“And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Matthew 21:22).

If I truly believed that, what five things would be at the top of my prayer list?

I don’t know. I never thought of it quite that way.

Right now I would go with these five:

• That I would have a heart like the Father’s.
• That my family would reveal the ways of the Father.
• That each of us in our home would find peace in all our relationships.
• That my extended family would know the Father’s peace.
• That the churches I’m affiliated with would experience revival.

But what if at times I struggle with truly believing that verse?

Pray anyway!

Posted: November 28

Sometimes, perhaps more often than I realize, I don’t make a very good transition from the teaching I receive to the living I do.

I think about that in the considering the jarring transition between these two verses in Matthew 20:

“And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again” (19).

“Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons, worshipping him, and desiring a certain thing of him” (20).

How could you hear verse 19 but come up with verses 20 and 21?!

As easily as I might hear a message on forgiveness . . . and then avoid a certain brother after the service.

Or as easily as I might read these very verses . . . and then go on to resent someone lording it over me.

I am blessed, though, by how Jesus takes the outlandish mother-and-sons request and ties it in with the teaching He had given just before that:

“And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” (27).

“Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (28).

“You become great by doing as I do!”

Posted: November 27