Asking, seeking, knocking

Celebrating and reflecting ahead of Warranted's first birthday

One year ago (next week), I shared one of my most vulnerable, lonely, terrifying moments on the internet for everyone who’s ever known me to read.

With the benefit of hindsight, after just a year I can confidently say that sharing that story was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. 

Over the last year, I’ve had the blessing of using this platform to share about my walk with Christ as I seek to understand what it really means to be a follower of Jesus, pledging my full allegiance to him above and before all else. 

As I was reflecting on the things I’ve learned and the ways I’ve grown over the last year, a surprising set of verses popped into my head: 

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Matthew 7:7-11

In the past, I’ve interpreted this passage of scripture as essentially a promise of wish fulfillment. “Tell God what you want, and as long as you’re faithful enough, he’ll give it to you.” 

Matthew Henry describes it this way in his Concise Commentary on the Bible: “Parents are often foolishly fond, but God is all-wise; he knows what we need, what we desire, and what is fit for us. Let us never suppose our heavenly Father would bid us pray, and then refuse to hear, or give us what would be hurtful.”

And while I do think that God wants us to lay the desires of our hearts before him, that this analysis is right, I think there’s a much more fulfilling, more exciting promise contained here. 

To get there, let me detour a bit with an excerpt from—you guessed it—C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. The book’s last chapter, “The New Men,” opens with the assertion that becoming a new creation in Christ is “not mere improvement but Transformation.” 

At first blush, this concept is scary. What if I like some part of who I am? I know that my sinful nature needs to be replaced; that I need daily renewal by the work of the Holy Spirit. But aren’t there redeemable things here, too? 

Lewis is one step ahead. “To become new men means losing what we now call ‘ourselves,’” he explains. “Out of our selves, into Christ, we must go. His will is to become ours and we are to think His thoughts, to ‘have the mind of Christ’ as the Bible says. And if Christ is one, and if He is thus to be ‘in’ us at all, shall we not be exactly the same? It certainly sounds like it; but in fact it is not so.” 

He continues, a bit later, “The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of ‘little Christs,’ all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all.” 

This image is breathtaking to me. Think of all the people who fill your life, with their vibrant, unique personalities, talents, abilities, and interests. Then, imagine them as facets in the brilliant diamond that is the person of God; this is what it means to be created in his image. Don’t confuse it for pantheism; I’m not arguing that people “make up” God or anything of that sort, but that each individual person is an intentionally designed reflection of who he is. 

And so we arrive at the crux of the argument, and the conclusion of the chapter: 

“Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most ‘natural’ men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints. 

…

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred. Loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” 

So, what does individual transformation have to do with God answering prayers? And how does any of that relate to this Substack celebrating its first birthday? 

Here’s the connection that I’m seeing: 

One year ago, I was going through what I’d lightly call a complete existential crisis. During the fall of 2022, I began questioning my career path, my purpose in life, and how I could use my unique, God-given talents and abilities to glorify him through my work. At that point, I thought a different job might fix me…but in early 2023, when I started that different job, it became immediately evident that simply changing employers wasn’t the solution I was seeking. 

I’m exceptionally grateful for my job and am blessed to work with a great team of talented and intelligent people. Switching jobs was a good thing, ultimately…but I knew there was still something missing. So, I prayed. I shed a lot of tears—like, more during the month leading up to starting this project than I had in the entire year before or since. I sought advice and support from family and friends. 

And out of that process, in March of 2023, Warranted was born. Few things in my life have been more fulfilling than the weekly ritual of preparing a short article to share with you, and the fruits have been abundant. 

So, that’s where Matthew 7 comes in. I have continually asked the Lord for direction; he led me to this platform. I have sought God’s guidance; he has led me to the wise council of believers across space and time who have taken up Paul’s mantle, saying, “follow me as I follow the example of Christ.” I have knocked, and knocked, and knocked with prayers of petition; the Lord has assured me, through nudges of encouragement and supernatural moments of synchronicity that he is with me now as he always has been,

• In the churches that molded me

• In my childhood bedroom, where I learned to read scripture on my own

• On that lonely night in Tuscaloosa all those years ago

• And now, in my writing spot on my couch, as I prepare these words for you to read. 

Ironically, as Lewis says, I feel more assured in my identity in Christ the more I surrender to him. Despite all the ways I’ve learned and grown over the last year—and honestly, throughout my entire life as a believer—I feel as though I’ve explored less than 1% of what it means to truly know God. That is equal parts intimidating and enthralling. I hope you’ll continue to walk with me as I continue exploring. What an indescribable privilege it is. 

From the archives: 

Let’s go all the way back to the beginning with my very first Warranted post:

And a recommendation: 

I shared this sermon in the first ever edition of Warranted, so I thought this might be a great week to revisit it.