The other day I realized that my older son has been sending his younger brother to ask me if they could play X-Box, instead of coming to ask me himself. It was happening over and over again. My kids thought that I didn’t know what was going on. I don’t know what the reasoning behind this was. Perhaps our older son thought, ‘my brother is cute, mom wouldn’t say NO to him’. No matter what the reason was, I didn’t like that an I had to address it. Now I’m sharing this with you because there is somebody mentioned in the Bible (in Jesus’ time) who had an urgent need and did something quite similar to what my kids were doing. Instead of approaching Jesus Himself, he actually sent a group of people to intervene for him.
Any idea who he was?
The guy I’m referring to didn’t have his name mentioned, only his job was. I’m talking about the Roman centurion who sent Jewish elders in order to convince Jesus to heal his servant. Now that itself was significant because Jews hated the Romans at that time, yet this guy must’ve been such a good man that even those Jewish elders were happy to go meet Jesus and put in a good word for him. But why not go himself? What was he worried about? He probably thought, ‘I am a Roman soldier, Jesus may not want anything to do with me because of my nationality and what my job stands for’!
This centurion didn’t know that with Jesus you don’t need a middleman, a facilitator, a third party… And he’s not the only one!!! Even, we, at times approach God with the same attitude, we bring along a list of reasons why God should listen to us. Lord, look how I’ve served you… Lord, heal me because my family needs me, or because I’ve been faithful to you… Lord, I have lived an honorable life, won’t you give me Mr. Right or won’t you bless me financially?
It seems that we think that we can earn a miracle, or earn our way into whatever it is that we want. As if we can convince God to intervene based on how good we are or how godly we’ve been living. But we should remember that God’s goodness is not dependent on our own goodness and our lack of righteousness does not take away from the righteousness of God. God listens to our prayers for two reasons: because HE is good and because it pleases Him to do so. Contemplate the words of this next verse:
“He adopted us as his children with all the rights children have.
Ephesians 1 :5
He did it because of what Jesus Christ has done. It pleased God to do it”.
Jesus came so you can have access to God directly. You don’t have to do anything, or repeat certain rituals, you don’t have to offer sacrifices, or redeem yourself of a sinful past. All you have to do is believe that because of Jesus, everything has already been done! He did the work so you don’t have to, because you and I on our own would never deserve God’s love or God’s goodness. Jesus met all these requirements on the cross so you can come to Him boldly and confidently ask for forgiveness as well as a miracle.
“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may
Hebrews 4:16
receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need”.
Let’s not act like children who have no clue how precious they are in their parent’s sight. I want to remind you as you pray, that there’s an immense weight to your prayers, that Jesus died to make it possible for you to ask boldly so don’t waste that. No need for a long list, no need to doubt. Come to God with thanksgiving and enjoy your privileges as a child of God!
For more on love, relationships & the single life check out Your Love is Better than Wine: Letters to Mr. Right.
You can also find it at “The GateWay Bookshop” & The “Bible Society” in Beirut, Lebanon.
michalmerhej 