A Renewed Perspective On Prayer                    

⁷ “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.⁸ For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.⁹ “You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?¹⁰ Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not!¹¹ So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.¹² “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.

Prayer that shows understanding of God’s Sovereignty.  It is not enough that we ask, but the real issue is what we ask for.

            The words “ask, seek and knock” signify a search with earnestness, diligence, and perseverance. The promise is that what we seek shall be given us. It is of course implied that we seek with a proper spirit, with humility, sincerity, and perseverance. It is implied, also, that we ask the things which it may be consistent for God to give-that is, things which he has promised to give, and which would be best for us, and most for his own honor. Of that God is the judge. And here there is the utmost latitude which a creature can ask. God is willing to provide for us, to forgive our sins, to save our souls, to befriend us in trial, to comfort us in death, to extend the gospel through the world. Man "can" ask no higher things of God; and these he MAY ask, assured that he is willing to grant them. 

Of the many things for which we should ask, seek, and knock, God’s wisdom is among our greatest needs. We cannot be discerning and discriminating without divine counsel from our heavenly Father; and the primary means for achieving such wisdom is petitioning prayer "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him" (James 1:5).

God gives us many principles in His Word, but He does not give specific methods or rules for every conceivable situation. For one thing, situations keep changing and vary greatly from age to age and person to person. To give specific rules for every circumstance would require a giant library of volumes. But even more important than that is One of the most valid ways of discerning God’s will is to rely on Him directly through the study of His Word. Without an understanding of who He is, i.e., what His character and nature is, we cannot pray wisely or rightly.

But even beyond our being in His Word, He wants us to be in fellowship with Him as our Father. Along with His perfect and infallible Word, we need His Spirit to interpret and illumine, to encourage and to strengthen. He does not want us to have all the answers in our hip pocket. The Bible is a limitless store of divine truth, which a lifetime of the most faithful and diligent study will not exhaust. But apart from God Himself we cannot even start to fathom its depths or mine its riches. In His Word God gives enough truth for us to be responsible, but enough mystery for us to be dependent. He gives us His Word not only to direct our lives but to draw our lives to Him.

It seems to me that Jesus very well could have been enlightening our eyes with these verses to help us see that we need His guidance and discernment on how to approach a brother who “has a speck in his eye,” or  knowing when we are “casting our pearls before swine,” etc.  Here Jesus says, in effect, go to your heavenly Father. Ask, seek, and knock at the doors of heaven, and you will receive, find, and have the door opened."

Contrary to some popular interpretations, verses 7 and 8 are not a blank check for just anyone to present to God. First of all, the promise is valid only for believers.  Throughout the Sermon on the Mount Jesus’ promises are addressed only to believers.  On other occasions (as in Matthew 23) the Lord addresses the crowds of persons directly; but during this message all of His references to them are indirect. He gives this sermon to His disciples, with the crowd listening in.

Based upon the context, I do not see the main thrust of these verses applying to the asking for things.  The principle is the same, but the reference point is not here.  If it were so, if the “ask, seek, knock” principle was the main focus, I think Jesus would have injected these verses somewhere in chapter 6 where He does deal with human concerns over physical and material wants and needs.  Jesus had already dealt with the reality of our Heavenly Father being the Righteous “Giver” of what we need.  In Chapter 6, Jesus gave us a model for praying for things and later in the chapter instructed believers to have the assurance that when we seek Him, first, all the things we need will be provided.  The context here grapples with the fact that we need much more than things to live a righteous life: i.e., discernment, wisdom, strength, forgiveness, humility, etc.  I think this is the essence of what Jesus was teaching.  Ask, for those things, seek those things, and the door will be opened to us.

I believe that there are four criteria that must be met before we can “claim” this passage of scripture.  First, the person who asks must be a born again child of God.  The two overriding relationships focused on in the book of Matthew are those of God’s kingdom and God’s family.  Second, the one who claims this promise must be living in obedience to his Father. "Whatever we ask we receive from Him," John says, "because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight" (1 John 3:22)  Third, our motive in asking must be right. "You ask and do not receive," explains James, "because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures" (James 4:3). God does not obligate Himself to answer selfish, carnal requests from His children.  And fourth, we must be submissive to His will. If we are trying to serve both God and mammon (Matthew 6:24), we cannot claim this promise. "For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways" (James 1:7,8).  To have confidence in answered prayer on any other basis is to have a false and presumptuous confidence that the Lord makes no promise to honor.

