you can ask God for help.

This one time, God gave me a free car.

Like, the car I drive right now was given to me. For zero dollars.

I pay for gas and car insurance and that’s it.

I’ve been thinking about this recently – about how it wasn’t just that someone gave me a car for free, but that God did it.

And not just because every good and perfect gift is from above. Or even because I asked Him specifically for it. What I keep thinking about is how God gave me a free car, first, because He taught me how to ask and believe Him for it.

Let me back up.

A few years ago, I was trying to figure out how to ask God for big things and specific things – and how to believe Him for those things.

My prayers had been pretty generic, “whatever You want” prayers, and they were starting to feel too passive. If I believed what God said in His word that nothing is impossible for Him, then what might that look like in my own life? How do I actively agree and partner with what He is doing – or could do – in my life?

I actually didn’t really know how to do that, so I started with the same prayer as the man in Mark 9: Help my unbelief. Expand my understanding of what’s possible.

Honestly, I didn’t really know what to ask for – so I asked that.

It was the same way when I prayed about my car situation. When I was thinking about getting a new car, anyone I talked to about it would ask what I wanted my car payment to be. I didn’t know, so I asked God that.

I knew I wanted it to be a miracle though. Like what car payment – what kind of deal – would make people’s jaw drop? What would bring glory to God?

It hadn’t even occurred to me that a car with no car payment was a possibility until Holy Spirit dropped that idea in my mind.

“Don’t you know who I am? Why do you have to have a car payment at all?”

Okay then.

So that’s what I asked for. That’s what I believed for. And it was less about not having a car payment and more about understanding what God was able to do in my life.

I didn’t know if God would give me a free car, but I wholeheartedly believed He could. And the fact that I believed that felt like the real miracle.

Don’t get me wrong, I love not having a car payment. I love telling people God did that for me. But mostly I love how it’s a tangible reminder that God is able to do more than we know to ask for – and He doesn’t need our faith to be 100 to do it.

He is a God who comes close, takes us by the hand, and teaches us how to ask and believe for more. If you don’t know what to believe for, ask for, or do next – you can ask. He’ll answer.

The power of God is in you, even on a Thursday.