Be Careful What You Ask For

I Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14; Eph. 5: 15-20

            I hear a lot of people saying these days, “Oh I’m going to get my life together,” or the alternative, “I’m going to get my life in order.” Typically, the person telling me this is on day three of not knowing where the laundry is, 2 packs deep into a dinner of Oreos and a stick of gum for lunch, followed by enough coffee to cause them to hear the color blue. Or my favorite was the email a coworker shared with me, “Dear Jenny, I’m sorry, I have lost control of this day. Can we reschedule?” Everywhere we go, we have a sense of too much, all at once, overload, and overwhelmed.” I remember a point this week in driving back and forth to Adel for work where I simply resigned myself to the fact that I had lost all ability to manage answering emails, phone calls, and texts.

            When it comes to these ideas of getting oneself together, finding some balance, or reclaiming my time (as the phrase popularized in the halls of Congress goes), I say this…be careful what you ask for. The answer may demand something different of you instead of altering the universe to make it easier for you. And as people who love control, that’s hard.

            In our lesson from I Kings, we learn that Solomon was a good man and a good king. He followed after God’s heart and loved God. But Solomon knew his shortcomings. He knew that the job of being king and governing these people was too much for him to do alone. He would be overwhelmed. In fact, he says to God, “And here I am in the midst of your own chosen people, a nation so great and numerous they cannot be counted…who by himself is able to govern this great people of yours?” Solomon knew he was unable to do this alone.

            He asked God to give him and understanding heart knowing the difference between right and wrong. In essence he asks for God to help him and to give him wisdom. Sometimes, when we are overwhelmed, we focus on the wrong thing. We pray about the problem. We ask God to fix the problem, to solve it, to take us around it. Stop praying about the problem. God doesn’t fix problems, save problems, love problems, redeem problems. God deals with you. God fixes us, saves us, loves us, and redeems us. Instead of praying over problems and wasting your time there, pray for God to work in your life instead…to give you wisdom, and to know what needs to be done. To pray over a problem is to keep God at arm’s length. Pray for God’s power, strength, and wisdom directly into your life.

            Solomon asked for God to work in and through him. He didn’t pray over the many quarrels, disputes, wars, territory questions, and administration problems. He prayed that God would work in and through him. And that seems to have worked and pleased God. God says that Solomon will receive what he asked for. But because Solomon prayed for the right thing, God also blessed him tremendously.

A friend of mine was preparing to defend her doctoral thesis. It was complicated, and she was not sure she could do it between the difficulty of the subject and her fear of public speaking. I asked how to pray. She didn’t tell me to pray that she would succeed, that it would work, or that God would make everything okay like magic. This was her prayer, “Guide me O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim in this barren land. I am weak, but you are mighty. Hold me with your unchanging hand.” She couldn’t fix what she had to deal with in front of her review committee. But she could make sure she went in armed with all the power of God and accompanied by the hosts of Heaven.

Now, if First Kings gives us the prayer we need, Ephesians gives us a second round of good advice to help out. We are told not to live like fools, but to be wise and make the most of our opportunities. Sometimes, I think we become so busy and overwhelmed that we become unable to accomplish anything. Never mind getting my life together, I can’t even get a half a brain cell to focus for 2 minutes. Ephesians gives a rather sharp retort to this, “Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.” The way to prevent thoughtlessness, says the Ephesians writer, is to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

I had a couple of good role models on this. Every Saturday when my mom did the cleaning, and I “sorta” helped slightly as a surly teenager, she listened to Christian music. Now sometimes it was Rod Stewart or Eric Clapton, but often it was Christian music that accompanied the long list of chores. On Sunday afternoons, I would stay after the family dinner at Granny’s and practice hymn playing on her horrendously out of tune Wurlitzer piano while she did odds and ends around the house. That sense of faith and melodies of testimony echoed through the rooms filling the home with God’s spirit as the chores were done.

The two big takeaways of Ephesians are being filled with the Holy Spirit and giving thanks for everything. These are common themes echoed by Paul. It’s very good advice, but we must also be careful what we ask for here. Being filled with the Holy Spirit and being grateful in all things are hard tasks. The easiest temptation is to become angry, insular, and bitter when challenges come our way. It can be easy to be filled with a whole lot of other things than the Holy Spirit when the interview doesn’t turn out right, our dreams are delayed, what we want is a fleeting reality. That’s why the hymn writers speak so powerfully. In those times, we are told to “hold to God’s unchanging hand.”

My cousin shared a post the other day on the interwebs. It said, “Pressure is a privilege. It means things are expected of you.” But as people of faith, it’s not just about what we accomplish. We must look to how we accomplish it. Anyone can succeed being drug along kicking and screaming. But do we pray that God would raise up in us the courage to meet the challenge and to lead with dignity and strength? Do we go to God, like Solomon, asking not for blessings in life, but for character and Christ-like wisdom?

God’s final words to Solomon are this, “And if you follow me and obey my decrees and my commandments as your father, David, did, I will give you a long life.” In particular, that life would include the “aforementioned” blessings God described. This is what Solomon had to hold onto. For us it’s a bit different. If we follow Christ, then the promise is that God is always with us—God’s Spirit rest in our very being. And that promise sees us through all the times we gather up the laundry, attempt cook healthy, try to catch up on work, calls, emails, and so on, and try to get our lives together.

Only, that Spirit of God doesn’t just rest with us; it works within us as well. As Paul said, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” That sounds easy, but it’s like trying to be healthy when the plate of cookies is right next to you. You may not be able to pray that the cookies disappear, but you can pray that God will help you not to go on a diabetes-inducing, cookie-eating frenzy. And if you listen, God will help.

Solomon saw his shortcomings, and he knew he needed God. His role was clear—he was now king, and there was no going back nor avoiding the challenges that lay ahead of him. But Solomon took the opportunity of God’s favor to ask God for what he needed to face the journey. You can’t always change the journey, but you can fix how you navigate it. Solomon prayed for wisdom, and God granted it, and so much more. Be careful what you ask for, but also be prepared, because God stands ready to hear you and answer you when you pray.

 Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/518099890668478