For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
We are dismissive of verses such as this one because they don't line up with our experience. Answered prayer seems like the exception rather than the rule. Usually it feels more like when we pray what would have happened anyway ends up happening. Since we know that Jesus spoke the truth we should ask what we are getting wrong.
You do not have, because you do not ask (see James 4:2).
If we want God to answer our prayers we need to be willing to pray them. We are not called to a timid prayer life, but rather one symbolized by the importunate widow who didn't let up on the judge until justice was done (see Luke 18:1-8). We should try to be like the friend who came at midnight to borrow three loaves, who didn't give up until his friend acquiesced (see Luke 11:5-8).
“Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
A moral literal rendering of the Greek is to ask and keep asking, to seek and keep seeking, and to knock and keep knocking. We are called to enter into a process that takes time, not because to give us what we ask is any special effort to God, but because we ourselves need to be changed in order to receive.
You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions (see James 4:3).
The problem is that the things which we really need are things like the loaf of bread and the fish, but the things for which we ask are often closer to the stone or the snake. Our heavenly Father wants to give good things to those who ask him. It is because he loves us so much that he wants us to participate in the process of receiving. Rather than disappointing sons who were hoping for a snake or a stone he would rather we learn that what we really want is bread or a fish, something that can actually satisfy us.
We are called to keep asking even though we often start off asking wrongly. Only if we continue to expose the deepest desires of our heart to God will his grace shine on those desires and transform them. As we learn to live in conformity with his will we learn that what pleases God is in fact what will make us happy as well.
we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him (see First John 3:4).
We grow in our ability to make our prayers in Jesus' name, desiring what he desires. This does not mean that our prayers become merely spiritual, leaving behind the secular and physical world. It means that our prayers include everything that concerns us, but with a view to the purpose of those things, their fulfillment in God himself. Where Matthew told us Jesus said that the Father would give us good things Luke gave a complimentary explanation.
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (see Luke 11:13).
We may not yet be convinced that what we want is in fact the Holy Spirit, or that what the world needs is the Holy Spirit. But if we ask and keep asking, by that very process itself, we will become convinced, and then, with that kind of firm faith, we will receive.
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