PRAYING CONSTANTLY WITH CONFIDENCE[1]
MATTHEW 7:7-12
INTRODUCTION
A
woman by the name Jo M. Guerrero tells this life story: "When my daughter
was five, she disobeyed me and had been sent to her room. After a few minutes,
I went in to have a talk about why she was being punished. Teary-eyed, she
asked, 'Why do we do wrong things?'
'Well,'
I said, 'Sometimes the Devil tells us to do something wrong and we listen him.
We need to learn to listen to God instead.' To which she sobbed, 'But God
doesn't talk loud enough!'"
I
would like to share with you on the subject, "Praying Constantly with
Confidence."
I. BELIEVERS' ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE FATHER
VV. 7-11
It
is natural that our Lord Jesus should move on from our relationship with our
fellow men and women to our relationship with our heavenly Father. This is
vitally important because our Christian duty of discrimination not judging
others, not casting pearls before pigs, and being helpful without being
hypocritical is much too difficult for us without divine grace.
A. The Promises Jesus Makes for Believers
This passage is not the first
instruction on prayer in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has already warned
us against pharisaic hypocrisy and pagan formalism, and has given us His model
for prayer. Now, however, Jesus actively encourages us to pray by giving us
some gracious promises. For nothing would motivate us to pray more than the
fact that the heavenly Father hears us when we pray. Jesus knows that we are
timid and shy, that we feel unworthy and unfit to present our needs to God. We
think that God is so great and we are so tiny that we do not dare to pray. That
is why Christ wants to move us from such timid thoughts, cast away our doubts,
and to have us pray with confidence and boldness.
The
most important lesson you can learn is how to pray. Indeed, you must pray so
that your prayer takes hold of God. Prayer is a voice that goes into God's ear,
and it lives as long as God's ear is open to holy pleas, as long as God's heart
is alive to holy things. It was E. M. Bounds who said, "The prayers of
God's saints are the capital stock in heaven by which Christ carries on His
great work upon the earth." The believer who is the most highly skilled in
prayer will do the most for God. The strongest one in Christ's kingdom is the
one who can knock the best, and the secret of success in Christ's kingdom is
the ability to pray. Therefore, Jesus commands us to ask, seek, and knock. These are imperatival verbs given to us
deliberately in an ascending scale of urgency. These imperatives indicate
persistence with which you and I should make our request known to God. The
promises are expressed in universal statement, "For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to
him who knocks it will be opened"(v. 8).
Jesus
uses an illustration which His hearers were familiar with, namely a child
coming to his father with a request. If the child asks for bread will he be
given something which looks a bit like it but in fact, disastrously different,
for instance, a stone instead of a loaf, or a snake instead of a fish? What
Jesus is saying is that if the child asks for something wholesome to eat
(bread, or fish), will he/she receive instead something unwholesome, either
inedible (a stone) or positively harmful (a poisonous snake)? Of course not!
Jesus says that parents even though are evil--that
is selfish by nature, still love their children and give them only good gifts. Notice that here Jesus
asserts and assumes the inherent sinfulness of human nature. However, Jesus
does not deny that bad men are capable of doing good things. On the contrary, evil parents give good gifts to their children, for God drops into their hearts a
portion of His goodness.
So
the force of Jesus' illustration lies in a contrast than in a comparison
between God and man. What Jesus is saying is that if human parents who are evil
can give good things to their children, how much more will our heavenly Father
who is not evil but absolutely righteous give
good things to those who ask Him (v. 11)? The reason why many believers are
reluctant or even refuse to pray consistently is that they don't understand the
object of their prayer. When a Christian is praying he/she is not praying to
someone who is far removed. When you pray to God you are not praying to a
distant person. Prayer has to do with relationship. If many of you understand
that in prayer you are coming to your "Abba, Father," who is
infinitely good and kind this would transform your prayer life. In prayer you
are not coming to your distant relative, but your heavenly Father. The teaching
of Jesus that God is the Father of Christians is very revolutionary. Professor
Joachim Jeremias, in his book The Prayers
of Jesus, states that when he was writing this book with the help of his
assistants they carefully examined the prayer literature of ancient Judah, a
large, and rich literature, but in no place in this immense literature is this
invocation of God as Abba found. Abba was a familiar word to the Jews, in
fact, it was an everyday word, but no Jew dare address God as Abba. It was only Jesus who addressed
God as Abba and also teaches us to
address Him as Abba, Father. The term
"Abba" literally means, "Daddy." So the truth of the matter
is that if you belong to Christ, God is your Father, you are His children, and
prayer is coming to your Father with your requests. In these words, Jesus
reveals the heart of God the Father, God is not selfish, begrudging, or stingy.
The children of God do not have to beg or grovel when we come to Him with our requests.
For
many Christians the reason they don't pray is that it seems too simple, even
simplistic. So in your sophistication you conclude that you cannot believe it,
and in any case it does not square with your experience. So you turn away from
Christ's prayer promises to your prayer problems. Let me share with some
problems people raise regarding the command to pray.
B. The Problem People Raise
Confronted by the straightforward
promises of Jesus, "Ask, and it will
be given you; seek, and you will find," people raise several
objections which we need to consider.
1. Prayer is unseemly
These
people say, "This encouragement from Jesus to pray presents a false
picture of God. They argue that this prayer implies that God needs to be told what
we lack or be bullied into giving it, whereas Jesus Himself said earlier that
our heavenly Father knows and cares for us anyway. Besides, God cannot be
bothered with our petty problems. Why do we suppose that His gifts are
dependent on our asking? Do human parents wait before supplying their
children's need until they ask for them?"
