Ask, Seek, Knock

Mr. Stevens, what he talked about here in the sermonette, is related to what I'm gonna talk about today. So he didn't know that, but it really was a great lead-in. It was like a, it was like the setup to what I want to cover today. Because he talked about suffering. I'm gonna look at the nuts and bolts of the thought process and the emotional process we go through when we're in those crises. So we've seen the overview in the beginning. Now I want to break that down into how do we deal with that in a way? I mean we all say, oh yeah, just endure until you're in the middle of something you can't adore anymore. And when you're in that, what do you do next? So there has to be some understanding of what God does next. And understanding of how difficult those things are for us. You know, I always laugh when I hear someone say, you just need more faith. Because I always think, boy are you gonna have a trial someday. Because there's a time when the tank's on empty, right? I don't have any more faith. I don't have anything else to give. There's nothing else here. Yes, that happens. That happens in life. And Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, gives a very cryptic commentary on that in a statement he makes. Let's go to Matthew 7. Matthew 7.

Verse 7. It's in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. And this just sort of comes out of nowhere in the context of what he's going through. He says, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. Well, what does that mean? I mean, we're supposed to pray. We're supposed to go to God. We know we're supposed to ask. But what does that mean? Verse 8, he says, for everyone who asks receives and he who seeks finds, to him who knocks, it will be opened.

Now, if you've been in a serious crisis of life, and maybe it's gone on for years, and you say, how much asking, how much seeking, how much knocking? I'm pounding at the door. Why isn't something happening? And those are legitimate difficulties we go through. When you ask that question, that doesn't mean God gets mad at you. It means it's where you are in this process.

Because sometimes we will lose hope because of the fact we're in a situation that doesn't seem to end. And we just feel like God's abandoned us, or God doesn't care, or God's angry with me. When the issue is, and this is hard, you know, I haven't given this sermon. It's been in my mind for about two years because I don't like its answers.

So I sort of hold off giving this sermon because its answers is what we have to learn, what we're learning through the process. And sometimes in that process, there's a feeling of hopelessness, or being lost, or God somehow has abandoned us. And that's part of the process. And there's reasons for that. And hopefully today you can understand them more. So that when you're in those situations, you understand and can feel. I mean, there's things we know intellectually. There's things we understand because somehow we feel it.

You feel that God is there. You know He is there. It's amazing that no matter what culture you find throughout history, all cultures try to find something, some God, goddesses, group of gods, or something to relate to because that this great need which is built into us is designed into us.

A need for something greater than us. We actually have a need for God in us. So without knowing God in Satan's world, there's always an attempt to create a God, to understand a God, or gods, or goddesses, or however you do. I mean, you have to find something greater than you. And yet there is only one way that we actually find something greater than us. And that's through Christ who leads us to the real God. We can find that real God and He can help us. And sometimes it's a calmness. It's a security. It's a peace that you can't manufacture. No matter how hard you try, you can't manufacture that.

You can't make it happen. But it can happen. And it's in those moments, in those moments, that you get a little glimpse into who God is, which is part of the problem we're going to face here today. We're not God. And that exists. It is so much greater than what we are. We have a very difficult time relating to God and to Christ. Fortunately for us, He has no problem relating to us. We think He doesn't because we don't understand it. No, He relates to us. But we have a very hard time relating to Him. So Jesus says the first thing you do is ask.

Now maybe you haven't struggled with this. There's been times I thought, oh, I need to pray about this. And I'm like, ah, God knows. And He does. But God knowing isn't the issue. God says, no, you bring it to me. Because in our bringing it to Him, it doesn't change Him. God doesn't say, oh, thank you.

You made me more righteous today by coming and telling me this or talking to me. No, He changes us. It's the action of doing it. It's in the asking that He works with us. Sometimes He allows things to happen just so we'll come ask. You know, I've done that with my children. I've done with my grandchildren. I don't know how many times my wife has said, Gary, go talk to that child, whether it's the four-year-old or the 40-year-old.

Go talk to that child and don't let them make this mistake. And it's like, no, they need to make this one. I mean, it's not something that's going to destroy them, but yeah. And then it's like, grandpa, can we talk? I wait for those moments. Grandpa, can we talk? Yeah. You messed up, didn't you? Yeah. Okay, let's talk. I get a learning moment here. You know God's doing that with us all the time. Oh, is that going to hurt? Come talk to me when it hurts.

