"Ask and You Will Receive." Fact or Fiction?

My mouth will tell of your righteousness, of your salvation all day long, though I know not its measure. Psalm 71:15.

I tried to come up with a way to build up to this and then have a dramatic revelation. However, I think it's best just to put this up front. "Ask and you will receive" is not a joke. It's not a suggestion. It is a promise.

"For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him whoknocks, the door will be opened." Matthew 7:8

Nowhere does it say "I'll think about it" or "I might if you're good enough." As I discussed in the previous post, I will never be good enough. Thus, being the textualist that I am, I look right at the language that tells me exactly what I need to do in order to receive. Just. Ask.

Now, I could go through and recount the numerous promises that God has made to people throughout history that he fulfilled. However, I am no theologian or historian and that would take me a while. So instead, I'm going to tell you how God promised me that if I would ask; if I would, instead of worrying and being anxious, simply make my request known to him, I would receive. The door would be opened. And it was!

It was a process for me personally to get to the point where I could ask God for something I wanted and actually believe that he would give it to me. Coming into my last semester of law school, I had no job waiting for me and, frankly, no prospects. Depending on how well you know me you may understand how devastating that was for me. Law school was so important to me. I sacrificed so much to be there and I put so much time and effort into it. And I did well. All of those things are ingredients to becoming a successful attorney, right? Everyone else in the top of the class with me had a job, or at the very least, had some good prospects. That's why I worked so hard to place myself in that top group because that's supposed to mean that law firms want you. But no one wanted me.

The whole "asking" thing started with me waking up each morning and literally just saying "HELP!" because I was at a loss of what else to say. I applied to any and every job I could find that I thought might remotely interest me. All TWO of them. I only found two job openings to which I felt worth applying. Then one came up with no contact information other than a P.O. Box - "Small to medium size firm specializing in insurance defense seeking associate." I thought it might be worth, at the very least, finding out more information. One day before the stated deadline, I dropped a copy of my resume in the mail in an envelope where I handwrote the address. (Very professional, huh?!) As I opened the box a let the envelope fall inside, I uttered a quiet "HELP!" under my breath, then moved along and forgot about it. I forgot about it because I didn't really want it. I didn't think I deserved it, and I just knew I would never hear anything from the firm.

Throughout the next two months, my cry for help evolved into something more like "If you want, please provide something for me. But if not, that's okay too." Then I got a phone call. I was sitting at my desk at the firm where I was a law clerk. It was basically a cubicle with four walls that were about 5 feet high and I felt like everyone could hear my conversations. This makes sense since I could hear everyone else's conversations. I didn't answer. As soon as the voice mail notification went off I dialed in to listen to the message. It was the administrator at some law firm calling to set up an interview. But I couldn't even remember who it was! I had to google the name she left on my voice mail to figure out which firm it was and when I sent my resume. I remember e-mailing my husband, telling him about the voice mail, and ending the e-mail with "Whaaaaaaaaat?" I never expected this. I called back and set up the interview, not really knowing what to expect considering how little I knew about the firm. However, with every second, beginning the moment I pulled into the parking lot, everything about the firm started to grow on me. The office was beautiful, everyone was extremely friendly, and every single attorney that I met that day had something in common with me. Whether it was cycling, my idea of a "perfect" job, where my family is from, or a mutual friend or acquaintance. Leaving the office, I felt that there couldn't be a job out there that would be more perfect for me. At that point I was beginning to realize that somehow, God had been ordering my steps to get me to this place in life before I ever even asked him to.

The day after my interview I was reading my "One Year Bible" (Which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about God but doesn't know where to start) and, in my reading for that day was Philippians 4:6:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

And I did. I woke up every morning, took a deep breath to release all the anxiety and anticipation about this job that was building up inside me, thanked God for all the amazing things he has given me, and presented my requests to him. Well, there was really only one request: Get me a second interview. Why I didn't ask him to just get me the job, I have no idea. Every morning I methodically prayed using his own words and presented my request to him.

There is so much more to the story. That amazing breaking point that I described in the previous post – learning to accept God's loving grace even though I suck and could never earn it or pay it back – happened while I was requesting the second interview. Since this post has become much longer than I intended, I'll end it there and simply say – I got another interview.

Coming up: Ask and you will receive. Check! Now what? Also, I'm going to start my "Book of Remembrance" to chronicle all the amazing things, big and small, that God does in my life daily.