Asking and Seeking

April 15

Deuteronomy 28

Psalm 45:13-17

Proverbs 11:9-11

Luke 11:1-28

Asking and Seeking

“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who ask, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks it will be opened.”  Luke 11:9-10 LSB

Jesus’ disciples had watched Jesus closely.  They had seen Him spend much time in prayer and asked Him to teach them how to pray in a way that would please God.  There are several principles that we can glean from His teaching.  Jesus started out His prayer by praising God and acknowledging that He is holy and set apart.  Exalting God to his proper position keeps us humble and grateful and is a great place to start any prayer.  He then voices submission to God’s will and plan.  Before He made any requests of His Father, He made it clear that His desire was that God’s will would be done.  He knew that God’s will is always best, so any requests He made were secondary to God’s will being accomplished.  Then He asked God to meet His needs.  He is our loving Father and He wants to take care of us and provide for our needs.  The next part of His prayer asked for forgiveness for sins and the ability to forgive others.  Jesus is not asking for forgiveness for Himself because He was perfect and had no sin.  This is a model prayer for how we should pray.  He understands that it is difficult to forgive others when they mistreat us and we may need to ask God for the grace it will take to do that.  And finally, He tells them to ask God to help them flee from temptation.  We need help when we are tempted, but we also need to pray for help avoiding temptation all together.  If we are praying in this way regularly, our prayer life will be effective and meaningful.  It isn’t meant to be a prayer we memorize and quote repeatedly without thinking about it.  It is intended to be an outline of the things that we should include when we are praying.  God doesn’t want our conversation with Him to be mindless repetition.  He wants us to pour out our hearts in dialogue as we would with a beloved Father. 

            Jesus then gives the example of the friend who comes at midnight wanting bread to teach us persistence in prayer.  We don’t pray about something one time and then give up if we don’t get an immediate answer.  He expects us to continue to pray until He answers.  That doesn’t mean we pray until we get the answer we want.  If He says no, we accept that and move on.  He may make us wait because the timing isn’t right or He needs to work in us more before we are ready for the answer.  In that case, we keep praying about it.  He doesn’t get tired of hearing the same prayer.  He won’t get annoyed or mad at us.  Be persistent!  Then Jesus said something that is often misinterpreted.  He said to “ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.”  This does not mean we can ask for anything we want and we will get it.  God is not Santa Claus.  He said this at the end of all this teaching about prayer.  He was telling them that if they had prayed in the way He told them, then their desires would be in alignment with God’s will.  If that was the case, then they could ask and would receive.