Come talk to me when it hurts. Ask. So Jesus says, he wants us to ask. He anticipates us asking. He enjoys us asking. Just like, I understand that. I didn't tell really until I was a father and a grandfather, and I enjoy whether it's, you know, the 18 year old or the four year olds, all in between when they say, grandpa, I have a question. I've actually had them follow me into my office and sit down in the chairs they have set up for counseling and be sitting there looking at me.

And it's like, you okay? No? Okay. Now I'm going to stop them if they're going to do something that hurts themselves. I think God stopped us many more times than we realize. He's actually kept us from hurting ourselves more than we do. But there's lots of times that say, eh, come talk to me. Come ask me. Let's work through this. We tend to think of God as waiting there to punish us, and He is not. Most of the punishment for sin is the direct results of the sin.

Now God says, I don't have to punish you. What you did to yourself was terrible. Now He will punish us. There's reasons for that. But much of the time we're just experiencing the results of our decisions or the decisions of other people that were wrong. You and I live in a world where there's 8 billion people making bad decisions every day, and you and I suffer because of billions of bad decisions every day around us that we have no control over. And we're, okay, let's go ask God about this.

So we are to ask, which reminds us that we are dependent upon Him. As we go through ask, seek, and knock, we're going to find that the reason for this is it changes who we are in our relationship with God. And we understand our dependence, total dependence on God. Just like we got lots of babies here, total dependence, right?

Then somewhere around 2 it's, no, I do it, right? I do it. Yeah, you could do some things, but there's other things you can't do. We're like that with God. And we have to remember we're totally dependent on God. Our eternity, our lives now, everything we have, everything good that has come from Him to us, and even in the crises, especially in the crises, we are dependent upon Him. So we are to ask. Then we're to seek, which is a verb. It doesn't mean you just sort of look around.

Seeking is a very active word because you're actually, you just glance at something. You're trying to find it in the seeking. In the seeking, we are changed. It takes effort to seek. Here's the issue we have. I may be talking to myself here, so maybe none of you have this problem. When I'm seeking God, much of the time is I'm seeking Him to fix the problem I have. God, would You do this for me? Would You take care of this for me?

Would You help that? You know, I don't keep getting older every day. You know, whatever it is. We keep asking and we're seeking for Him to fix something for us. And in this seeking, the first thing we do is seek Him. The first thing we're supposed to do is, Father, what's happening here? What do I learn? What do I do? I mean, whenever I'm sick, I'm a big baby. I just go and beg for healing, right? So, you know, God, please, I hate having the sniffles. Please heal me. But you know, when you're really sick, when you find out you have cancer, you're not just seeking healing.

You are seeking God. It's a desperate, I'm seeking God. Because what if God says I'm not going to heal you? What if He says that? You must seek Him because He's now the one who's going to carry you through what's going to happen next. So we ask, but we seek. We seek Him. And when we do, sometimes we don't get the answers we want. What we get is an insight into God. You may not get the new job you wanted, but you may end up with real insight into God.

Now, which is more important in eternity? So in the seeking, in the asking and the seeking, it's God-centered. We're problem-centered. He said, maybe you're not, but I am. I'm problem-centered. Fix the problem. God is saying, come ask me, and then let's find out how you need to learn what I want you to do. You need to learn how I see things. Of course, it's so difficult because you and I are trapped in time, aren't we?

We're trapped in time, and we're trapped in our own limitations. You know, I'd be afraid to wrestle my 17-year-old grandson right now. There was a time it wouldn't have been a contest at all. I'm not sure I could beat him. Time does this. Don't tell him that, by the way. I won't even still be afraid of me. But you know what I mean? We're all trapped in time. We're all trapped in our own limitations.

And God's not trapped in anything. So we're asking to see things the way He does.

And it's totally different than us. Fortunately, He knows what it's like. Remember, Jesus Christ knows what it's like to be a human being. He knows what it's like to say, I've got to get some sleep. I can't take another step. I'm exhausted. He knows what that's like. He knows that limitation.

Because He's subjected Himself to experiencing those limitations.

