Unleash Your Inner Warrior
My dear warrior, You are wonderful. I am not saying that to flatter you or compliment you. I am simply stating the fact of who you are in Christ. You are wonderful because God says you are. Whatever Jesus says about Himself is also true of you. Graham Cooke says, “If Jesus Christ is in you, and one of His names is Wonderful, what does that make you? It makes you better than you imagine!” It makes you wonderful. God wants you to come before the throne in confidence, knowing that He says you are wonderful, that He has adopted you into His holy, royal family. You are a son or daughter of God with a brilliant inheritance. He wants to lavish love on you, to give you the desires of your heart, and to lavish gifts on you because His love for you is extravagant. God wants you to ask Him for the desires of your heart. He is inviting you to pray, to ask, to petition for the things your heart desires. It is not arrogance to ask Him for the things you want. I’ll start from the beginning. In Psalm 37:4 you are told to delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. This goes a step farther than having pre-installed desires He wants to fulfill. When you delight yourself in the Lord, He actually places godly desires in your heart. You could not desire anything godly apart from Him. And you cannot (would not) crave anything godly if God had not placed that desire in your heart in the first place. He wants to give you godly desires and then fulfill the godly desires He places in your heart. Beloved, delight yourself in the Lord so that He can give you those godly desires.
God has given us specific commands to ask, to pray, to petition for things that we want. Philippians 4:6 says, “in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God.” Think of it this way: more people get healed when you pray than when you don’t. Likewise, you are given more if you ask. God wants you to ask for more because He wants to give you more. You can reason, “well, God is sovereign and He’ll give me whatever He wants to give me. If He wants to revive me or refresh me or give me joy, He knows my address. If He wants to give me my heart’s desires, He already knows them. I don’t need to ask.” All throughout the Scripture, we are constantly told to ask; specifically, to make our request for our heart’s desires known. Just look: Ask, seek and knock, ask and keep on asking (Matthew 7:7-12); if you ask anything according to His will He will hear you (1 John 5:14-15); ask and it will be given to you (Luke 14:1-31); if you abide in Him and His words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you (John 15:7); His promises are yes and amen (2 Corinthians 1:20); ask I’ll give the nations to you (Psalm 2:8); if you ask the Father for anything in My name, He will give it to you (John 16:23); He gives good gifts to those who ask (Matthew 7:11); He gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask (Luke 11:13); He is able to do infinitely more than you can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20); You gave him his heart’s desire and have not denied the request of his lips (Psalm 21:2); may He give you what your heart desires and may He fulfill all your plans (Psalm 20:4). Beloved, when God says something once, it’s important. If He says it twice, He wants to draw your attention to it. If He says it three times or more, He is really serious about it. And trust me, He is REALLY serious about you coming before Him in humility and making your requests known to Him, and asking Him for the things you want. There is a view that sees God as the caretaker of an orphanage. This view has you seeing Him only as guaranteeing you three meals a day and a cot to sleep on. It says He only cares about your needs, not your wants. That is not the Father’s heart for you. That is a lie from the religious spirit; you cannot allow that to creep into your heart. You are not an orphan living in an orphanage. You are a blood-bought son or daughter of God who has been adopted into a holy, royal family; you are a son or daughter with an incredible inheritance beyond anything you could ask or imagine; you have a good Father who calls you wonderful and wants to lavish love and gifts on you. You are now part of the richest family in the universe, and there is no good thing that God wants to hold back from you. This is the good news. There is no lack in Heaven, there is only superabundance! Think of a child at Christmas. A child has certain wishes for gifts at Christmas time. A good father will ask the child what they want so he can go out and get those gifts and lavish those gifts on the child. A source of frustration for a good parent is when they want to give the child the desire of their little hearts, but the child will not tell the parent what they want (whatever their reason may be. I know someone who does this. She will not tell what she wants because she desires to be humble, not realizing that this is false humility, and not realizing how frustrating it is for those who want nothing more than to lavish love and gifts on her). One of the reasons that it is so important to ask for the desires of your heart is because prayer and petition is actually about communing with God in conversation. One example I use is the difference between knowing someone and knowing about them. I may know all about C.S. Lewis, what kind of pipe he liked to smoke, the color of his favorite armchair, his favorite books, how he liked to spend his afternoons—but these are only things I know about him. I’ve never met the man in my life, so though I may know all about him, I don’t actually know him. That is the difference between God knowing the desires of your heart, and you actually talking with Him about those desires. God knows more about you than you will ever know about yourself, but if you don’t spend time talking with Him, praying about things that matter to you and to Him, then He will never get to know you intimately in the way He desires; and vice versa, you will merely know about Him and little more. See, friends just like to talk. God wants to know you intimately, every part of your life: your thoughts and ideas, wants and needs, concerns and frustrations. He wants to know your heartache and pain, guilt and shame, love and joy, anguish and frustrations—all of it. No holds barred. He wants to know what makes you happy; He wants to dance and laugh with you; He wants to sing over you, to hear you sing and shout for joy. He loves all of that! Any true lover, any true friend would. He wants to know you and be known by you. Beloved, if it matters to you, it matters to Him. God has dreams so much bigger than you could possibly come up with on your own. But He is waiting for you to ask Him for those God-sized dreams. He wants to give you His dreams for your life. And they are SO good! He wants to place those desires in your heart so that He can fulfill them in unimaginable ways. He wants to lavish love on you beyond your comprehension. The word lavish is an incredibly rich word that means “over the top, more than you could imagine.” 1 John 3:1 says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God.” Your identity is found in that statement. You are royalty. I don’t care what anyone else says about you, or what low view you have of yourself; this is who God says you are. Therefore, anything that is counter to that is irrelevant. End of story. The word “lavish” in 1 John 3:1 is the same Greek word used for “gave” in John 3:16. It is the Greek word is “didomi.” It says that God loved you so much that He “lavished” Jesus on you. The idea of crying out to God with a loud voice may be strange to you, and the idea of making your heart’s desires known with fervency may seem uncomfortable, but I challenge you to ask, seek and knock just as He says to. That is a direct order from your King and Commander. He is pushing you out of your unholy comfort zone because He is drawing you into communion with Him. Ask Him for the desires of your heart. Through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, with loud shouts, by worshipping and praising Him (even when you don’t feel like singing or praying), make your requests known to Him. Come before the throne with confidence knowing that you are a much-loved daughter of God, knowing He longs to lavish love on you more than you want Him to. Be intentional. Ask. Ask and keep on asking, Warrior Beloved ©Michèle Aimée, 2016 Partial excerpt from an upcoming book, title pending.
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