Asking, Seeking, and Knocking Because Our God is a Good Father

Good morning, everyone.  It is so good to be with you as always.  So, when I was a child, I asked my parents for many things.  Mom and dad, can I have these art supplies for my Christmas present?  Mom, will you host a holiday tea for my friends and their moms?   Dad, will you help me build this castle for school?  Mom and Dad, can my friend Kelly come to Virginia with us? And so forth and so on it went because like all children, I had many needs and desires, and these needs and desires could only be met if I asked my parents and they said “yes”. 

Well, the good news was that my parents said “yes” more often than not, for they loved me, wanted good things for me, and were attune to my needs and desires.  Thus, I learned fairly early on in life that I could approach my parents with boldness and confidence each time I had a new request because I knew deep down in my bones that they cared for me – that even if they said “no”, it was not because they didn’t care, but that they had good reason for saying “no” – for example, the time I asked for a pony, and they said “no”.

Okay, let me provide some context here.  So, when I was about 8 years old, I started taking horse-back riding lessons, and one day my instructor informed me that I could have Misty, the pony that I had been riding for many months, if I wanted her.  Well, of course I wanted her!  Even if she wasn’t the nicest of ponies, I really loved her!  So, I confidently asked my mom if I could have Misty, hopeful that her answer would be “yes”, but unfortunately, she said “no.” 

You see, it’s not that my mom didn’t want me to have a pony, but she knew that she and my dad could not afford to board a pony on two teacher’s salaries.  It was just not financially possible.   And you know what, deep down, before I even asked my mom, I had already understood this reality.  Nevertheless, I still asked because I knew my parents’ heart towards me.  It was one of generosity and care, so it was worth asking and seeing what my mom’s response would be. 

And though my mom’s response was “no”, she nevertheless showed me her generous heart, demonstrated that she saw my desire and affirmed it, and in the end said “yes” but in a different way.  For about the next six years, my mom (and dad) faithfully drove me to the stables week by week and paid for my riding lessons and my horse-back riding gear.  Ultimately, my deepest longings in this regard were fulfilled as I got to spend regular time with one of God’s most beautiful creatures week by week.  I am so thankful for my parent’s generosity towards me.  And though I am now an adult, I still ask my parents for things from time to time because I know their hearts towards me.  I even, by the way, occasionally still ask them for a horse.    

Well, friends let us pray. 

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for all of the people who have put in our lives – parents, friends, spouses, and others – who have shown us generosity and love in various ways and have been attuned to our needs and desires.  Through them, we have had a glimpse of your character as a loving Father who sees us, desires our good, and gives us good things.  Dear Lord, would we always come before you with confidence and boldness, asking, seeking, and knocking while all along trusting in your loving care.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 So today, we continue along in our many-week exploration of Jesus’ teaching that we have come to know as the Sermon on the Mount.  Over the last few months, we have learned from Jesus what it is to live life in a more fully human way, in a creative and redemptive way that God has always intended for us to live. 

We have also learned what it looks like for us to pray and to come into the Lord’s presence.  In fact, a few weeks ago, when I last preached, we explored the Lord’s prayer and saw that this prayer provided us with a wonderful framework for prayer, where we come into the Lord’s presence, offer up our praise to Him and ask Him for provision, protection, pardon, and partnership with Him as He brings His Kingdom. 

Well in today’s passage in Matthew 7, Jesus teaches us again about prayer.  In this case, He doesn’t so much teach us about the specifics of prayer – how we should pray and for what we should pray  – because He has already done that, but rather, He reminds us of the character of God – the One to whom we pray – and he teaches us something about our posture and attitude towards prayer. 

So, this morning, I would like us to spend some time exploring what Jesus tells us about God’s character and then in light of that, what our posture towards prayer should look like.  I would also like us to explore the content of our prayer in light of the whole Sermon on the Mount and sit with the mystery of the give and take between us and God.  So, let’s dive in.

 So, in today’s Scripture, Jesus commands us to ask, seek, and knock (or to be truer to the original Greek), He commands us to keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking for when we do, we will receive and find, and the door will be open to us.  So, what we have here from Jesus is both a command and a promise.  We are told to ask God for things in prayer because God will say “yes”. 

