Familiar Words, Fresh Conviction
Matthew chapter 7 contains many familiar words, but when I read them recently, I found them convicting afresh. Here, towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says,
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)
I found these words convicting because very rarely do I find myself asking, seeking, or knocking.
Anemic
My prayer life could best be described as anemic. This is something many of you—though hopefully not all of you—will sympathize with. I find myself saying, “I wish I prayed more.”
And part of the problem is what you just read: the passive voice. Rather than purposefully pursuing prayer, I instead wait for a moment that feels like I should pray, or I wait until it strikes me that, oh, now would be a good time to pray. But that falls pretty far short of what Jesus shows us in these three word pictures: intentional pursuit. I shouldn’t be waiting for a prayer life to fall on my like a lighting bolt from the sky. Instead, the picture Jesus gives is to intentionally pursue a pattern of consistent prayer.
God's Character
Part of this has to do with motivation. You see that in how Jesus continues with his sermon. Jesus illustrates for his hearers from their own experience. He says,
“9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 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!” (Matthew 7:9-11)
What motivation for prayer can we discern in these words?
Jesus is pointing his disciples to the character of God. He does this by holding a mirror up—do you give your kids rocks when they ask for bread? Or snakes when they ask for fish? I didn’t think so. Don’t you think God is more loving than you are?
We can and we should approach approach our Heavenly Father with confidence because he is a kind and loving Father whose heart is set on giving us good gifts.
However, in his divine wisdom, he often does not give those gifts to us when we fail to ask for them.
Why Keep Asking?
Okay. So we need to ask. But why do we have to keep asking, seeking, knocking? Why isn't one time good enough? Why should I have to keep asking, seeking, and knocking? If God is a kind and loving Heavenly Father, is he also forgetful? Is he busy and needs to be reminded?
I mean, that’s the kind of father I am. I have a lot of irons in the fire. My kids ask me something, and I may genuinely have a desire to do good things for them or provide good things for them—but I'm busy. I often have other things on my mind. So, is God like that—you know, he loves us, he cares about us, but he's got a lot on his mind, and so we have to just keep bringing it before him so that he doesn't forget. Is God forgetful like us?
It's About Our Memory, Not God's
No, he is not forgetful. God is not an absent-minded Father. God is not a distracted Father.
God is omniscient. He knows all. And he's omnipotent. He is able to handle any and every circumstance. But he also has a perspective that is different than ours. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. His timing is not our timing. His timing is perfect.
On the other hand, we are forgetful. Our minds are prone to wander away from contemplating the kindness of the Lord. And so I think part of the reason that he wants us to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, is so that we recognize when he answers our prayers, when we do receive, when we do find, when the door is opened. It is only if we have continued to pray that we will understand that this is happening as an answer to prayer.
A Personal Example
A number of years ago, our church was going through some struggles. We were an older church, in terms of attendance demographics. We were going through what turned into a church split. Church split may seem like an exaggeration considering the small number of people who left, but when you're a church of 17 people, it doesn’t take much to feel like a split.
In the midst of that, I went back home to visit family. As I was having lunch with my spiritual mentor, a man I consider my older brother in the faith (I mean, I suppose that is a literal description of our relationship, but it really feels that way with Wayne in a way it doesn’t with other people). At that time I told him that one of my main prayer requests was for God to bring one young family to our church.
At that time, there was no one in our congregation younger than us. We had one other couple with a kid in high school and a kid in college, but no one else with small children. And I told my mentor I would love to see one other family in church.
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The Forgotten Answer
Fast forward a year: God had brought a young couple into our church. They both came from varyingly difficult upbringings and were working to get established in their own life as a Christian couple. They were seeking to grow in maturity and conformity to the Lord.
As I was again talking again with my mentor, almost exactly a year after our previous conversation, I was expressing to him some of my difficulties in figuring out how best to minister to the church as a whole and this couple in particular. And he paused me and said, “Do you remember that a year ago you were asking God to bring a young couple into your church?”
My response was both honest and embarrassing—“Well, now that you mention it, I do remember that conversation and I remember those prayers. But I had stopped praying about it, and until now I’d completely forgotten.” Thankfully, I was able to have a conversation with someone who had not forgotten my prayer. But I had forgotten. I had stopped asking, seeking, knocking. And so I was missing the blessing of God that was directly in front of my face.
Friends, we need to keep asking, seeking, knocking. Lest we miss his answers.
A Practical Step
So practically, what do you do with this? What do you do with this information?
I don’t have any kind of cure all, but I will share with you what I have been doing recently. This has not solved all of my prayer problems. But it has helped me immensely as I seek to pursue an intentional prayer life where I am coming before the Lord regularly.
Earlier in out marriage, my wife kept a series of names on 3x5 index cards on a ring. And she would flip through those cards and pray for people. I was contemplating that, but it felt a little too abstract to work for me. So, okay, I've got this person's name in front of me. What do I do with it?
What I decided to try was to incorporate that practice with my Bible reading and Scripture memory. And so I have those same 3x5 note cards on a ring, and I have the name of the person that I'm praying for at the top. Then, as I'm either working through my Scripture memory or my daily Bible reading with that series of index cards in front of me, I will write the date and the text of Scripture that I was praying over as I thought about that person.
And then I flip to the next one.
If I'm trying to memorize a verse, I may pray that same verse over numerous individuals. Or if I'm doing my daily Bible reading, I'll just look at who is up next and as I come across a verse that seems to speak to my understanding of their situation or our last conversation or in some other way seems appropriate to pray over that person, again, I will write down the date and the text of Scripture that I prayed over that person, the reference for that text, and then I flip to the next person.
I am still playing with how I organize this, but here is what it looks like at the moment: at the front I have my immediate family—my wife and my children. And the next concentric circle out is our church family. And then I have my extended family, parents, siblings, my grandmother, et cetera, along with some close friends. And then the next layer out is employees in our business, then community members, ministry colleagues, other friends and family, supporters of our ministry, and a few churches.
In this, what I’m seeking to do is to consistently pray through the people who I have the most contact with in my life. That doesn’t mean this is the only time I'm praying. This doesn't mean that praying for people is the only thing I'm praying about. But what this practice had done is provide some structure and a way for me to reference, back. To say, “here’s what I was praying over this person on this date”, and to think back over what has God done in response to those prayers.
Ask, Seek, Knock
I don’t think this is a perfect solution. It may not be a universally applicable one, but it is a practical step that I’m taking to try to put into practice this principle of asking, seeking, knocking.
Whatever it looks like for you, whether it be 3x5 note cards, or an app on your phone, or a journal that you keep, I want to encourage you to be consistently pleading with the Lord to provide for all of your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
There’s another lesson here about the value of Christian friendship. Another article for another day.
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