Ask, Seek, Knock

“For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it shall be opened. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” Luke 11:10-13

The idea here is not just to ask, but to keep asking, to keep seeking, and to keep knocking. Prayer is hark work, but for any prayer to be answered, it must first be made.

The late John R. Rice wrote in Prayer: Asking and Receiving, 1970, about once visiting a home in Chicago, where he saw an “electric horse” exercise machine. Since he had long experience of riding horses in his youth, the evangelist was easily persuaded to try out this mechanical version.

“It got on,” he wrote, “pressed the button, and presto, I galloped a fine imitation of the gallop of a horse.” But then, he recorded, that after he pressed the stop button, “I got off exactly where I got on! I had not been anywhere at all!”

Then Dr. Rice commented: “That is exactly like the prayer of [so many] - purely for exercise, not to get things from a prayer-hearing, prayer-answering God.”

I find it amazing how so many people talk about prayer and how so few practice prayer. We have a God who will answer. The problem is, we do not have people who will pray.