God Wants to Answer Your Prayer
I went to pick up our grocery order at the same time my wife went to put our baby to bed. Our oldest didn’t know I was gone and needed something.
He called, but no one answered. So he went looking. He found my wife in our baby’s room with the door closed, so he knocked.
That’s just what we do when we have a need isn’t it? We ask, we seek, and if all else fails, we knock. My son didn’t do it consciously, I’m sure, but he was playing out Jesus’ ask, seek, knock-illustration of prayer in Matthew 7:7–11.
A FRESH TAKE ON OLD TEACHING
Jesus’ illustration comes in the middle of his famous Sermon on the Mount. Throughout the sermon, Jesus instructs his disciples on how people in his kingdom are to live and think. Most of his teaching isn’t new. It’s as old as the Old Testament.
But his words are fresh and deep, taking his hearers (and us readers) to the heart of the matter. Jesus tightens the screws of God’s law, showing us how difficult it is to live it out. We can avoid murder, but can we avoid anger? We can avoid adultery, but can we avoid lust
As Jesus preaches, our sense of need grows and grows. How could we ever be the people he’s calling us to be? We fail so often! But lest we begin to hang our heads, King Jesus has a word for us.
ASK, SEEK, KNOCK
The Christian life must not and cannot be lived apart from prayer. Our need is too great, and the call is too high. We may be willing, but as Jesus said, “The flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). Of course, God never intended his people to live apart from reliance on him anyway.
In all the Old Testament, I can’t remember one time where God rebuked his people for being too needy, but I remember many times where God rebuked them for not being needy enough.
So when Jesus stands to deliver his sermon, he’s not presenting a life to be lived apart from his grace. Rather, he’s calling his people into a life of discipleship where they never stray from dependence on him.
How could it be anything else? The demands are too high. Jesus began by saying, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20). Later, after teaching about loving your enemies, he says, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).
The Pharisees were the best citizens of the day, and God is holy. We are evil and sinful and full of disobedience. How can we ever get where Jesus wants to take us?
As our need for grace grows in sight of our recurring sins and failures, our Father in heaven stands ready to help. All we have to do is “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matt. 7:8–9).
We become the kingdom people Jesus calls us to be not by our rugged self-reliance but by our humble prayers. We ask. We seek. We knock.
WE DON’T HAVE WHAT WE NEED—AND THAT’S OK
It’s easy to miss what Jesus is doing here. In the middle of his demands, he’s pausing to encourage us to pray. He knows our limits. He knows we cannot do this on our own. He’s not asking us to. He also knows that our tendency is to look at God’s law and try to obey it in our flesh.
But he doesn’t want us to. That leads only to failure. The way we succeed in Christ’s kingdom is not the way we succeed in the world’s kingdoms.
We are living for the King, yes, but the King is living in us. We don’t have what we need within ourselves to obey. That’s perfectly fine with Jesus, because he has it, and he’s ready to give it, moment by moment.
Saint Augustine said, “Lord command what you will and grant what you command!” In Christ, change is possible. We may be weak and sinful, but Christ in us is not. His commands are high, as they should be. He has the right to demand our obedience. He also has the grace to help us in our weakness.
Everything in the Sermon on the Mount becomes real in us by prayer. The Beatitudes become real in us through prayer.
We are salt and light in the world to the degree that we’re people of prayer. We deal with our anger, our lust, our faithfulness, our truthfulness, our retaliation, our enemies, through prayer. We practice our righteousness in the quietness of heart that only God sees in prayer. We fast and trust the Lord for the reward as we look to him in prayer. We get off the anxious treadmill and beside still waters and into the green grass of God’s pasture through prayer. We forsake harsh judgment and extend generosity to others by the power of prayer.
We are none of the things Jesus calls us to be by nature. Our need is great, but we have Someone greater than our need on the other end of the line, hearing and answering the prayers of his people.
GOOD, GOOD FATHER
Jesus not only encourages, he assures. “Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?” (Matt. 7:9–10).
Our spiritual needs do not go unnoticed or unanswered by the God who loves us. He is not some God far out there, removed from our day to day life. He is a Father, near and tender toward his people. Jesus already told us in his Sermon, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him,” (Matt. 6:8) and, “Your heavenly Father knows what you need” (Matt. 6:32).
When we approach God in prayer, we are not coming to the bartering table; we are coming to our Father. We don’t have to persuade him of our spiritual need. He’s waiting for us to realize it.
Coming to God our Father with our need is like our children coming to us with their need. We don’t recoil at their request. We don’t give them the opposite of what they need. We don’t give a stone instead of bread, as if one thing from the earth is just as good as another. We don’t give a serpent instead of a fish, as if one scaly thing is interchangeable for another.
If we care so well, Jesus asks, how much more does God? “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:11).
GOOD THINGS
God is a good Father, one who gives good things to those who ask. What are those good things?
They are the things of which Jesus preaches. The good things of the kingdom. The good things that God makes of his people. It’s the fruit of the Spirit and all the rest. The people we long to be, God intends to make us—imperfectly now due to our remaining sin, but perfectly in the resurrection ahead.
Maybe we tend to think God is the holdout in the relationship. He just doesn’t give us what we want. But maybe it’s our desires, not his provision, that are wrong.
When our heart starts longing to be kingdom people, God is ready to give the spiritual blessings we long for. The question is, do we long for them? Do we feel our need enough to pray or are we satisfied with the little bit of holiness we have?
GOOD THINGS IN STORE
When we read the Sermon on the Mount, the redeemed heart finds beauty in it. We long to obey Jesus, to follow him in all things, to be the spiritual people of his perfect kingdom he’s bringing from heaven to earth.
So we ask, seek, and knock on heaven’s door, praying that God would make us into the people he’s called us to be, trusting him to do in us what we cannot do in ourselves, waiting for the good things to become real in us.
And we take heart, because though his calling is great, his grace is greater still. God wants to answer your prayer for your deep spiritual need. He has storehouses of good things available. It’s all there for the asking.
David McLemore is an elder at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He also works for a large healthcare corporation where he manages an application development department. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons. Read more of David’s writing on his blog, Things of the Sort.