What is most important to you? For those of us who are mothers and fathers, we almost always answer that it is our children, for their safety and happiness.
God sees us the same way.
What is second most important to you? Beyond the immediate physical needs that most of us answer in the first question, if we are being truly honest with ourselves, we will most likely answer that we wish to be in good standing with God. Everyone wants to know who God is and what He thinks about us personally.
God wants to know us too.
Combine these two answers together, and you will have the answers to just about everything in life: safety and happiness, and to be in good standing with God. Anything else – our jobs, worries, sickness – are all temporary.
Below is a beautiful story of a woman crying out to Jesus for help with her child. Jesus doesn’t answer her right away, nor does He with us sometimes, but He doesn’t send her away either. With the mother’s consistent pleading and prayer, when Jesus knows her faith is where it should be, He answers her.
Matthew 15:21-28 ~ A Gentile Mother’s Faith
When Jesus left there, He withdrew to the area of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came and kept crying out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is cruelly tormented by a demon.”
Yet He did not say a word to her. So His disciples approached Him and urged Him, “Send her away because she cries out after us.”
He replied, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
But she came, knelt before Him, and said, “Lord, help me!”
He answered, “It isn’t right to take the children’s bread and throw it to their dogs.”
“Yes, Lord,” she said, “yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table!”
Then Jesus replied to her, “Woman, your faith is great. Let it be done for you as you want.” And from that moment her daughter was cured.
