SEEK, ASK, FAITH

I was having my quiet time this morning and the devotional used Mark 10:46-52 to talk about declaring what you want into your life before Jesus gives it to you. The devotional pointed out that by Jesus asking Bartimaeus what he wanted, He wanted Bartimaeus to make a declaration into his life and have faith for it to come to pass. However, reading the short passage got me seeing things in a different light, although not entirely veering of the path that God had chosen to point out through the devotional.
For me, it got me thinking about the fact that Jesus expects us to seek Him too and when we seek Him with all of our hearts, we will find Him (Jer. 29:13-14). Just like Bartimaeus did, Jesus wants us to call out to Him at the top of our lungs ignoring those who tell us to shut up and assess our lives, adding that our continuous calling out to God had yielded nothing. Of course people will be there to try and discourage you as you seek God out, but trust me, no matter how long you may have been seeking Jesus' face, He has promised in His word that we will find Him, and He never fails on His promise, so indeed He'll be there. He'll just be waiting for us to ASK.
We know how Jesus is very particular about us asking Him for what we want and need (Matthew 7:7) so yes, before Jesus will answer your prayer, you must ask. Bartimaeus told Jesus that he wanted to see (v51b) after Jesus had asked him "What do you want me to do for you?" (v51a). You see, after Jesus has been sought out and has been found, He asks us the question above, and its up to us to answer, and pour out our souls to Him. Ask for what is on our hearts that we want Him to do for us. But for Him to answer after we have asked, He wants us to ask with FAITH.
Jesus said that whatever we ASK him for in prayer, we should believe that we have received it and it will be ours (Mark 11:24). Basically, Jesus wants us to have faith that He will do it for us, because He WILL definitely do it for us, once and only if we ask by faith and do not doubt. Jesus does not like sin and encourages us that when we come to Him asking for forgiveness, He shall cleanse us of all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Therefore, we cannot go before Jesus in prayer when we have doubt in our hearts because anything that we do without faith is sin (Romans 14:23). So you see, first of all, we cannot approach the throne of grace with sin in our hearts, therefore, in order to avoid sin, we must remove all doubts in our hearts before we present our requests at the feet of the Most High.
Tonight, my message is short and simple, seek, ask and then have faith and the good and faithful Judge, who is our Lord, The Almighty, shall answer our prayers and will provide our needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:19).
God bless you and Live for Christ1!! :)