Have you asked?

Personal Photo: I took this photo of this calm hummingbird years ago, but it reminded me of how peaceful it is when we drop our pride, when we accept the help that God so graciously gives to us, and when we come to Him in every way.

When I was in Sunday School, my parents were the Sunday School teachers for grades 5-8. We had some exercises that we would do every week to help us learn some basics about our faith. For example, we would go around the room and recite the Lord's prayer one word at a time. If someone said the wrong word, we would skip them. Another exercise we did was to name all of the disciples. Usually there were some obvious ones that people named off, usually the more commonly known people, like Peter, James, Judas, etc. However, once we had identified all of those, the names we hear less often in sermons and Bible Study were easy to forget about. Well, because of this, I made it a mission to remember all the ones that were lesser known, but week after week there was a specific disciple that I always named first: Thomas.

Why Thomas? Well, because no one remembered him, and usually when someone did, all they thought of was the nickname 'Doubting Thomas,' which does not paint him to be a very faithful disciple. For me, I said his name first because he was such an obscure disciple and when I found out that his name was always forgotten on the list, I took a liking to him. Looking back now as an adult, I think it is perfectly fitting that most of us kids did not remember Thomas. He wasn't one of the more famous disciples and his reputation is best known by doubting that the others had seen the Risen Christ. The story of Doubting Thomas goes as follows: When Jesus was resurrected, He appeared to ten of the disciples, and when Thomas heard of this, he said he refused to believe it is true until he could touch Christ's crucifixion wounds. Then Jesus appeared to Thomas and allowed him to touch His wounds and Thomas then believed. Jesus then said "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29). However embarrassing Thomas's shaky faith was and how frustrating it was that his human logic prevented him from believing what the disciples had told him, I find that we can all relate to Thomas.

Thomas is like so many of us, waiting to trust in something until it is right in front of us, specifically searching for evidence, and letting the pride of our own understanding override the faith we have in trusting God. Pride. Pride is really the root of Thomas's doubting, isn't it? He knows Jesus exists, He knows that Jesus will rise again, and He knows that Jesus is the Messiah. When Thomas doubted the other disciples, he likely was shocked that Jesus did not include him in the group when He appeared to them. Thomas likely was upset that Jesus showed himself to the ten others, but not him. And because of Thomas's pride, he said he would not believe until he saw it himself. Pride is a slippery slope, one that we can often find ourselves sliding down without any knowledge of it. We can be going through life and realize one day that pride has prevented us from our faith, from our understanding, from asking God for what we need, and more. The concept of Doubting Thomas goes hand in hand with pride preventing us from asking God for something, and that is what I want to dial in on here.

Thomas never explicitly asks God that He would like to see the resurrected Christ, but instead just proclaims that he will not believe until he does. I think we often use pride in our own understanding to replace the opportunity to ask God for guidance. We are all Doubting Thomases at some point or another in our lives. We have all been the person who won't go to God because we are stubborn. We justify ourselves by saying things like "God is so busy, I do not want to burden Him with something so small" or "I really just need to figure this out by myself" or "This is something that God does not care about" and so on. We put so much pride in our understanding about God and His abilities and His love, that we doubt Him having time and patience for us and what we need.

God never tells us that we should only come to Him with 'big' problems, or when we have time to sit down for hours and pray. He does not say that we cannot ask Him for help, that He does not have time for us, that He only handles the life crises. Rather, we are told in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that "if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land." He is saying here that when we set aside our pride and look to God, He will certainly hear it. No matter how small or how nagging something might be to us, we can bring it to God in prayer and He will listen to us and help us through it. The only catch is that we have to actually humble ourselves. This means that we have to abandon the prideful thoughts that invade our mind and are taught to us in this world on a regular basis.

Dwight Yoakam has a song titled "South of Cincinnati" (you can listen to it here: dwight yoakam - south of cincinnati - YouTube) and it depicts a story of a broken couple. The woman wrote a letter to the man, but she refuses to send it to him, and he is in Chicago, completely unaware that she still loves him. Both of them are miserable, thinking the other does not care. A specific lyric is applicable to my message here: "He'll never read the words that pride won't let her send." The man never has the chance to make it right, and because of her pride, she is stopping either of them from happiness because she refuses to send the letter. Pride is what stands in between them. The point of this line is that it depicts how destructive pride can be for us. When we do not come to God, because we feel guilty for asking for something when He has given us so much, because we feel as though our problems are small in comparison to others, because we think God is too busy to listen to us, etc., we abandon any chance for God to help us. How is the Lord supposed to help His children if we do not communicate with Him about the things that are heavy on our heart? Just like Thomas, we can let our pride get in the way of our belief in Him and His capabilities. And this doubt in Him impacts our relationship with God, it reduces the chances for God to guide us because we feel as though we can handle it ourselves, and it encourages the clinging to pride in our own understanding of God.

When we only see God through the lens of pride in our understanding, we have already limited Him. The God that we believe in, my friends, performs miracles, listens and speaks to us, brings light to every corner of our hearts, and our small capacity of understanding has a habit of trying to put God in a box. Our pride tries to tell us that we do not need Him, that we must see things to believe, that we are on our own in this world, and that we deserve help without us asking for it. Humbling ourselves means that we are aware of our shortcomings, both great and small, and that we understand very little about the power of God and His love for us. In this way, our humility brings us to the base of the cross every time, with every single problem (regardless of the size), with every single accomplishment, and we rely on the faith that God surpasses our understanding. God cannot be put into a box. The Bible reminds us time and time again to "Look to the LORD and his strength; seek his face always" (Psalm 105:4). It does not say to seek His face only when times are tough, or when we hit rock bottom, but instead God says always. This means that God has no boundaries set when it comes to who He is requesting come to Him, what they come to Him about, and how long they should spend with Him. No, God opens His doors for everyone, for however long necessary, and for any reason at all. He tells us in Proverbs 8:17, "I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me." We are all given the chance to ask God for time, for help, for guidance, and more, and when we set aside our pride, we find that often times we were expecting something from God that we never even asked for.

In Luke 11:9-10, God tells us “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." This verse is the heart and soul of this article; It directly expresses the importance of asking God for what we need. If we do not seek Him out and ask Him, it means we have let our pride stand in between us and our faith in God. It means we have put all of our stock in our own understanding of what God is incapable of and what we are seemingly capable of. Just like Thomas, we often find ourselves doubting our faith, doubting the abilities of God, and when this happens, we can quickly let pride prevent us from asking God for what we need. It is important to recognize when pride has stepped into our relationship with the Lord, and when we identify it, we can more easily put it aside, abandon it, and stop doubting the things we do not fully understand, the ways in which God can help us, and the love that He has for us.

So, when we think about the things in life that are restless, that have been making us stumble, the things that we feel guilty for being upset about, we can then ask ourselves if we took it directly to God. Did we seek Him and ask for help? If the answer to that is no, then we have the chance to humble ourselves and seek His face. Just like Thomas, we can quickly and easily fall into the trap of pride. However, God has no boundaries, no boxes that He can be put in, and His love for us is so beyond our human comprehension, that we can trust in His words and come to Him always, seek Him always, and ask Him for the things we need.