So: How do you find praying?
Not a question many of us like to be asked. Prayer is a subject that makes us feel guilty. We don’t pray as much as we know we ought to. Or helpless. We don’t know where to start. Or both.
Jesus talks about prayer in the passage we’re looking at this morning.
But he doesn’t do it to make us feel guilty. He wants us to enjoy praying. He wants prayer to be something we all do. And to make that happen, Jesus focuses our attention on God. If we can start to grasp what God is like, that will transform the way we talk to him.
Ask, Seek, Knock
Verse 7 is very well known: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
Jesus uses 3 different verbs to urge us to pray. Those 3 words build up a helpful mental picture of prayer for us.
We are to ask. That’s very simple. Here’s something I’d like God to do. So we ask him for it. And the wonderful promise in verse 8 is that everyone who asks receives.
We are to seek. Which makes us wonder what we are to seek. A better question is who. The Old Testament frequently urges the people of God to seek God. Isaiah 55, verse 6, says this: Seek the Lord while he may be found, call on him while he is near. Go look for God, he says. Look for him so that you can call on him, which is Old Testament speak for depending on him and trusting him. And Jesus says that if we seek God so that we can live our lives in his care, the one who seeks finds.
Then third, we are to knock. Do you remember the story Jesus told? You’ve gone to bed. It’s midnight. You’ve locked up, which is a big task before the days of 5-lever locks and keys. And then there’s a knocking on the door. Gradually you wake up, until you realize it’s your best friend asking for a loaf of bread. Someone’s just popped over to see them, and the cupboard is bare. So, says Jesus, you might not do it because he’s your friend, but for peace and quiet if nothing else – you get up, and you give him the bread.
Jesus says: If you’d do that for your friend, how much more do you think God would do it for you? So if there’s something you need, go and knock on God’s door. Because to the one who knocks, it will be opened.
They are wonderful promises. Ask. Seek. Knock… Go on! Because everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.
Now, whenever we read a promise in the Bible that God answers prayer, our minds always fill with “yes but”. We immediately think of the prayers we prayed that God did not answer. We’ll come to that, because Jesus helps us with that as well.
But before we start qualifying, adding, tweaking, limiting this promise, let’s just stop to enjoy it for a minute. Let’s let what Jesus says soak in. He is deliberately open here. He intends these promises to be generous, unqualified, comprehensive. It would be a shame if we didn’t enjoy Jesus’ generous promise to us, because we’re so keen to know the small print.
Jesus is inviting us to test God’s generosity. Our instinct is to hesitate to pray, in case God doesn’t answer. Jesus wants us to try and see. Give it a go, in case he does.To believe that what God normally does with prayer is answer it. And so to ask, to seek and to knock.
Loaves and Fishes
And to help us see why God is so generous, he then tells us a parable. It’s an analogy about loaves and fishes.
Imagine, he says, that your son one day comes and asks you for some bread. He’s hungry, and he wants to eat. You wouldn’t find a stone that looks like a bread roll and give him that instead. He wanted something to fill him up. A stone is useless in that regard.
Or if he came and asked you for some fish. Some protein. Something for strength. You wouldn’t go and find a poisonous snake instead. That isn’t even useless. It’s positively harmful. Again, you wouldn’t do it.
And so, Jesus says, do we not think God knows how to be a good parent? Human beings are capable of being selfish. We can even be cruel to our own children. But for all of that, we know what a good parent should be like. In our better moments, we are like that with our own children. How much more will God fit the stereotype? Surely he will be the good parent. If his children ask him for something that is good for them, why would he not give it to us?
And now it’s time to think about why our prayers sometimes go unanswered. There are lots of things we could say, but let’s limit ourselves to what this passage adds to this difficult question. Jesus adds two things to our store on why sometimes doesn’t God answer our prayers.
First, let’s notice what the son in the story asks for. He asks for bread. He asks for fish. These are daily necessities. Jesus talked about prayer in chapter 6. He immediately followed it with a warning against piling up treasures on earth. Then another warning against trying to live for two master, God and money. Then an encouragement not to worry, but to trust God to give us all we need.
So is Jesus deliberately telling the story the way he does? The man’s son does not ask for a Ferrari with gold-plated rear-view mirrors. He asks for a piece of bread, and some fish to go with it. God delights to answer his children’s prayers. But that doesn’t give us carte blanche to demand everything our selfish little minds can dream up. That isn’t why God promises to answer our prayers. And if we use the gift of prayer in that way, is it any wonder if God says no?
The second pointer also comes in what the son asks for. He asks for bread. He asks for fish. Those are good things to have. Jesus says that our Father in heaven knows how to give good things to those who ask him. Now re-run the story. This time, the son asks for a poisonous snake to play with. Remember Jesus is describing the ideal parent. You’d say no, wouldn’t you?
So if we were to ask God for something harmful to us, he’d say no as well. And what a good job. God knows everything. He knows the consequences of answering our prayers. He knows us better than we know ourselves. What a relief that he decides whether we’ve asked for something good or not. Who’d want to live in a world where we ask God for scorpions and snakes, and he unthinkingly says yes?
