If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!
One of the great truths we can read in all of Scripture is that God enjoys, encourages and is delighted in our coming to Him in prayer. You can't read too far into the Word of God to discover this truth. God enjoyed the relationship with Adam, taking walks in the garden in the cool of the day. God enjoys "fellowship" with man. Why? It is not because He "needed" man to have fellowship. God could have fellowship within the Trinity. God created man out of His good pleasure and did so because He WANTS to fellowship with man, not because He MUST fellowship with man. With hat said, the above verse gives us a great look at the way God wants to fellowship. God wants to bless us! God is not this distant impersonal Being who lives to taunt His creation. He is not this saditic Being who lives to tease His creation. And, He is not this all-powerful Being who terrorize His creation. God is loving and gracious God who wishes to give pleasure to His creation. In fact, if we have ANY good gifts, we can be assured they come from God:
James 1:17
Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
What James is telling us is that if any thing good happens to us, it is a good gift from God. Even the non-believer benefits from a gracious God. Notice what Matthew tells us, earlier in this same section, in regard to God's "common" grace (grace that is common to all men ... despite their belief in Him):
Matthew 5:45
... so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
In 1 Peter we are told that our gifts from the Spirit are "good gifts." God is in the process of giving us good things, even when we ask for them. He wants to do that. We tend, however, to ask for things that are not necessarily good for us. Notice what James says about our asking:
James 4:3
You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
In the above text in Matthew, God does not say that He will gives us what we desire. It says He will give us what is "good" for us. Like a child who asks good things from His father, so God will give us good things. But, like a child we often ask for things that are not good for us and like a good Father, God does not give us those types of things. When we come to God we need to allow Him to determine what is Good. We can be assured, as believers, that whatever we have in our life right now, it is Good. Because God gives good things to His Children. We don't tend to think that way, but even in bad situations, note what God tells us:
Romans 8:28
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
The truth is, God give us "good" things. Whether we recognize them, or not.
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