him that which reflects God’s own heart. Do our intentions an purpose represent that of God? Look at our prayers, and the things we ask for. There needs to be an understanding that when we truly love God, our desires and what we pray for changes. If we have God’s heart, and we want to full-fill his intent then we can confidently ask God in prayer.