Proverbs 10:11 “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life.”

Several things are clear and lie right on the surface of today's text. The first obvious thing is that God is the giver of and a lover of life; he likes to promote life, not violence and death.
    I have come to believe that life is the gift of God - both this life and the life to come. And, like any gift, it is freely given out of love; but it must also be received, and opened, and experienced in order to become a true reality in our hearts, minds and souls.
    There are only three things that I find in the Bible concerning death; One is found in the Book of Genesis 2:6 where it says “And the Lord God commanded the man; ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but, you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you shall surely die”… Man of course, disobeyed God, which was sin, and the result of sin is the curse of death. “The wages of sin is death.”
    The second thing the Bible says about death is that it is the destiny of every man to die once, and after that to face the judgment”(Hebrews 9:27) Let me emphasize something here; Man is destined to die ONCE. This becomes important because of the third thing God’s Word says about death;
    The third, is rather interesting - and probably most important - from the Book of Revelation 20:12-15 - “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
    That’s basically all the Bible has to say about death; Death is the result of sin. It’s man’s destiny to die once…But, if our name is not found in the Lamb’s Book of Life, we face what is called the “second death.”  Basically, that’s it. Because that’s all we need to know about death! You see, the truth is God’s Word is concerned - from beginning to end - about LIFE.  Not just eternal, spiritual things as some would believe, but even more so with this life, right here right now. From this came the title of my first book “In It For Life.” This is also why I call what I do “Life Ministries.”
"The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of LIFE."

To be continued…

 

    Knocking. The knocking here denotes seeking entrance, or desiring fellowship with When you knock on the door, you are looking for the door to open. Again it is also a suggestion of persistence…”keep on knocking”. Which of these three (ask, seek, knock) do we do the most?…(ASK) Which do we do the least?…(SEEK) Which is the most difficult for you to do?
Within this command to pray I think we can see four general principles about prayer:
1. God Does Not Promise to Answer Everyone’s Prayers. The there is a restriction to the promises given in these verses. The promises apply only to those who are really God’s children…“But isn’t God the Father of all humans?” you may ask. And the answer is, “No he is not.” He is the creator of all, but he is not obligated to answer the prayers of those who are not his children. I realize of course that is pretty narrow statement, in fact a former head of the Southern Baptist Convention once stirred up a big conflict over this statement that God is not obligated to answer the prayers of unbelievers. But he was right! And I believe it’s scriptural. God is not the Father of all men, God is the Creator of all men, but that is not the same. God is Father only to those who are born again into the family of God. God does not Promise to answer everyone’s prayers...He may at his own discretion, but he is not obligated.
2. We are expected to ask for the things God has promised. “ask (for whatever God has promised) and it shall be given.” This same principle is stated in the negative in James 4:2 “…you do not have (the things God has promised) because you do not ask.”  And, it goes on to say that we ask with the wrong motives. We live in an age of man’s efforts and man’s determination, of man’s confidence in himself and his own power to achieve things, an age of human organization, human machinery, human push, human scheming, and human achievement; even in the church. But, where is God in the church?  Jesus said; “Unless you abide in me, you can do nothing.”  O, it may look like something, but it’s nothing!
3. God hears and answers every prayer of the believer.  “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” There are two certainties when we pray. One is that God hears every prayer; the other certainty is that God always answers. This verse says for ‘everyone who asks receives,” did I read that right? Yes, it says everyone receives! But we have the misconception that the only possible answer to prayer is yes. There are other possibilities; God can say, no or he can say, not yet, I have something better planned. But, God hears and answers every prayer.

4. Sometimes God gives us what we need and not what we ask for.  “Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”
    Even earthly fathers give good things to their children. We do not give a child a red-hot chili pepper just because they ask for it. Well, some fathers might, but with a sense of humor. My dad once had me hold on to the spark plug of the lawn mower so “I could see if it was firing!” But generally speaking we do not give things to our children that we know will really harm them. And if this true of our earthly fathers how much more true it must be of our heavenly father.  So then if we ask for good things, he grants them. If we ask for things which are not good (either not good in themselves, or not good for us or for others, directly or indir-ectly, whether immediately or ultimately ) God will deny them; and only HE knows the difference.
    Someone has written “I asked for strength that I might achieve; he made me weak that I might obey. I asked for health that I might do great things: he gave grace that I might do better things. I asked for riches that I might be happy; he did not give them so that I might be wise. I asked for power that I might have the praise of men; I was given weakness that I might feel a need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life; I was given life, that I might enjoy all things. I received very few of the things I asked for; but I received all the things I had hoped for.”
    Sometimes God Gives Us What We Need and Not What We Ask for…But then, He is God.
The good news is that God has promised that “it shall be given to you; you shall find; and it shall be opened to you”…But, we can’t just  ASK.

                                               

“Ask, …Seek …Knock”
Matt 7:7-11

    There is nothing that reveals more about a believer than his or her prayer life. How that individual approaches God and what that individual is willing to ask for can reveal how he or she views God. We frame our requests in accordance with what we know of the character of the one we are addressing. It is very similar to how an child will make a request from their father. The child with a kind, gentle and firm father, does not fear to ask anything, for deep down they have the assurance that the father has greater wisdom and experi-ence, and because he loves them, would not give them anything that would be harmful. The child with extravagant but uncaring father will with arrogance lay down his demand - sometimes with much weeping and wailing - knowing his every desire will be met. The child with the stingy, ill-tempered, abusive father will seldom dare to ask for anything. 
    "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.” All three verbs in verse seven, Ask, Seek, Knock are imperatives (commands).There are two basic kinds of impera-tives in the New Testament. There is the aorist imperative which is a command to do a particular thing at one specific time, and there is the present imperative which is a command not only to do something but to keep on doing it indefinitely. All three verbs in verse seven, Ask, Seek, Knock are not only imperatives but they are present tense imperatives. We are told to ask and keep on asking, we are to seek and keep on seeking and we are to knock and keep on knocking.
    There is also within this verse a progression in prayer. The very words ask, seek and knock seem to suggest an ever increasing intensity in prayer.
1.Asking. This one is obvious. There are some things that the need is so clear that we merely must ask for them. However, There are times as James has said, when “Ye have not because Ye ask not.”
2.Seeking. Seeking is a deeper level of prayer than just asking. Sometimes we may doubt or be in darkness and we need to first seek God’s will before we know what to pray for. But God has made provision even in those times when we don’t know what or how to ask; for we read in Romans 8:26-27  “the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” If something is not the “will of God” we can ask until the cows come home, and it will do no good.

    Seek is (asking + effort): When someone wants something, they pursue it. To pursue something you must show effort. You can seek after something that you show no effort for. When Jesus said for you to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”, he did not mean that he will pour money from heaven into your bank account! Jesus meant, “God will open doors to provide for our daily needs.” God is not going to do what you can, but he is more than willing to do for you what you can’t on your own.
    So, “seeking” may be seeking God’s will; or seeking after that for which we have asked God to help us with; or it may also mean just plain seeking after God while we wait for an answer.

Continued tomorrow…