So He understands. But for us to understand the other way, in no way can we totally understand God in any concept. But we can get little bits and pieces. And you know, a lot of times that comes in suffering. I get these little glimpses into who God really is and who Jesus Christ really is. You know, in Matthew 6, just back to the previous page here in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. This has become a cliché, unfortunately. I mean, how many times have you been in the church for long at all? You've heard this many, many times. But let's read through it again. Because this is His viewpoint. And He's trying to explain it to us so that we can understand.

I say trying. No, He's explaining it to us. We don't understand. It's not Him. He doesn't have any trouble explaining. We have trouble understanding. He says in verse 25, Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you eat or what you drink, or about your body, what you should put on it. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Now, He didn't say go around in rags. And if you're starving, don't care. That's not the point. His point is I want you to see beyond the day to day things. I want you to see beyond that.

Now, does He want us to be hungry? You know, what's amazing is He says He'll bless us. And we all get lots of physical blessings in the course of a lifetime.

But as we said in the sermonette, once humanity was kicked out of Eden, nothing works.

So we get these little bits and pieces of what God does. We get some happiness. We get some goodness in life. Even bad people will do good things. But the bottom line is nothing really works. Okay. Are we discouraged by that? Or God says, No, no, no, see it the way I see it. He says, I see you in your little world, in your little life. And I see it, it's difficult. And I know it's difficult. He doesn't say, Oh, you weak people, you get upset because of this or that. You know, He didn't say that at all. He says, I understand how hard this is. But I want you to understand a bigger picture, how He sees it. Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sown or reap. They're gathered into bards. Yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you of more value than they? He said, if God has set up nature, of course, even nature is corrupted, but it's amazing how this whole world, everything's interacted with everything else. And He says, you know what, compared to you, that's not even important to God. He loves the creation. He just loves creating things. But we are different than any other creature because we are created to be His children.

Which of you, by worrying, can add one cubit to a stature?

Every year I get shorter. Explain that.

I still tell everybody I'm about five-nine. My wife says, that's a lie.

Okay, I'm five-eight-and-a-half. Maybe three years ago.

He says, so why do you worry about clothing, consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, neither toil nor spin? Yet I say to you that even Solomon, all his glory, was not a raid like one of these. So he goes on and he says, verse 30, now if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow's throne of the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

He says, because your purpose goes even beyond this physical life. It's so hard to get that, because we're conscious. Our own self-consciousness requires us to see everything right around us.

So we're limited in our understanding by our own self-consciousness.

Right? I mean, every day, what do you think and feel? What you think and feel?

It's who you are. It's just God's consciousness. Well, the way He describes all the Spirit, His consciousness is everywhere. It's a little different perspective, right? When your conscious is everywhere and we're in this little bubble, and in this little bubble, it's everything.

And He doesn't condemn us for that. It's just the reality of what it is to be in the image of God as a creature. We're part of physical creation. We're a creature. It made in the image of God.

And He says, okay. He says, but look, you've got to step back and try to see this from God's viewpoint.

Verse 33, but seek first, okay, here's the seek, the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

And all these things will be added to you. Now, unfortunately, when we say the kingdom of God, sometimes in our culture, we think that the kingdom of God and the millennium are synonyms, and they are not. The millennium is a thousand years. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of God.

God's still sitting on His throne. Just because He let Satan have a little power for a little while, doesn't mean God disappeared. Doesn't mean He's not the king of the universe anymore.

He's the sovereign ruler of the universe. And He says, seek first God, His kingdom, which is going to come with Christ in the future to retake this from Satan. But right now, you and I participate in that kingdom. Seek that first, because that's eternal. The kingdom of God is eternal. He says, seek that first. Seek those values first. That's why we're called citizens of the kingdom now. That's why we're called the children of God. John says, we're the now the children of God. We're already, God says, I'm pulling you out of this mess, and you're learning what it's like to be in my kingdom, which will be established over everything when I kick Satan out when Christ comes back. But we're already involved in the kingdom of God. You receive God's spirit of baptism. The consciousness of God was shared with you. The power of God was shared with you. We have no idea what that really means either. We know it intellectually, but what the power of God came in here. And God says, just think of that for a little bit. And if that doesn't blow your mind, let me tell you something else. See, God just keeps telling us things that we just run through, and we know intellectually, but really are profound.

And so we get caught up in all the stuff that we go through all the time.

And we forget, wait a minute, I'm already participating in the kingdom of God.

And when Christ comes, we will be changed. And much of this stuff will matter at all.

