Come to Jesus

An invitation to come

Isaiah 55:1–9 CSB

1 “Come, everyone who is thirsty, come to the water; and you without silver, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without silver and without cost! 2 Why do you spend silver on what is not food, and your wages on what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and you will enjoy the choicest of foods. 3 Pay attention and come to me; listen, so that you will live. I will make a permanent covenant with you on the basis of the faithful kindnesses of David. 4 Since I have made him a witness to the peoples, a leader and commander for the peoples, 5 so you will summon a nation you do not know, and nations who do not know you will run to you. For the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel, has glorified you.” 6 Seek the Lord while he may be found; call to him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked one abandon his way and the sinful one his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, so he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will freely forgive. 8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. 9 “For as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Jesus asking

Mark 14:36 ESV

36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Jesus surrendering completely: “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (14:36). Jesus is real about his feelings, but they don’t control him, nor does he try to control God with them. He doesn’t use his ability to communicate with his Father as a means of doing his own will. He submits to the story that his Father is weaving in his life.

Mark 14:36 ESV

36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Mark 14:36b ESV

36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

. Jesus is real about his feelings, but they don’t control him, nor does he try to control God with them. He doesn’t use his ability to communicate with his Father as a means of doing his own will. He submits to the story that his Father is weaving in his life.

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are in a similar situation when they face the heat of a blazing furnace. They respond to Nebuchadnezzar’s command to bow before him with the identical balance of Jesus. They tell the king, “Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king” (). They avoid the cliff of Not Asking by boldly declaring that God would rescue them.

Then, in the next breath, they say, “But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods” (3:18). While this sounds like a contradiction, these men are asking boldly and surrendering completely.

Like a parent whose toddler is about to wander off, Jesus is yelling, “My Father has a big heart. He loves the details of your life. Tell him what you need and he will do it for you.” Jesus wants us to tap into the generous heart of his Father. He wants us to lose all confidence in ourselves because “apart from [Jesus] you can do nothing”; he wants us to have complete confidence in him because “whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit” (). All of Jesus’ teaching on prayer in the Gospels can be summarized with one word: ask. His greatest concern is that our failure or reluctance to ask keeps us distant from God. But that is not the only reason he tells us to ask anything. God wants to give us good gifts. He loves to give.

The name of Jesus gives my prayers royal access. They get through. Jesus isn’t just the Savior of my soul. He’s also the Savior of my prayers. My prayers come before the throne of God as the prayers of Jesus. “Asking in Jesus’ name” isn’t another thing I have to get right so my prayers are perfect. It is one more gift of God because my prayers are so imperfect.

One of the best ways to learn how to abide is to ask anything. Jesus added the qualifier “abide in me” only once in the six times he told us to “ask anything.” His primary concern was to get us into the game. Start asking. Don’t just ask for spiritual things or “good” things. Tell God what you want. Before you can abide, the real you has to meet the real God. Ask anything. If you are going to take Jesus’ offer of “ask anything” seriously, what is the first thing you have to do? Any child will tell you.

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p. 122). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (pp. 117-118). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p. 117). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Paul Miller story:

In the Greek, “Give us this day our daily bread” () is an obscure expression that literally means “give us tomorrow’s bread today.”[1] It hints at the abundance God wants to bring into our lives. I suspect that your refrigerator or your checking account has “tomorrow’s bread” already there. Just once in our life Jill and I didn’t have tomorrow’s bread today. I was going to college full time and supporting our small family (our first daughter, Courtney, was a year old) with a part-time painting business. It was New Year’s Day 1975, and we had run out of food, money, and work. We’d sold our books, our jewelry, and our high-school rings. So we sat down at our kitchen table and prayed for food. The minute we finished praying, the phone rang. It was a painting customer. Could I come the next day? The next day I not only told the customer about how she was an answer to prayer, but I asked her for an advance. No sense getting too spiritual. I was so struck by how immediately God answered our prayer that as I went to bed, I asked him for something bigger: God, would you change me? I wasn’t even sure I was a Christian; at the very least, Christianity wasn’t working in my life. I struggled with intellectual doubts. The Bible felt stale. It wasn’t just a low point—my whole life had been that way. The next morning I woke up with a song in my heart and a hunger for his Word that has never left. He changed me.

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p. 117). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (pp. 125-126). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p. 125). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Often our need for daily bread opens doors to deeper heart needs for real food. The day after Jesus fed the five thousand, the crowds met him on the beach at Capernaum hungry for breakfast. Jesus told them he had better food for them: “The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” ().

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p. 126). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

We also shy away from prayers like these because they invite God to rule our lives. They make us vulnerable. Like the crowds at Capernaum, we want breakfast, not soul food. Left to ourselves, we want God to be a genie, not a person. Scholars have pointed out that Jesus’ references to the kingdom are a subtle way of introducing himself as king. When we pray the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come,” we are saying, “King Jesus, rule my life.” The heart is one of God’s biggest mission fields.

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (p. 127). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Oddly enough, we can also use prayer to keep God distant. We do that by only talking to God and not to mature believers. I can demonstrate that easily. Which is easier, confessing impure thoughts to a mature friend or to God? The friend is tougher. That feels real. We need to ask the body of Christ, Jesus’ physical presence on earth, the same questions we ask God. If you isolate praying from the rule of Jesus by not involving other Christians, you’ll end up doing your own will. Many Christians isolate their decision making from the body of Christ, then further isolate themselves in their vacation homes. They say something like this: “Well, my husband and I prayed about it, and the Lord seemed to confirm it.” Possibly God did confirm it. It is also possible that you used prayer as a spiritual cover for “doing your own thing.” We can mask our desires even from ourselves.

Miller, Paul E.. A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World (pp. 127-128). The Navigators. Kindle Edition.