The skill of asking

The power of asking is a skill that we can practice and become good at, but most of us don't practice it as often as we should. Learn how you can start developing this skill...




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The fear of "No"

The fear of receiving a "no" for an answer can block the power of asking. But, what if instead we start looking at the word "no" as steps on a staircase? Let me explain...




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40 Days

40 Days of the Power of Asking -- A special message to you. Attend the event!

Gold from your enemies

Exodus 11:

1 And the LORD said to Moses, “I will bring yet one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of here altogether.

2 “Speak now in the hearing of the people, and let every man ask from his neighbor and every woman from her neighbor, articles of silver and articles of gold.”

3 And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. 

Nine plagues had already come upon the Egyptians. By this time, they knew exactly what was going on and who was behind it — the Israelites and their God!

Turning your neighbor’s rivers into blood, causing frogs to crawl up in their beds, and killing their cattle with hail, among others, weren’t exactly the top tips on how to make friends… There’s no doubt that by this time, the Egyptians hated the Israelites. They were sick of them.

And yet, here comes Moses with another one of his God’s brilliant ideas. Go ask your neighbors — that’s right, the Egyptians who hate you — to give you silver and gold. Give you, not sell to you.

What is God thinking? Does He want us to antagonize the Egyptians even more? Is He trying to get us all killed?

No. He was simply trying to teach His people how to use the power of asking. Notice that He was already planning on giving the Israelites favor in the eyes of the Egyptians. But the Israelites would only find that out if they went and asked them.

Lesson?

God wants us to have the courage, the brazen face to ask what we want even of those least likely to give us anything. In other words, if somebody has what you want, just go and ask. It doesn’t matter if he’s your enemy. And it doesn’t matter the size of your request either. Gold and silver? Of your enemy? Just ask!

We of course, with all our fears and shyness and other little monsters scaring us in our minds, wouldn’t dare ask such things even of our friends.

What is God thinking? That’s what I want to know.

And that’s how I want to think too.

When did you lose it?

When and why did we lose the power of asking?




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Two ways to Receive

In Matthew 7:7 Jesus said: “Ask and it will be given to you.” In Luke 6.38 He said: “Give and it will be given to you.” Okay, wait a minute. What must I do to receive something — ask or give?

Both.

The Lord Jesus gave us two parallel streets that lead to getting what we want. Ask Street is where our requests travel as they ride on prayer, perseverance, and faith in His promises. Give Street is where our requests travel secretly, wrapped in gifts. It’s like a limousine with dark tinted windows; you can’t see who’s inside, but you know it’s somebody important. Our gifts carry unspoken requests and announce their importance, and that’s why it’s a powerful way of asking.

Asking and Giving are two ways that lead us to Receiving. Each of them is powerful if used alone, in appropriate situations. If used together, they’re irresistible.

Jesus was teaching us that if we want to receive, we must not be ashamed of asking or afraid of giving. We need to overcome our laziness, doubts, and lack of faith to ask. And we need to overcome our stinginess in giving.

If we are brave enough to ask boldly and give generously, the only trouble we'll have will be finding room to put everything we will receive…

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Why did we lose the Power of Asking?

As we saw in the last post, we were all born with the power of asking. Only seconds after we were born, we already started screaming our lungs out to complain about that drastic drop in temperature, from our mother’s womb to that cold hospital room… And if we took too long to cry, the doctor slapped us to make sure we cried, because that meant everything was okay with us.

But that is about the only time in life somebody actually encourages us to cry. After that, it’s pretty much a conspiracy to try and keep us quiet.

Why is that baby crying? Where’s that pacifier, for crying out loud? (No pun intended…)

It only gets worse from there. And it’s not just our parents — it’s school, it’s religion, (especially religion), it’s social norms… Think about it. Have you any idea how many times we hear the word “no” by the time we are 10 years old? It’s no, you can’t, it’s not allowed, this is not for you, not now, don’t do this, be quiet (or the less polite “shut up!)…

Now, compare how often we’re told all those variations of “no” to how often we’re told yes. The truth is we are told “no” so many more times than “yes” that we begin to expect a “no”. And what happens when we begin to expect a “no”? Exactly. We stop asking!

That’s why by the time we are in our teens or early adult years, we’ve all but lost the power of asking.

So, is there any hope? Is there anything we can do to resurrect the power of asking within us? The good news is there is, and we’ll explore that in our upcoming posts, but before I finish today I’d like you to know this:

Asking is the beginning of receiving.

Successful people are often just better askers. They ask more of life, and so they get more.

If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you'll always be in the same place.

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The Power of Asking – wired into us

One of the most underused tools of success is the power of asking. There is power in asking for what we want — and yet, few of us use it to its full potential.

We didn’t ask to be born, but as soon as we were born, asking was the first thing we learned. As a baby, if we were hungry, or cold, or sick, or just needed a new diaper, we instinctively knew what to do — we just had to CRY!

Nobody taught us that, we were too young to understand, but we knew — as if it had been wired into us — that all we needed to do to get what we wanted was ask! Or cry, as it were. And get we did.

Our parents were very good at understanding and responding to our requests — otherwise they wouldn’t get much sleep anyway…

But as time went by and we grew older, it seems that the instinct of asking for what we want was slowly stamped out of us. Little by little we were made to feel that asking for something we wanted was selfish; that we were disturbing somebody; that we didn’t deserve to ask for anything but instead should be grateful for whatever we had; and somehow we even learned to take pride in NOT asking anybody for help or anything else we needed… How did that happen?

This is a fascinating, “lost” power that we all need to relearn how to use.

If nothing else, it’s simple math. If you ask more, more often, from more people, in more ways, you’re bound to get more.

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What I want is...

God must have been speaking through Mark Twain when he said the above. I’m sure that’s exactly how He feels about us many times. Can you say out loud what you really want? Yes, I mean right now, before you continue reading this?

“Well, er… sure… umm… where do I start? Umm…”

How many things do you want in one day? You want a better job in the morning, to lose weight at lunch, spend more time with your family in the afternoon, and pay off your debts in the evening. And you probably won’t have done a thing about any of those wants by the time you go to sleep. But you want them. Or so you think.

Moses spent 40 years in the desert as a fugitive of Egypt. If anybody asked him, on any day, if he wanted his people free from Egyptian slavery, he would have answered with an emphatic, almost angry, “Yes, of course!” But on the day God told him on Mount Sinai He was going to use him to do just that, Moses said, “Not me, Lord, please send somebody else.”

If you say you want something, then do what it takes to make it happen. Any less than that is self-delusion.

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