This stuff is important to us now. Now, God doesn't say that's wrong. You know, when I play with my grandkids, I did this with my daughters who thought I'd have to do it again. You know, we play little tea time and we make cookies out of Play-Doh and all that stuff. But that's important to them in their little world, and I understand that. I understand it. It's important in their little world. And their little reality, this is learning something. This is teaching something. This is fun. But you know, when they're 15 years old, they're not going to ask me to have tea time with Play-Doh anymore, right? Because they're growing. And that's what God is telling us. As we grow, we begin to see what's important more than other things.

That's why, verse 34, he says, therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Take care of today. He doesn't say not the plan for tomorrow, but he says, realize God will take care of our tomorrows. God will help us through tomorrow. Today's a good day. Today's a good day. And tomorrow you get up and say, today will be a good day with his trials, his problems, whatever happens. Today's a good day.

Boy, it's hard to keep that mindset, though, isn't it? So he says, seek. And then he says, knock.

Now knocking doesn't mean you're pounding at the door, saying, God, you know, what's your problem? Why won't you let me in? I find it interesting. I've wondered why he says, okay, ask, I know, seek, why knock? This is my, okay, I always say it when something's my interpretation. I think he's saying, after you ask and after you seek, and you still don't seem to have an answer, remember, there's only one door to knock on. He's basically saying, just keep coming back. Just keep coming back. Because the gulf between our weaknesses and our needs and our desires, and remember the sermon I gave where I talked about what God's righteousness is? It's absolute goodness, absolute justice, and absolute love. Where our weaknesses and our needs and our desires are so unimportant in the face of absolute goodness and absolute justice and absolute love. And yet, because that's who he is, he plays tea time with us.

God plays tea time with us. He sits down and what are we doing today? And we're doing something that's absolutely silly to God, and yet he's involved with us. He does that with us as children. So we've got to go back to that door and keep saying, this is the only door I have. Because if not, you know what we do? We run to another door and then we're in real trouble.

You just go back. That's the point of knocking. It's the same door. We keep struggling with the same God, and it's a struggle. There is no easy way to deal with the human weakness and the greatness of God. There's no way to deal with that in an easy way. There's always a struggle involved in this. And we keep thinking, well, if I get spiritual enough, there'll be no struggle. No, if you get spiritual enough, you'll stop one struggle and begin the next one, because there's always a struggle in the difference between us and God. If there's no struggle, either you're perfect or either you're not understanding the difference between you and God, there's always a struggle as we strive to learn to grow. And in that, we begin to see the awesomeness of God. We begin to understand how much greater He is. We begin to depend on Him more. Faith is dependence. We depend on Him more and more and more, because we realize, I can't do anything without you.

You know, Genesis 32. Genesis 32.

We all know this story, but we need to go back and look at these things.

Jacob was coming back home after spending years away from home. His brother, who was going to kill him, is coming after him with a private army of 400 men. Well, Jacob has a small tribe at this point, but a lot of them are women and children. In other words, if God doesn't do something, His brother can kill his entire tribe.

So it's the night before he's going to confront his brother. Obviously, he wouldn't be sleeping much.

He's in a problem he has no answer to. He has no solution to this problem.

And so he's up. Verse 22. And he rose that night and took his two wives, his two female servants, his 11 sons, across over the fort of Jabak. And he took them and sent them over the brook and sent over what he had.

Then Jacob was alone, so he sends his family ahead, and now he's alone, wrestling with God in his mind. And then it says, and a man wrestled with him till the breaking of day.

So a man confronts him. He knows this isn't just a normal man. And the man starts talking to him, and he wrestled. He's physically wrestling with him, which is what was happening in his mind too. You and I wrestle. Of course, this is the one who would become Jesus Christ. We wrestle all the time with God. But in this case, the strangest wrestling match in history, he literally was physically wrestling with him. He's grabbing hold of him and saying, I can't do this. You come to help me, but I can't. And, you know, he tries to step away, and he just won't let him go. I imagine this. This is just almost a comedy, right? You're wrestling with the Son of God, not as a man, but in his natural state as the eternal Son of God, eternal Word.

Now, when he saw that he not prevail against him, in other words, he's not going to give up. It's not like he was winning the wrestling match. It was like this man won't give up.

