The Personal Website of Edgar "Mark" Sotomayor also known as BALTHASAR BASILEIA

There is a sentence in Jeremiah that reads almost like a contract:

“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” — Jeremiah 33:3

Look at the order of operations. Call first. Answer second. The great and mighty things come third — and notice they are things you don’t already know. That’s the whole point. God isn’t offering to confirm what you’ve already figured out. He’s offering you the file you don’t have access to.

But the sequence starts with a call. Not a wish. Not a worry. A call.

You Have Not Because You Ask Not

James says it with almost uncomfortable bluntness: “ye have not, because ye ask not.”

I’ve had to sit with that verse more than once, because most of my so-called unanswered questions were never questions at all. They were complaints with a question mark stapled on the end. There’s a real difference between “God, why is this happening to me” muttered into the steering wheel and “Father, what am I supposed to see here?” asked on purpose, out loud, expecting an answer.

We take our questions everywhere else first. To the group chat. To the search bar. To the ceiling above the bed at two in the morning. We’ll poll six people who have never walked what we’re walking before we’ll ask the One who wrote the map.

Then we call it silence from heaven.

“If You Ask” Is Not a Technicality

This is the part that has to make sense, or the whole thing collapses into a slogan. Why would a good Father make His answer conditional on our asking? If He already knows what we need, why not just tell us?

Because a father who answers every question his son never asked raises a son who never learns to talk to him.

Jesus doesn’t say the door will open on its own. He says knock, and it shall be opened. The door was never locked to keep you out. The knocking is what makes it your door. The asking is not a fee God charges for information — it’s the relationship itself. Information can be handed to a stranger. Wisdom gets handed to a son who came and stood in the doorway.

So the condition isn’t God’s reluctance. It’s your presence.

He Will Not Throw the Question Back in Your Face

Here’s the promise I keep returning to:

“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” — James 1:5

That word upbraideth is the Greek oneidizō — to reproach, to revile, to cast a thing in someone’s teeth. The Holy Spirit put that word in the verse on purpose, and He put it there because He knew exactly what you were afraid of.

You’re afraid the question is stupid. You’re afraid it’s the ninth year in a row you’ve asked the same one. You’re afraid He’ll bring up what you did in March before He answers anything.

He doesn’t do that. He gives liberally, and He does not throw it back at you. If shame is the reason you’ve stopped asking, shame is the very thing that verse was written to kill.

The Answer Usually Comes Quieter Than You Expected

Elijah stood on the mountain and got a wind strong enough to break rocks, then an earthquake, then a fire. God was in none of them. Then came the still small voice — and that’s the one that carried the instructions.

Most of the time we aren’t waiting on an answer. We’re waiting on a volume. We’ve decided in advance that a real word from God has to arrive with special effects, and so we walk right past the whisper in the Scripture we read on Tuesday, past the correction a friend offered that stung a little too accurately, past the quiet nudge that has been saying the same thing for six months.

Test what you hear — the Word never contradicts itself, and God’s voice will never send you somewhere His character can’t follow. But don’t demand thunder. He tends to speak at the volume of a father sitting on the edge of the bed.

Ask a Better Question

Here is where most of my own praying went wrong for years. I was asking “what’s going to happen?” when the answerable question was “what would you have me do?”

Saul got knocked flat on the Damascus road and asked exactly the right one: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” The answer came back immediately, and it was almost disappointingly small. Get up. Go into the city. You’ll be told what to do next.

That’s it. He didn’t get the missionary journeys. He didn’t get the shipwreck, the letters, the prison cell, the crown. He got one step and a promise that another step would be waiting when he took it.

That’s how “God will give you all the answers” actually makes sense. Not as a download. Not as a map you fold out on the kitchen table and study for the rest of your life. As a conversation that never runs out — one obedience at a time, for as long as you keep coming back.

You will get all of it. You just won’t get it all at once, because you couldn’t carry it and you wouldn’t need Him tomorrow.

The Prayer That Always Gets a Yes

John gives us the confidence clause: if we ask anything according to his will, He hears us.

So ask yourself what you already know to be His will. That you’d be sanctified. That you’d be wise. That you’d be a doer of the word and not a hearer only, deceiving yourself. That you’d be a better man tomorrow than the one your family lived with today.

There is no waiting period on that prayer. Ask for that and you are asking for something He has already gone on record wanting more than you do.

Father, I don’t need to know everything. I need to know the next thing. Don’t hand me the whole map — I’d only worship it. Make me a better man by making me a doer of what You’ve already said. Speak, and I’ll move.

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So write the question down. The real one, the one under the other ones. Say it out loud to Him, today, without apologizing for asking it again.

Then go do the last thing He told you.

Because the fastest way to get the next answer is to obey the one you already have.