Asking

Psa 138:2 I will worship toward Your holy temple, and praise Your name for Your loving-kindness and for Your truth's sake; for You have magnified Your Word above all Your name.

What a powerful statement! God has magnified His Word above His name. We know how important God's name is to us: "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved" (Rom. 10:13). It is through His name that we are saved: "The name of the LoRD is a strong tower: the right­eous runneth into it, and are safe" (Prov. 18:10).

Literally hundreds of Old and New Testament refer­ences demonstrate the power and importance of the name of the Lord in our lives. This is a truth we all know and believe; then we are told that God has magnified His Word above His name!

All I can say is, "Lord, help us to under­stand the power and integrity of Your Word." We are com­manded in the Bible not to take the name of the Lord in vain. If His Word is above His name, we should be careful not to take His Word in vain either.

In the following verses from John's writing, God gives us the foundation for correctly petitioning Him.

And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. —1 JOHN 5:14-15

First, He tells us that we can have confidence in our asking when we are asking according to His will. Why would this kind of asking give us confidence?

Because when we ask according to His will, He hears us; if He hears us, then we will receive what we asked for. So, what is the key to receiving? Getting God to hear us.

How do we get Him to hear us? Ask according to His will. What is His will? His Word! When we base our asking on what His Word says, then we will have what we are asking for because God is lis­tening to us when we ask according to His will.

Based on these verses, we need to search the Scriptures and find verses that speak to the area for which we are going to ask before we ask. The more of God's Word we incorpo­rate into our asking, the more we will receive.

That is His promise to us, and "God is not a man, that he should lie" (Num. 2 3:19).