As many of you know, I worked full time while I was taking my graduate degrees. As with most graduate schools, classes met only once week - but classes would last for 3 hours – and the evening classes lasted from 7 to 10 PM. Most of my classmates were also working adults and every night when we arrived for class, we prayed that perhaps the teacher will be able to complete the lecture in less than the allotted time because then we can go home early. But it seemed like those were just the times when the professor will open class by saying, ‘There's a lot of material to cover this chapter’. As soon as a professor said that, we’d know we were doomed to spend the entire 3 hours in ours chair. We wouldn’t be getting any nice long breaks, and we wouldn’t be getting out early.
In the past several weeks we’ve heard the story of the Good Samaritan and we learned about how you cannot separate faith from works of Christian charity – or rather we learned that living a life of faith where our first concern is God is not enough if we ignore the needs of those around us.
Then we heard the story of Martha and Mary and learned the complementary lesson of how we cannot be so overly busy with works of Christian charity that we forget - or are too busy - to spend time with the Creator.
This morning we will take a look at how God responds to us as children, inviting us to ask in faith, and be secure in the knowledge that our Lord and father waits always to give us the very best that can be offered.
As Jesus is praying, his disciples ask him about how to pray. It’s not that they don’t know how to pray. All of them have been raised as Jews and many of them are Pharisees. They’ve prayed all their lives. They have the Psalms as models for prayer. They’ve heard their parents pray and certainly, they have heard the rabbis praying in the synagogues.
But they want something more. They know that God answers Jesus’ prayers. They wonder if there is some special phrase, some special words that will give their prayers more influence with God.
Jesus does give them a way to pray and we still use this model of prayer today. And many sermons have been preached of every word and phrase in it.
But that is a sermon for another day. Today we’re going to skip right past those verses and touch down briefly in verse 5 to remember that Jesus talks about persistence in our asking which means persistence in our praying.
Now we come finally to the meat of what we’ll be looking at in this morning’s sermon. We look at verse 9 where there are the 3 verbs used to frame the commands: ask, search, knock. In our English translations, it almost seems as if we ask once - search once - knock once - but if we go back to the original Greek in which this was written, we discover that the forms of the verbs used here mean a continuing action – something that happens all the time. So actually this verse reads, ‘Be asking, and it will continue to be given to you. Be searching and you will continue to find. Be knocking and the door will continue to be opened to you.’
The difference is so subtle and yet it is so important. It is the difference between saying. ‘I work’, and, ‘I am working right now’ or ‘I am always working’. It is the difference between doing something once that will last forever and something daily and continually – forever. It teaches us that the Christian life - that Christianity itself - is not a one time thing - not a one time prayer - not one time decision - not one time anointing. We spend our lives asking – and God spends this time giving. Just as the mercies of God are fresh every morning, so our Christian walk with God is renewed day by day.
Jesus first says: ‘Be asking, and it will continue to be given to you’. So the first thing we must discover in this continual day-by-day process is: What exactly do we ask for and just how do we ask for it? The fact that we are asking at all shows that we understand that there are some things we cannot do for ourselves. Jesus doesn’t say to earn something to deserve something from God - this is not a work of labor, but a work of faith.
Several years ago, my mother and I baby-sat for the two young children of some friends of ours. The older child had just turned 2 and thought he was old enough to do everything by himself. He would get into everything and he didn't want to ask for anything. He would reach as high as far as he could - perhaps even do things that were dangerous and he gave his mother gray hair because he wanted to do everything without asking.
How like many Christians I know - including myself – we want to do it ourselves - but we are still children in the eyes of God, and as children, we need to learn to ask our heavenly parent to supply us with the things we cannot get for ourselves – and we do that in prayer.
Praying can be hard. It can be uncomfortable and awkward. It is not easy to ask for things that you don't deserve-and yet the prayer that the apostles are taught in the first portion this morning's gospel, starts out by calling God - the father - and again this is where the Greek helps us because the word used here really means, ‘Daddy’. We approach the throne of grace with the confidence of innocent little children, not the fear and foreboding of guilty adults.
Be asking and it will continue to be given to you.
As we learned in the story of the Good Samaritan, having religion and even having faith are not enough if you keep them all yourself. The priest and the Levite in that story had faith - did pray - but their faith did not stir them to action.
And so Jesus next says: ‘Be searching and you will find.’ Praying may be something that you can do at home while no one is watching, and without risking too much, but searching for something very different. The nature of searching is that it is an activity, not a state of being. Is something we do. It means that we step out away from the crowd and leave behind all that is comfortable - all that is known - and all that not absolutely necessary - to look for something more. As children of God, we are citizens of a heavenly kingdom. Not only must we be looking for God's kingdom to be here on earth, but we need to be searching to know God and to know the will of God.
In our society, many people are searching-but they are not searching for the city that God has prepared. They search for wealth, honor, security-and none of these things is necessarily bad. It is the sense of priority that is important.
We will not find the kingdom or lordship of God in our lives if we ask for things that don’t matter or if we are content to stay where we are. Our true homeland is in heaven and we are strangers in the world. We may think that we cn never find the way. But the nature of God is such that the Lord has such love and care for us that we are guaranteed that if we will be seeking the grace and love of God - we will be finding it! No dead ends and no false turns - if we will be seeking - we will be finding.
Next, Jesus says: Be knocking and the door will continue to be opened to you. So what gets opened? Luke uses the verb ‘open’ three more times when he talks about the activities of the risen Lord. In 24:31, he opens the eyes of the disciples-that they might recognize him. In 24:32, he opens the Scriptures-so that they could understand that Jesus was the fulfillment of those scriptures, and in 24:45, he opens their minds-so that they could better understand the will of God.
The first thing we do we get to someone's home is knock on the door-or ring the doorbell-or honk the horn in the driveway. It is our way of saying, ‘Here I am, let me in. I want to visit with you.’
The greatest gift that we can receive from God is the ability to commune with the holy - and this is where the Holy Spirit comes in. The last verse of this morning's scripture reads, ‘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!’
I mentioned earlier in the sermon how my mother and I baby-sat for two young children. The younger child was a five month old girl. She was not there very long before she began to fuss a bit. We thought she looked hungry. We knew she was a breast fed baby, but her mother had supplied us with bottles of purified water and formula mix - which we dutifully mixed up. She would have none of it. We thought that perhaps it was too cold – so we warmed it up. She still wouldn't drink it, so we cooled it off. Still nothing. Next, we tried plain water. Then we tried the pacifier. That poor kid – we burped her, changed her diaper, danced round living room with her - and all the while she looked more and more miserable, and more and more hungry, and more and more tired. Finally, we reached the end of our resources, and laid her in her play pen on her back - whereupon she turned over on her stomach, put her finger in her mouth and was asleep in minutes.
We stared at each other in disbelief. We had been willing to do anything to make this child happy - but our knowledge of this child was imperfect - and our best efforts could not give her what she wanted or needed - which was her mom. If we, being basically inexperienced, and not the true parents of this child, were willing to for this child the best that we knew how to do, how much more will our heavenly father-who is our true and perfect parent, and who knows us better than anyone - do for his children?
This is the assurance of God, ‘for everyone who asks receives, and every one who searches finds, in for everyone who knocks, the door we'll be opened.’
Be asking, and our gracious Lord will give it to you. Be searching, and you will find the desires of your heart. Be knocking, and all the treasures of the eternity will be open unto you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches, finds, and for everyone who knocks the door is opened.
But first we have to humble ourselves and just ask. Amen