Prayer that displays a reverence to His God-head.  He delights in giving things that have more significance than earthly, physical substances.  He is not a “heavenly supply clerk.”  He does not exist only to give us what we want.  God wants to supply us with those things that will bring lasting change to our hearts.

We must be very careful here that we do not get the more important thing confused with the least important.  It is a very short distance between expecting God to do for us the things we want because our earthly fathers did for us what we wanted.  The point also needs to be made with regard to the examples that Jesus used.  When it comes to the human relationship of earthly fathers to their children, they ask and receive material things.  No loving father, even though all fathers are corrupted by sin, would intentionally give a son a stone for bread, or a snake for a fish. 

As in the previous chapter, Jesus uses the phrase much more to describe God’s love for His children (Matthew 6:30). Our divine, loving, merciful, gracious Father who is in heaven has no limit on His treasure and no bounds to the goodness He is willing to bestow on His children who ask Him. The most naturally selfless relationship among human beings is that of parents with their children. We are more likely to sacrifice for our children, even to the point of giving up our lives, than for any other persons in the world. Yet the greatest human parental love cannot compare with God’s.

There is no limit to what our heavenly Father will give to us when we ask in obedience and according to His will. Again we get additional truth from the parallel passage in Luke, which tells us, "How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?" (Luke 11:13).

The truth Jesus proclaims here is that, if imperfect and sinful human fathers so willingly and freely give their children the basics of life, God will infinitely outdo them in measure and in benefit. That is why the children of God are "blessed… with every spiritual blessing" (Eph. 1:3) offered by "the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us (vv. 7-8). If we want God to treat us with loving generosity as His children, we should so treat others, because we are those who bear His likeness.

The implication of verses 7-11 is made explicit in verse 12. The perfect love of the heavenly Father is most reflected in His children when they treat others as they themselves wish to be treated.

Prayer that reveals that His Kingdom has come.

However you want people to treat you sums up the sermon to this point, and so treat them is a summary of the Law and the Prophets. It is also a paraphrase of the second great commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:39; cf. Lev. 19:18).  And "he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law" (Rom. 13:8; cf. v. 10; Gal. 5:14).

How we treat others is not to be determined by how we expect them to treat us or by how we think they should treat us, but by how we want them to treat us. Herein is the heart of the principle, an aspect of the general truth that is not found in similar expressions in other religions and philosophies.

Man’s basic problem is preoccupation with self. He is innately beset with narcissism, a condition named after the Greek mythological character Narcissus, who spent his life admiring his reflection in a pool of water. In the final analysis, every sin results from preoccupation with self. We sin because we are totally selfish, totally devoted to ourselves, rather than to God and to others. Unregenerate man can never come up to the standard of selfless love—the love that loves others as oneself and that treats others in the same way that one wants to be treated.

The Golden Rule is of no use whatever unless you realize it's your move.

—Atlanta Constitution

Only Jesus gives the fullness of the truth, which encompasses both the positive and the negative. And only Jesus can give the power to live by that full truth. The dynamic for living this supreme ethic must come from outside our fallen nature. It can come only from the indwelling Holy Spirit, whose first fruit is love (Gal.5:22). In Jesus Christ, "the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:5). Only Christ’s own Spirit can empower us to love each other as He loves us (John 13:34). We can only love in a divine way because God Himself has first loved us divinely (1 John 4:19).

Selfless love does not serve in order to prevent its own harm or to insure its own welfare. It serves for the sake of the one being served, and serves in the way it likes being served—whether it ever receives such service or not. That level of love is the divine level, and can be achieved only by divine help. Only God’s children can have right relations with others, because they possess the motivation and the resource to refrain from self-righteously condemning others and to love in an utterly selfless way.