What He Asked For and What He Got

You ever ask somebody for a little and find out they had a whole lot more to give? Picture a young man calling his dad to say his truck's low on gas and he needs a few dollars to make it to payday. His dad says, come on over, I've been wanting to talk to you. When he gets there, his dad hands him a set of keys and says, that truck sitting in the driveway is yours, the title's in the glove box. The boy came for gas money. He had no idea his dad had been out shopping for him. I think a lot of us pray that way. We ask for the gas money and never find out about the truck.

Acts 3 opens with Peter and John walking up to the temple at the hour of prayer, around three in the afternoon. At the gate called Beautiful sits a man who'd been lame from his mother's womb. He was carried there and laid down every day to ask money from the people going in. Somebody carried him there daily. I don't know who they were, but they weren't villains. They did the best they knew, which was to set him where the coins were. A man who can't walk and can't work needs money, and that was about as high as anybody's thinking went.

Acts 4:22 tells us the man was over forty years old. That many years of being lame will teach a person what to expect from life. Every day he held out his hand and hoped somebody had change. When a person lives like that long enough, even his asking gets small. He asks for the biggest thing he can picture, and what he can picture is a handful of coins.

Peter fixes his eyes on him, and John does too, and Peter says look at us. The man gave them his attention, expecting to get something. So his hand is out, and Peter says, silver and gold I don't have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. I like that Peter doesn't apologize for being broke. He doesn't say sorry brother, I'd help if I could. He had something better than money and he wasn't embarrassed to hand it over.

Then Peter takes him by the right hand and lifts him up, and right away his feet and ankle bones receive strength. He leaps up and walks into the temple with them, praising God. There was no rehab and no months of learning how to use his legs. And what did the man do to earn it? Go back and read it. Nothing. He didn't pray a good prayer. He asked for coins. The healing came to him as a gift, and it cost Jesus everything and cost the man nothing. He got handed a whole new life by somebody he'd only asked for spare change, and he never saw it coming. That's what grace looks like when it shows up in the middle of an ordinary afternoon.

Now we get to the porch. While the man held on to Peter and John, all the people ran together to them in the porch called Solomon's, greatly amazed. I'd have held on too. When your feet have never carried you anywhere, you grab the nearest person until you believe it. Solomon's porch is the place John 10:23 says Jesus walked in the winter. The Lord had walked there Himself, and now a man who'd never walked on his own was standing in the same porch.

Luke tells us the people recognized him as the one who used to sit begging at the Beautiful Gate, and they were filled with wonder at what had happened to him. They knew him. That's the part I'd have you hold onto. Nobody had to take Peter's word that this man had been lame, because the people standing there had seen him at that gate. The folks who knew the old version of you make the best witnesses to what God has done. They can't say it was always this way, because they remember.

Peter looks at that crowd and turns the attention off himself right away. He asks why they're so amazed, and why they're staring at him and John as if they'd made this man walk by their own power or godliness. Then he says it's the name of Jesus, through faith in that name, that made this man strong, and the faith that comes through Jesus gave him complete soundness in front of them all. Peter hands every bit of credit back to Jesus. As far as he's concerned, he just happened to be standing at the right gate.

Peter knew that name better than most. Not long before this, he'd stood in a courtyard and sworn he didn't know the man. Now he's standing in front of the same city telling them whose name this is. He tells the crowd they handed Jesus over and denied Him, and then he says he knows they did it in ignorance. Turn back, he says, and times of refreshing will come from the presence of the Lord. He could talk to them that way because he'd been on the receiving end of the same mercy himself.

Here's what I take from all of this. Asking was never the man's problem, and asking is good. What he asked for was only as big as what he'd seen, and what he'd seen was a gate and the coins people dropped in his hand. Peter gave him what he had, and what Peter had was the name of Jesus. That name is a lot bigger than whatever your situation can hold. You can't see the whole of what the Father has laid up for you. That man couldn't either, and the first thing he did with his new feet was walk through the door he'd been sitting beside.

So what are you asking for? Maybe it's gas money. A little relief, a break on a bill. Ask. The Father cares about gas money, and Jesus taught us to ask for daily bread. You don't have to be embarrassed about small requests, and you don't have to wait until you've got something big enough to bring Him. Then let your asking stretch a little. Ephesians 3:20 says He's able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think. Above all we ask. The man asked for coins, and heaven had legs for him.

He went into the temple with them. The gate he'd sat beside, where he'd watched other people go in, he walked through on his own feet. I don't know what gate you've been sitting beside. Whatever it is, the Father has been planning a lot more than a handful of coins. Tell Him what you need, and leave room for the truck in the driveway.

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