He is Worth Getting to Know~

Matthew 7:7 “"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

The first time I ever invited my now son-in-law, Emilio, to dinner, I made NY Strip Steaks.  The recipe is easy.  Punch them full of holes with a fork, pour A-1 all over, and broil in the oven four minutes each side.  This will create that melt-in-your-mouth on the inside but charred-on-the-outside crunch that we talked about in last Thursday’s DEVO.

The insides of these steaks were blood-red and screaming, “MOO!” As we sat down to eat, our mouths were watering, and we were in culinary heaven – most of us anyway.  For you see, Emilio, like my former self, preferred his meat more-cooked – a lot more.  Of course, God bless his heart, he did not say anything and started eating his steak.  In an ironic twist I gave him the most rarest steak of all, and I recall how Rachel, Jorge, and I were all commenting on how “perfectly cooked” his steak looked.  I was so proud of myself for having given him what was clearly the best steak, and then the circular motion began.

I noticed after a few minutes that Emilio was cutting into his steak in such a way that he was shaping it like a circle.  I asked him if everything was okay, and he assured me everything was.  Maybe that was how he was taught to cut steak.  What do I know?  It finally occurred to me, when the steak was the size of a quarter and nothing but a bright red disc, that he was forcing himself to eat it.  I honestly felt bad, especially when we all finished before he did and were just staring at him laboriously chewing those last few bites.  To his eternal credit he ate the whole thing—all 12 oz of it.

Fast forward two years and now Emilio regularly enjoys eating his steaks at a nice medium rare.  Why? He discovered that it actually tastes good.  His introduction to eating this way was a little awkward but something about it impressed him enough to continue on.  And to think -- he might have missed out if he wouldn't have taken a chance!

Sometimes this is the way it goes in our relationship with God.  We start off slow, not sure of what it will be like.  Will He hear me? Will He answer me? Will He help me? Is it worth it to keep on going?  Does He care? But if we hang in there, if we persist, if we take a step of faith, next thing we know we will realize what an awesome, amazing, beautiful, loving, prayer-answering, mighty God we serve! We will be given answers to prayers.  We will find that He has an inexhaustible supply of every single thing we will ever need, and the door to life will be opened to us! Most importantly, we will never go back to the way things were. 

PRAYER: Dear Lord, You are worth getting to know.  You are worth our persistence.  You are the best thing that could ever happen to us, and we thank You that when we ask, seek, and knock, we receive, we find, and the doors open wide to bless us.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN~