Matthew 7:7-11 / Luke 11:9-13…
Prayer is the pipeline to the power and presence of God. Jesus tells us to be persistent, and in a sense it is a progression, don’t just ask, but seek and knock, keep bringing it up, keep looking for it to happen, keep causing a stir. If we lack in prayer we lack in experience.
Believe it or not, Jesus is saying that God will always answer our prayers with a yes. He isn’t telling us we can ask for anything we want, and that if we don’t receive it is because we don’t have enough faith. Jesus is saying that the Father will answer all our prayers, not according to our desires, but according to His goodness. He will answer our prayer as if we prayed it knowing what He knows. The answer is not always the yes we want, but the yes we need. Sometimes the yes is a no, because what we are asking for is inappropriate for us, or the time isn’t right yet.
If we ask God for something good He won’t give us something evil, if you ask for a fish, the Father is not going to give you a snake. But that is the test – if you get a snake, you know it wasn’t God who gave it to you. Do you know the difference? You may be hungering for something God doesn’t allow, doesn’t want us to have, or simply doesn’t exist, like some made up anointing that some “prophet” claims we can have. We have to be careful of counterfeits, and there are even good things which God in His providence does not desire for us to have. You can “get’ something, and it not be from God (2 Corinthians 11:3-4). If we ask for something good, He doesn’t give us something bad, and if we ask for something bad, He doesn’t give it to us. But you cannot use this truth as some sort of defense against counterfeit gifts.
The big yes is that the Holy Spirit is with us in prayer (Romans 8:26-27 / Galatians 3:14); we are in communion with God and He interprets our prayer, to answer it as if we were wise enough to know what to ask for. We stop praying because we don’t think it is working, but it is working, it is working on us. God listens to our prayers, and He answers them; will we answer the call to prayer and learn about God in and from our prayers?
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