And why will He say “yes”?  Because He is a loving Father who is so much more loving and attuned to His children’s needs and desires than even the best of earthly parents, parents who can never fully know their children as God knows them and who are also sinful, yet nevertheless give good things to their children.  Well, God, who is good and perfect and knows every hair on the top of His children’s heads, gives the best parents in this world a run for their money.  God loves, sees, and is attuned to His children’s needs and desires, and He delights in giving them good things.

What this means is that when we come before the Lord, we can come before Him boldly and confidently.  What do we desire?  A spouse?  Children?  A home?  Deep friendships?  Meaningful work?  Whatever it is, we can ask for it with boldness because God’s posture towards us is always one of goodness, love, and generosity. 

Now, for some of us, we may worry that we are not worthy to take up God’s time or to ask God for anything, whether large or small.  So, we don’t ask.   Well friends, I say, overcome these hesitations; ask God anyway. 

Or maybe for some of us, we are overly scrupulous and unsure of whether our requests are line with God’s will.  So, we don’t ask.  Well, I say, overcome these hesitations; ask God anyway.  

And then there are some of us who are doubtful that prayer works or that God wants good things for us.  So, we don’t ask. Well, I say overcome these hesitations; ask God anyway.      

If there is anything that is crystal clear in today’s passage, it is that God loves us, wants to hear our requests, and is intent on blessing us.   Just as children in a healthy household unabashedly go to their earthly parents and ask for food and toys and all kinds of things, expectant that their parents will give them what they desire, we too are to approach God with expectancy and hope.  He will never put us to shame as we bring our requests before Him.  And He will say “yes”, although His “yes” may look a bit differently than what we expect. I’ll say more on this in a few minutes.    For now, what is important to focus on is the reality that God is a good Father who wants to give us good things, so we should ask Him for what we desire with confidence and boldness.

At this point, however, I would like to look a bit more at the content of our asking, seeking, and knocking, for up to now I might have left the impression that our asking, seeking, and knocking is simply about personal and material blessings.  Well, as the Lord’s Prayer teaches us, we are indeed to ask for our daily bread.  God does care about providing for our personal needs regarding food, housing, health, family, community, work, and more – what John Stott calls creation gifts.  Thus, we are to ask God for these things. 

However, our asking, seeking, and knocking is to be about much more, and the placement of this particular teaching on prayer by Jesus demonstrates this.  This teaching comes towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount.  This is not mere coincidence, but is intentional.  At this point, Jesus only has a few more things to say to his disciples before He wraps it all up, and before He does so, He instructs his disciples to keep on praying.  Why?  Because He knows that it is going to be challenging to live out all that He has taught them throughout the Sermon. 

Following in this way is going to be counter-cultural and at times sacrificial, and our own flesh is going to fight against it from time to time as we attempt to do the hard work of loving our enemies, caring for the needy, prioritizing God over wealth, pursuing reconciliation with others, understanding marriage on God’s terms, and much more.  We will simply not be able to live this out without the Lord’s help, without the Lord’s Spirit working within us and through us.  And so, we must keep on asking, seeking, and knocking. 

The repetition and even amplification of words here – asking, seeking, and knocking – indicate that we are going to require perseverance in seeking out the way laid out for us in this Sermon, and thus we are also going to continually need to ask God for His help.  As we live out our lives here on earth, there will always be two gates before us – one that that is wide and easy, but will ultimately lead to destruction and one that is narrow and challenging at times but ultimately leads to life. 

We are to seek out the narrow gate, and living out the imperatives of the Sermon on the Mount is part of this narrow way.  This way, while challenging, is not completely unattainable. 

For when we ask for the Lord’s help to live our lives in Kingdom ways, and when we indeed go further, trusting in Jesus to forgive us and restore us when we go astray, Jesus, who is the gate himself (as John 10 tells us) will open up the door to us to abundant and eternal life, not just in the future, but right now. 

Our asking, seeking, and knocking will be met with God’s Kingdom advancing in this world and we will receive God’s forgiveness, be adopted as sons and daughters of the Father, be empowered to live more like we were always meant to live,  and receive eternal life – what John Stott calls redemption gifts.  Our asking, seeking, and knocking will be met with an emphatic “yes”.  Jesus absolutely guarantees this.  This is a promise and as such, it is really Good News.

