"Ask What You Wish Me to Give You"

When Solomon was confirmed as the King of Israel after his father David’s death, he offered a thousand sacrifices and later that night, God appeared to him in a dream. First of all, the notion of God appearing in a dream is pretty trippy, but it is right there on page 455 of the Bible. Either we accept this reality or we don’t. And, if we do, we also accept the possibility of God behaving in the same manner today as He did then. To me, Bible knowledge without Bible experience is lame, at best and vain at worst.

In this dream, God says to Solomon, “Ask what you wish me to give you…”. In essence, “What do you want? No caveats, no fine print, no bait and switch. What do you want?” Astonishing.

You can talk all you want to about God’s all knowing capacity to see what Solomon really wanted. We could debate Solomon’s moral weaknesses (and by the way those weaknesses were already present when God offered this blank check) and his eventual downward spiral. Doctrinal experts rush in like a “haz-mat” team to immediately confine God’s behavior here so as to avoid anything messy happening in our time. But none of the above matters to me. I say, if God didn’t want me to want this, He should never have put this story in the Book.

New Testament disciples are called upon and designed to be “kings and priests” (I Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6) with royal aspirations living in our visions and dreams. Jesus came to be “King of kings” not “King of bums”. If you and I don’t see this we won’t offer a thousand sacrifices as Solomon did the day before he had this outrageous dream and we certainly won’t have the revelation of the possibility of the offer of this dream being our inheritance.

I want my inheritance! Not for squander like the younger son’s error in the parable of the prodigal (Luke 15:11-32), but for investment and fully realized potential as could have been for the older son in that same parable! Do you realize that the older son was equally guilty of wasting the inheritance as was the younger son? The younger son wasted his inheritance with loose living but the older son wasted his inheritance with NO living!

Read it for yourself, the older son was ticked off and separated himself from this significant family party that dad was hosting for the younger son’s return. When the father went out to get his older son he said, “My child, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours.” Both selfish harlotry and self righteous resentment will separate you from God’s richest offers.

The extreme generosity of this father suggests that he would have given anything to either son and clearly, on some level, both sons were missing the point! Is it possible that we are still missing the point? “…All that is mine is YOURS…” sounds to me wonderfully familiar to, “Ask what you wish Me to give you”.

What would it look like if we too would offer a thousand royal sacrifices of worship? What would it look like if we would allow the Holy Spirit to lift us to a dream state to realize that our Father is saying to us, “All that is Mine, is YOURS”? What would it look like if we wanted, ONE THING?

Oh…I almost forgot…Solomon asked God to impart to him the full capacity of genuine royalty…that’s how I read it. Lay this template over the story of the prodigal. What if one of the sons in that story had said, “Father, bless me with the full capacity to rule in your house with a heart of genuine royalty that I might increase, enjoy and properly distribute ‘all that is yours’”.

“But seek for His Kingdom, and these things shall be added to you. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen GLADLY to give you the Kingdom.” Luke 12:31,32

Go ahead….ASK…..I dare you.