But implied in all of this is that we have to ask. God longs to give good things to his children – when they ask him. He teaches us to depend on him by waiting for us to ask. The letter of James says: You do not have because you do not ask God. And so Jesus wants us to know God, as our loving Father in heaven, who is literally waiting for us to ask him for thousands of good things.
Living this out
I’ve been asking myself this week:: Do I really believe this? Which means I need to ask you: Do you really believe this?
You see: What would my prayer life look like if I did? How much of my time would I spend praying, asking our heavenly Father for things that are good. Ask yourself: What would be good for you? Good for this church? Good for this village? Good for those you love in your family and in your neighbourhood? If we really believed that God is our Father in heaven, who is good, who knows how to give good things to those who ask him, we’d ask him wouldn’t we? And we wouldn’t stop until we’d run out of good things to ask him for.
The church prayer meeting would be full. We’d be putting out extra chairs, moving to a larger premises, meeting weekly rather than monthly by demand from the clamour of those who come. Here’s our chance to come together as a family and ask our Father for things that he’s promised to give us. If we really believed that was what God was like, we’d be having to turn people away for fear of overcrowding the building. And then a second meeting would spontaneously start on the grass for those who couldn’t get in.
So maybe we don’t believe this is what God is like. Maybe we don’t believe he’s good – he’s not really on our side. Maybe we don’t believe he’s in heaven – he’s not really the all-powerful maker of everything who can do anything. And I mean anything – more than all we ask or imagine. Maybe we don’t believe he likes to give good things to those who ask – he’s not really interested in what we have to say to him, he’s in his own little world. Maybe we think his blessings are automatic – that he doesn’t teach his children to depend on him by waiting until they ask him.
But if we really believed that God was good, that he is in heaven, that he is our Father, that he loves to give good things to his children, that he’s only waiting for one thing – for us to ask, we’d be battering down the doors of heaven. We do it together. We’d do it on our own. Whenever we get the chance we’d ask, we’d seek, we’d knock, we’d hammer on God’s door knowing he loves to hear the noise.
Do to others
Which just leaves verse 12. Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
It sounds like Jesus has totally changed subject. But has he?
The Sermon on the Mount started with Jesus telling us that he came to fulfil the law and the prophets, the Old Testament. Now he claims to be summarising what God requires of us.
Chapter 7 opened with Jesus spelling out how we might love our neighbours as ourselves. Now we find another verse, asking us to treat others well.
Verse 12 is not a red herring. It belongs in chapter 7 on loving our neighbour, and it belongs in the Sermon on the Mount on fulfilling the Old Testament law. If anything, it’s the verses on prayer that don’t belong here.
What’s Jesus saying? It’s very simple. How would you like to be treated? Then that is how you should treat other people.
Your often here this called the Golden Rule. Apparently the Roman Emperor, Alexander Severus from the early 3rd century, was not a Christian as some later emperors were. But he was so impressed by these words of Jesus he had them inscribed on his bedroom wall in gold lettering. Allegedly.
Lots of other religions have sayings like this in their teachings. But in every case, they have the negative version. Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t like done to you. If you don’t like being punched, don’t punch. If you don’t like being lied to, don’t lie. And so on.
What Jesus says here is much, much harder. That’s because there’s no limit to the good that someone might do to you, and that you could do to others. Have a think. Let our imagination roam. How would you like others to treat you.
If you’ve just lost your job what would you like them to do? If you’ve had a crisis in your family, what could someone do? If you’re living on your own, what would they do to you?
Then ask who you know in those situations. And go and do it.
To think some people think the Sermon on the Mount is easy! This is impossible. This is loving your neighbour as yourself.
Which is why the verses on prayer are not out of place at all. Loving our neighbours in the way that Jesus loved us is not something we can just do.
The Sermon on the Mount began with Jesus announcing God’s blessing to the poor in Spirit – to those who know their lives don’t impress God. God’s blessing to those who mourn – to those who wish their lives were more Christ-like. To those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
The only way we can love our neighbours in this way is if God adopts us as his children. This is something we could never earn. We cannot prize it out of his fingers. But we can ask him to give it to us. We can ask to become his children, purely as an act of kindness. When we hear how we should live as God’s children, we can ask for his help to live like that.
So Jesus began to talk about loving our neighbour as ourselves. And then he pauses. And before he delivers this golden rule – as a punch line, as a climax – he reminds us that we can talk to God in prayer and ask him for good things.
God loved us so much that he sent his Son to die for us. We can only become like this God if he makes us like him. And that drives us to our knees.
Conclusion
So I don’t know how your prayer life is.
The key to a healthy prayer life is a right grasp of who God is.
We need to hold on to the wonderful truth that God is our Father in heaven. He loves to give good things to his children – if only we would ask.
We need to live out the wonderful character of God, loving those around us whether or not they deserve it. He loves to give this to us – if only we would ask.
Once we grasp how much God loves us, and how much he calls us to love others, we’ll take every chance we get to ask, to seek and to knock.