He touched the socket of his hip, and the socket of Jacob's hip was out of joint as he wrestled with him. You know, just to let him know this isn't an even match. Okay, we're wrestling. I touch your hip, and it says the muscle shriveled up. He would limp the rest of his life. Just a little reminder, it wasn't an even match, okay? This wasn't even. I'm with you relating to you. That's the way it is with us and God. Sometimes we're wrestling with God. Sometimes we're saying, God, you're not fair. This doesn't make sense, and God doesn't strike us down. God says, I know that doesn't feel fair, but you've got to learn to see it my way.

I just find it so fascinating. All night long, he just keeps, makes this an even match, and then says, okay, it's time to end this, and all it took was a touch of a finger.

And he said, let me go for the day breaks, but he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me.

So I asked him, what's your name? He says, Jacob. And he says, okay, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God with men and have prevailed. And he says, Jacob says, tell me your name. And he said, basically, you know my name. You know who I am.

And you'll remember it every step for the rest of your life. Because it pained him every step of the rest of his life. Because of what he did to his hip.

He limped. He said, you know who I am. You'll never forget me.

This is the way it is mentally, emotionally with us, with God all the time.

We wrestle with him because we don't understand.

That's part of the process of learning God. Of God reaching down into our lives and teaching us about him. Whoa! See why I didn't want to give this sermon? But that's the reality of it.

And that's actually the amazing part of it that he even cares enough to do that.

God says, okay, you're all messed up. You're all wayward children. I'm going to make you my children.

And think of any of you that had to raise a two-year-old. And he says, boy, you're just like a bunch of two-year-olds. And this is going to be fun. And he interacts with us, and he teaches us, and we get these little glimpses. It's like my one of the four-year-olds. I have two four-year-old granddaughters the other day. I can't remember what she said. It was like, I wanted to do something. I'd ask him, but she'd be too embarrassed to say. She said, I wanted to do something, and it was wrong. So he sort of looked at her, and she said, but I didn't listen to my brain, and I did this. And what she did was right. It's like, hey, you got it. Sometimes you don't listen to your brain. Because, no, that's not what I'm supposed to do. And she made the right choice. But I didn't listen to my brain was remarkable. Because that's what we're doing all the time.

We're not listening to our brains. There's that corrupt human nature, this, which is natural. And there's this other voice saying, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what this is. Oh, that's God through the Scripture telling us. And we're wrestling.

It's part of growing up. This is all part of growing up. I wish I had a message that would say, do this and all suffering disappears, but it won't. Obey God perfectly and you'll have a perfect life. Well, first, you can't obey God perfectly. And secondly, you and I are promised perfect lives in this lifetime. We're not. What we're promised is, I will finish the work I started in you. God promises that. And now there's what He's going to do. He's going to have us grow up. So that when we meet Him, we're not little two years running around. We can relate in some little tiny way. When we meet Him, we'll be able to relate. We'll actually relate. We'll relate to Jesus Christ in a limited way because we'll never fully comprehend God. And that's good.

That will never fully comprehend God. I don't ever want to be a match for God, right? That's scary. I always want Him to tell me what to do.

Because only He's perfect. Only Christ is perfect. That's it. Two of them. So, we are learning how to ask, seek, and knock. Let's go back to where we started here in Matthew. Matthew 7.

Now He's going to tell us God's viewpoint. Verse 9, we read verse 7 and 8. In Luke's account, He says that what He was talking about there was the Holy Spirit. In other words, oh good. He knows what good things I want, and I want to be a millionaire. That's what He's talking about. How much does He as a father know what to give us so that when we meet Him, we will be His child? That's what He's going to give us. It's what we will be then when we are changed. So we ask and we seek and we knock, and He's going to give us. It's a promise. You can go claim this promise. God, give me what I need so I will be your child, and I will meet you face to face when I am resurrected and meet Christ face to face and help me to be there. Totally prepared. Totally prepared to be His child. This is the essence of Christianity. This is what it's all about. It's what He's doing to bring us to that point. There's a, I'll just mention there's a parable Jesus gives about the persistent widow you all know that one where He talks about this widow that goes to a judge, but he's an unjust judge. And He goes to the judge, or she goes to the judge and brings her case, and He won't listen to her case. And it doesn't say what He's taking a bribe, or He just hates widows, or He just doesn't care. But He won't rule in her favor. So she just keeps going back and back and back again till finally He says, okay, I'll do what you want. And He compares that to our relationship with God, and you say, well, man, God's like an unjust judge? No. He's talking about the human experience. The parable is about your human experience. But remember, God is not that unjust judge. That's why. Let's go there, Luke 18. We'll just read the one verse. But He's making a point.

