If You Would Only Ask
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:” Matthew 7:7
What is it that most people desire? I would venture to say that the most desirous possessions would be love, peace, happiness, health, respect, and contentment, to name a few at the top of the list. The crazy thing is that these things are all within the grasp of people, but too many end up, as the song says, “looking for love (and the other wants) in all the wrong places”. The one exception that can be elusive is health, for sometimes that is a completely physical event that no amount of prayer and healthy living will change. Disease entered the world when sin came in, and it’s just a fact with which we have to deal. God has the power to heal all of our diseases (Psalm 103:3), but sometimes His choice to heal is by death. There are those who teach that if you have enough faith, then you will either be healed of your infirmity or never be sick. We know that is not true. Even the Apostle Paul suffered an affliction that God chose not to heal, but, instead, gave him the grace to bear it (II Corinthians 12:9).
Jesus tells us exactly what to do when we have a need or desire. He says to simply, “Ask”. He said if we ask, then we will receive. But guess what? There is a catch: it’s called “motive” which is the “inner drive, impulse, or intention that causes a person to do something” (ask) “or act in a certain way” (seek and knock) (Webster’s Dictionary). There is another catch which is found in I John 5:14-15: “…if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us: And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him”. James (4:3) explains to us that if we ask “amiss”, that is, selfishly, for something that, as James wrote, for lustful personal consumption, then we shouldn’t expect God to provide what we desire. However, that’s a good thing. It’s not just the “give me, give me, give me” prayers that are not answered, but sometimes asking for what we think would be the best for others and ourselves, and perhaps that which might even glorify God, may never be answered.
At other times, we ask for things, even godly attributes, but are not prepared to go through the conditions that are required to bring us to that desired outcome. Patience is a virtue that is often used as an example to illustrate this point. If one prays for patience, the Lord will not open up one’s soul and pour patience in. Rather, patience is achieved by enduring one frustrating event after another until we eventually learn to bear difficult trials with calmness and self-control without complaining about it. An old cliche says it all: “Your better watch what you pray for because you might just get it!”
Jesus said in John 14:14 that “IF ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it”. Asking in Jesus’ name adds a whole new dimension to praying for our desires. If we know Christ and realize the immense love that He has for us in that He only wants the best for us and to see us grow in Him, then how can we ask a selfish desire in His name and expect Him to be in agreement with us? To pray in Jesus’ name means we pray for His desires for us. When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane just before His crucifixion, He asked His Father to “take away this cup from Me: nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou will” (Mark 14:36). The human side of Jesus didn’t want to go to the cross. However, the divine side was willing for Jesus knew it was His Father’s will. Above everything else that Jesus did on earth, His main focus was in obeying His Father. When we ask in Jesus’ name according to God’s will, Jesus will agree with us and do whatever we ask so that God will be glorified, which is the ultimate purpose in life. A holy God will not give us just “any old thing” that we ask. For God to do so would violate His own will and undermine His purpose for our lives.
In addition to asking, we are to seek in order to find. What do people seek for? They either seek for something they had, but misplaced or lost, or they seek for something they don’t have. To seek has the connotation of expending more labor and diligence that just “looking” for. To seek means to persevere until what we seek is found. To “knock” means to put in action the asking and the seeking. We ask in God’s will, then seek to do that which is pleasing unto Him, and then we knock at the door patiently waiting for it to open to provide the desires of our heart. Scripture insists for us to persist, that is, refuse to give up in prayer (Luke 18:1-8). God wants us to be persistent in prayer to Him for it shows that we are placing our trust in Him and completely depending on Him for the answer. Prayer is the most powerful privilege that we have in overcoming defeat and the attacks of the devil.
In my Our Daily Bread devotional from December 2010, the statement was made, “People make mock our message, but they are helpless against our prayers”. When we pray for God’s will to be done, there’s no devil in hell that can thwart or obstruct that godly desire. Remember that God doesn’t always answer immediately, but He will answer either “yes”, “no”, or “wait” on His own timetable. We just have to be patient and trust Him.