Fishing for Snakes?

One of my tweets/statuses this week was this: If I asked God for a fish, why do I keep picking up snakes? It comes from the scripture in Matthew 7 where Jesus says that God will give us the good things that we ask for. He compares God to our earthly fathers. If we ask our earthly father for bread, will he give us a stone? Of course not. If we ask him for a fish, will he give us a serpent? Unthinkable. In the same way, if we ask God for something good, he's going to give us something good.

However, I seem to have a problem believing this promise. I ask God for things often. Some things I have been requesting for many months or years. Sometimes it seems that God is not answering my prayers.

When this happens, I tend to look around to see if I can "find" God's answer. I go rooting around through the dust and dirt, finding "snakes." These are answers that are obviously not God's will for me, but what I think will satisfy my desire.

Picking up those snakes is no fun. Not only do they fail to satisfy for long, they also inject a little poison into my life. Yuk! Why do I keep picking them up?

This reminds me of another story in the Bible: that of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. Problem was, God was taking a mighty long time to give Abraham and Sarah a child. Sarah got worried. Maybe God wasn't going to give her a child! She had to do something, right?

Sarah worried so much that she asked Abraham to try to have a child by her servant, Hagar. (I suppose Sarah figured that God wouldn't notice the difference between her child and her servant's child.) Abraham did what Sarah asked, and he fathered a son, Ishmael.

Of course, this wasn't God's plan. God planned to bless Abraham through Sarah. He was just waiting until Abraham and Sarah were too old to have children. (God never explains why He did this. I suppose it's not our place to know at this point.) And, in the proper time, Sarah did have a child, Isaac.

Now enters the snake analogy. Ishmael is Abraham's son. Isaac is Abraham's son. One is the son of a servant, the other the son of the free woman. A million difficulties arise, especially since Ishmael is the FIRST BORN son. Yikes! Now Sarah has to get rid of the snake that she picked up. You can read more about that in Genesis 16, 17, and 21.

In my life, I want to avoid picking up snakes. If I am praying for something, I want to be sure that I wait for it. I don't want to get so impatient that I try to make circumstances fit my request when they don't. I know that if I trust God and wait on him, I will receive what is best for me: a fish, not a snake.