Thursday, December 6, 2007
explaining 'ask and ye shall receive' - option 6
reiterating my suggestion for explaining how one can ask but not receive..."option 5: those statements on prayer were meant for a specific place and time - theirs, not ours." stuff happened in the first century that does not happen now; maybe divine response to prayers was one of them. we assume 'ask and ye shall receive' applies to us...does it? we already make similar judgements about bible content, such as women's veils or greeting each other with a holy kiss. where do we draw the line?
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2 comments:
Thanks for reiterating this comment. For some reason, I never received your responses posted between Dec. 1-5.
Option 5 is appealing, but I see "ask and you shall receive" in a completely different category than "if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short" (1 Cor. 11:6) or "a man ought not cover his head" (1 Cor. 11:7).
Besides, Paul talks about pleading "three times" to God for relief from the "thorn in the flesh" but his request was rejected (2 Cor. 12:7-8). In other words, not EVERYONE in the first century got all their requests granted.
This verse raises some helpful insight into this quandary. Paul says God denied his request because, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (v.9)
It wasn't until this last year when I got the idea that God was essentially saying, "Sheeze, Paul, I've given you a free truckload of grace to cover up your gazillion sins. Isn't that enough? And now you want all your little aches and pains to go away, too? Gimme a break. You don't realize it, but you're actually a better person when you're in a weakened and humbled state. So, suck it up, Buckwheat, and quit your whining."
What do you think about this interpretation of 2 Cor. 12:7-10? Or does this also qualify as a pat answer?
opt. 5 is not necessarily appealing to me, just a logical possibility that i only recently began to explore. the text from 2cor. is another crucial text in this thread. obviously, 'ask/receive' was not a blanket truth back then. but what chaps me is that at least God apparently gave paul an audible response. 'no' is fine; at least it is an answer i can process. your insight on the text i agree with, not a pat answer at all. paul did not get the answer he wanted, but he walked away a better man. this forms another option in my mind: option 6 - 'ask/receive' does not mean what we think it means. i will post that notion as a separate comment.
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