It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask

Have you ever longed for something-something that you did not seem to have any influence over making happen?  I am thinking of the kind of wish that you dared not give voice to.  Would it be like a wish on a star, that simply dissipates if confessed aloud?

It was like this for me about a special desire I had for years.  I guess I’d never got over the disappointment of purchasing a losing ticket; that ticket worked my hopes up to a lather.  It was my first and last play at the lottery; however, now with a Biblical world view, I have no interest in gambling. But I had taken my fear of risk to extreme.

Wasn’t it safer not to hope, not to ask, and not to dream?  If I just pretended the desire wasn’t there, I could go on with life and avoid any pain or grief–so I thought. It turned out that a buried desire can still live and breathe and wield its influence over the bearer.

One day, I got out the shovel and dug it up.  I gave myself permission to hope again.  I was sitting in the rocking chair in my upstairs bedroom of a heritage home back in Victoria. And on my lap was my journal. I had just entered a quote.

It is easy for us to be defeated at the outset because we have been taught that everything in the universe is already set, and so things cannot be changed.  We may gloomily feel this way, but the Bible does not teach that.  The Bible pray-ers prayed as if their prayers could and would make an objective difference.  The apostle Paul gladly announced that we are ‘colaborers with God’ (1 Cor. 3:9); that is, we are working with God to determine the outcome of events.”

-Richard J. Foster

When I dug up that old desire, it was fresh and vibrant again, and I was finally receptive to my hope growing as expansive as God enabled it.  I humbly let Him know that I was going to knock on His door for as long as it took or until He graciously let me know I should cease. Believing that I did have some input into my future dreams set my faith aloft.

To pray is to change. is another quote of Foster’s.  It’s exactly what happened to me.  Once my beseeching began, many changes happened in my life that, I see now, were all part of the answer to my prayer.  So the “Whatever will be, will be” mantra that had been playing over and over in my heart was replaced by a belief that I would be heard, and possibly even answered in the affirmative. It was knowing that I would be listened to that seemed to empower my entreaties the most. If the answer was to be negative, then I would rely on His comfort.

Sounded like a win-win to me.

So, twenty-two months later, after twelve years of infertility, I was lying down on a bed in the ultrasound room of my local hospital, watching my unborn child waving his arm as if to say, “Hi Mom! He said yes.”

A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul…

Proverbs 13:19

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He settles the barren woman in her home

as a happy mother of children.

Praise the LORD.

Psalm 113:9

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Prayerful Blessings ~ Wendy ❀