Look at God differently. Luke 18.

Here's why He gave the parable, verse 1. Then He spoke a parable to them that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. And then He says, look, even unjust people will sometimes do what's good because people just keep coming back. He said, stay close to God, and He will give you what is good because He's God. So instead of giving up and losing heart, just keep asking. Just keep seeking. Just keep knocking. And sometimes, even in that, you reach the point and you say, okay, God's not going to solve this problem right now.

So I will live with it, and I will keep this relationship with Him. But our problem is, you know what an impressionist painter is, right? Remember, that was a big style back.

The one by, well, in English we call him George Sarat, but in French it's not even close to that. The great impressionist painter. Huge painting. I don't know what that painting must be. 10, 12 feet long, 6 feet high. And it's an incredible painting of a scene at a park.

There's a pond, there's people out on the pond, there's rowboats, there's these people walking around. I mean, you could just... The painting's fascinating because it's just... You can make up stories about all these people. How many of you know the painting I'm talking about? A few of you. Okay. When our daughter Kelly was in high school, maybe junior high, we lived in Wisconsin at the time, and they were going on a field trip to the Chicago Art Museum. So she said, oh, Dan, you've got to go with me. So I took off work, went with her that day. And she and I were walking along, and we walked into the room, and that painting was on loan from the Louvre or whatever it normally is. And there it was, an entire wall of that painting. And we both went, wow! I mean, out loud, we both said, wow! And the guard walked over and said, if you're not... If you're going to be rowdy like that, you will have to leave. So we just stood there, looking at it, and we watched him leave the room and walk into another room and disappear. And once he disappeared, we both went, wow! Because we just couldn't believe there it was! But you know, when you walk up and you look at that painting, close. All this is dots. It's dots. Impressionist painters didn't paint by creating the actual scene. They just put dots. So light, you know, the way light hits in dots, creates an image that we... Oh, yeah, that's a person that, you know, it may not be exactly realistic, but we understand everything in the painting. Our problem is, we're so close to the painting of what God's doing, all we see is dots. We see the dots, and we think it's the picture.

And it's not. I mean, we walked up, we'd look at it, we'd step back 15 feet and we'll get it.

We'd walk five feet away and look at it. It was different every place you looked at it. But there's a certain vantage point, and that means that every time that painter was putting in dots, he'd have to step back to that vantage point and say, and then go back with the dots in.

And in the end, there's this incredible picture where you can make up all these stories about all these people in this park, and there's no realism at all in it. It's made up of dots. So that's sort of like what it is with God. He's got it all painted out. Well, he's in the process of painting it. And in our lives, we're looking at the dots and thinking that's all there is. And God says, wait till you see the work I do. Why do you have the vantage point I have? And he says, you're going to be amazed. This is beyond anything you can imagine. You know, the same thing with a tapestry. You ever look at a 15th century tapestry and go back and look at the back of it? It's just colored strings, threads. You go look at the front and it's pictures. You look at the back, it's threads. We're looking at the threads because that's all we can see. When God shows us what he's doing in our lives, we will be amazed. So remember, in these times of crisis and suffering and, you know, ups and downs of life, remember that God has this picture for you that we only get glimpses of. Sometimes it's just clear sometimes you'll be thinking or praying or hear a message or reading the scripture and something God's doing is absolutely clear. And then it's like it gets muddled again, right?

And sometimes it's in the suffering. In the midst of the suffering, you'll get a glimpse.

You'll see what God is doing and you'll say, wow!

And hopefully we'll get kicked out of the art museum. But wow! And then you'll get closer and all you'll see are the dots. Remember the greater picture. Suffering is part of it.

I wish I had a different message. But the reality is suffering is part of it. It's not all of it because God wants us to have good things in life too. But it is part of the process.

It's part of the process as we ask, seek, and knock. He helps us come into a relationship with Him and Christ so that when we are changed, we will no longer be children like little children.

Paul says that. We'll be children, but we won't be children tossed to and fro. We won't be little kids running around. We'll be different. We'll be able to relate to God and we'll understand how much He's been relating to us.