“If you then, evil as you are, know how to give good gifts—gifts that are to their advantage—to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask and continue to ask Him!” This is the Amplified Bible’s translation of Luke 11:13.

Sometimes this verse trips us up, or we just surface-read it and move on. Personally, it has always seemed difficult for me to understand. I can’t explain why that is, so I decided to dig into it a little today.

Jesus was talking to those following Him about prayer. He had just spoken of being unrelenting in their requests, asking, seeking, and knocking continually. Then he mentioned how a parent would not give their child something evil in place of the good thing the child asked for.

Here’s where today’s verse comes in. He said that the people he was talking to were evil. Wait, what?!? Weren’t they following Jesus?

The words translated to “sinful people” are defined as “evil, wicked, worthless, guilty” and “be identical, belong to.”

If you who belong to evil…
If you who are identical to the wicked…

Jesus was saying that even those who follow the evil one know how to be kind to their children/followers/kin/descendants. It’s something built into the human DNA. (Yes, I know there are aberrations to that. Those do not mark the whole.) And the gifts they give are for the advantage of the child—or the one asking. They benefit the one to whom they are given.

If those who belong to evil will give blessings to those they love, how much more will Love give the best Gift ever to His followers who ask?

God is not some cosmic bully waiting to crush us when we step off the straight and narrow. He is waiting for us to choose Him and ask for Him, and there won’t have to be any pounding on the door, seeking to find Him or begging. The simple ask is all that’s necessary for us to receive the Spirit of God, given with so much love that we can’t contain it.

Jesus said that the Holy Spirit has come to show us how to live, to correct wrong thinking or belief, to teach us right thinking and belief, to discipline wrong choices, and to comfort us in all circumstances. Without Him, this daily Christian walk would be impossible.

If you don’t have that correcting, disciplining, comforting Teacher in your life, just ask God. He’s ready and waiting to give you the gift of your eternal lifetime.

Coffee, Bible, Journal.

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Faye Bryant is an author, coach, and speaker who helps individuals escape the lies of the enemy, live into God’s truth, and build a better life by first feeling, dealing, and healing their way through a stuck future or an abused past, toward a deeper path of purpose, and into the unhackable life of their chosen legacy.  Hers is a story of resurrection: from death to life!