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~