But, friends, it is important to note that just as Jesus doesn’t always answer our request for creation gifts in the ways and timing we would prefer, God doesn’t always answer our request for redemption gifts in the ways and timing we would prefer either.    This is a great mystery, and this is something I want to now spend a few minutes pondering. 

For if you are anything like me, you might be skeptical when you hear:  just ask, seek, and knock, and you will receive, find, and have the door open to you.  Because at first glance, it does not seem to be true.    As I have shared pretty openly with some of you over the years, I have spent plenty of years asking for a husband and children – good creation gifts that God values and gives to many people, yet have not been given to me.

Moreover, over the years, I have also struggled with various sinful habits and have asked God to be free of these tendencies and to grow in certain virtues that would make me more like Jesus, but change has been slow in coming in certain areas of my life.   Thus, because of these realities, at times I have doubted that prayer makes a difference or that God really loves me, and thus, I have gone through seasons where I have not prayed very much, or stop praying for certain things, or have not really prayed with any kind of expectancy.     

But I am here to tell you today, friends, that this particular teaching by Jesus is here to push us out of our hesitations, apathy, or doubts about prayer, and to encourage us to keep on praying, trusting in God’s generosity towards us and in His ultimate promises.   For if God is truly good and generous towards us, as our Scriptures today let us know He is, then He is then delighted when we come before Him with our whole selves, including our very real needs and desires.  

No, He is not a genie or a Santa Clause who will grant our every request, for some of our requests will actually be destructive and God is not in the habit of giving us those things that destroy.  However, He is also not put off when we are real and authentic with Him.  In fact, this asking, whatever it may be for, provides an opportunity for a conversation to happen between us and God; it creates a moment of intimacy between us.  And during this intimate time, a few things can happen.

First, our requests can shift over time.  For if we are truly open to the Lord’s leading and are sincerely seeking His Kingdom, we will begin to see when our desires are distorted and God will help reveal to us the deeper and purer desires below these stated desires, to which He desires to say “yes”.  As a result, over time, we will more naturally pray for those things that are aligned with God’s will.  But it all begins with us laying out what we desire now before God.  This opens up the conversation between us and God. 

In a similar manner, our perspectives about God’s response to our requests can change over time.  All of us will find from time to time that we have certain desires that are in fact aligned with God’s good intentions for the world, and yet when we ask God for them, God does not seemingly answer us.  In fact, all we hear is “no” or silence.  However, if we continue to go before the Lord with our requests, we eventually see the deeper desires below our requests and find that to those deeper desires, God is saying “yes”.   For example, below my desire for a husband and family is a deeper desire to be known, to be loved, to serve others, and to have faithful companionship, and to this desire, God is answering “yes” with friends, family, church family, and most completely with Himself, which at the end of the day is the ultimate end goal of all our asking, seeking, and knocking.

And finally, we are given an opportunity to acknowledge our dependence upon God and to develop patience and perseverance.  Although, many of us are remiss to admit this, we do depend upon God just like children depend upon their parents.  We can’t simply take or make abundant life happen for ourselves.

Rather, we must receive it from the Lord, and we must wait on Him because for reasons we cannot comprehend, God’s work of redemption is a slow work.  The Kingdom is “here but is not yet” and it moves forward in ways and timing over which we have no control.  So, there will be some things we ask for now – for example, completely harmonious relationships in our lives– that God will say “yes” to, but these things won’t find their completion until the time Jesus returns and makes all things new.  So, in the meantime, we must wait. 

And yet, as we wait and keep on asking, seeking, and knocking, we will be pulled out of any apathy and hopelessness we have and instead will be encouraged and empowered to persist in doing what we can do now to reveal God’s Kingdom and point to that that day when all things will be new.

So, friends, as we come to the conclusion of our sermon today, I want to encourage you to do what Jesus has commanded you to do, and that is to keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking because God is your loving and generous Father who longs to bless you and say “yes”.  Now, His “yes” may not come in the form or timing that you would prefer, and  in some cases, His “yes” may not come in this lifetime, but as you seek His Kingdom, rest assured He will say “yes” and you fill find Jesus, the ultimate end of all your asking, seeking and knocking – the One who opens the door to eternal life for you and the One who loves you, sees you, and is attuned to your needs and desires.  So, friends, let us heed Jesus and embrace this Good News.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.