The
answer to these valid questions regarding the reason why God's giving depends
on our asking is neither because He is ignorant until we inform Him, nor
because He is reluctant until we persuade Him. The reason has to do with us,
not with Him. The question is not whether He is ready to give, but whether we
are ready to receive. So in prayer we do not prevail on God, but rather prevail on ourselves to submit to God.
Admittedly, the language of "prevailing on God" is often used in
regard to prayer, but it is an accommodation to human weakness. Even when Jacob
"prevailed on God," what really happened is that God prevailed over
him, bringing him to the point of surrender when he was able to receive the
blessing, which God had all the time been longing to give him. The truth is
that the heavenly Father never spoils His children. He does not shower us with
gifts whether we like them or not, whether we are ready for them or not.
Instead, He waits until we recognize our needs and turn to Him in humility.
This is why He says, "Ask, and it
will be given you," and James adds, "You do not have because you
do not ask" (James 4:2). Therefore, prayer is not unseemly; rather it is
the very way God has chosen for us to express our conscious need of Him and our
humble dependence on Him.
2. Prayer is Unnecessary
This
second objection arises more from experience than from theology. Thoughtful
Christians look around them and see many people getting on well without prayer.
Indeed they seem to receive without prayer the very same things that we receive
with it. They get what they need by working for it, not by praying for it. The
farmer gets a good crop by labor, not prayer. The mother gets her baby by
medical skill, not prayer. The family balances its budget by the salary of dad
and perhaps others, not by prayer. Surely, you may be tempted to say,
"This proves that prayer doesn't make an ounce of difference; it is so
much wasted breath."
But
wait a minute! In thinking about this question, we need to distinguish between
gifts of God as Creator and His gifts as Father. We also need to distinguish
between His creative gifts and His redemptive gifts. It is perfectly true
that God gives certain gifts (harvests, babies, food, life) whether people pray
or not, whether they believe or not. He gives to all life and breath. He sends
rain from heaven and fruitful seasons to all. He makes His sun rise on the evil
and the good alike (Matt. 5:45). He visits a mother when she conceives and
later gives birth. None of these gifts is dependent on whether people
acknowledge their Creator or pray to Him.
However,
God's redemptive gifts are different.
God does not bestow salvation on all alike, but bestows His riches upon all who
call on Him. "For everyone who calls
upon the name of the Lord will be saved" (Rom. 10:12-13). The same
applies to post-salvation blessings, "the
good things" which Jesus says the Father gives His children. It is not
material blessings only which Jesus is referring to here, but also and most
importantly spiritual blessings, such as
daily forgiveness, deliverance from evil, peace, the increase of faith, hope
and love, in fact, the indwelling work of the Holy Spirit as the comprehensive
blessing of God, which is how Luke renders "good
things" (Luke 11:13). For these gifts we must certainly pray. As
believers we pray for daily bread not because we fear we will starve to death,
since millions get their daily bread without ever praying for it or saying
grace before meals, but because as His children it is appropriate to
acknowledge regularly our physical dependence on Him. We pray for forgiveness
and deliverance, because these gifts are given only in answer to prayer and
because without them we will be lost. Therefore, prayer is not unnecessary. On
the contrary, prayer is vitally essential.
3. Prayer is unproductive
The
third problem is similar to the second. People argue that prayer is unnecessary
because God gives to many who do not ask, and that it is unproductive because
He fails to give to many who do. Someone may say, "I prayed to pass an
exam, but failed it. I prayed to be healed of an illness, and it got worse. I
prayed for peace, but the world is filled with violence and the sound of war.
Prayer doesn't work!" This is the familiar problem of unanswered prayer.
The
best way to approach this problem is to remember that the promises of Jesus in
the Sermon on the Mount are not unconditional. It is absurd to think that the
promises "Ask and it shall be given
you" is an absolute pledge with no strings attached; that "Knock and it will be open to you"
is on "Open Sesame" to every closed door without exception; and
that by the waving of the prayer wand any wish will be granted and every dream
will come true. This idea is ridiculous. It will turn prayer into magic, the
person who prays into a magician like Houdinin, and God into a servant who
appears instantly to do our bidding like Aladdin's genie every time we rub our
little prayer lamp. In addition, this concept of prayer will place an
impossible strain on every sensitive Christian if he knew that he was certain
to get whatever he asked. As humans though Christians, God knows that at times
what we request in prayer are not good for us. But God being the good Father
that He is, He gives only good gifts to His children. Being wise as well, He
knows which gifts are good and which are not. Our heavenly Father in His divine
wisdom and benevolence will never give us something that is harmful, even if we
ask for it urgently and repeatedly. The reason is that the Father gives only
good things to His children. Therefore, if we ask for good things the Father
grants them; if we ask for things that are not good, He denies them; and only
He knows the difference.
Therefore,
thank God He answers prayer. But thank God He also sometimes refuses our
requests. From hindsight aren't you glad that God did not answer some of your
prayer requests? Prayer sounds very simple when Jesus teaches about it.
However, much lies behind the command to ask,
seek, and knock. First, prayer presupposes knowledge. Since God gives gifts that accord His will, you and I
have to take pains to discover His will. This implies that we have to study
Scripture, and to have a Christian mind that is schooled by meditation of
Scripture. Second, prayer presupposes faith.
It is one thing to know God's will; it is another to humble yourself before Him
by expressing your confidence that He is able to cause His will to be done.
Third, prayer presupposes desire. You
may know God's will and believe He can perform it, and still not desire it.
Prayer is the cardinal means God has ordained by which you and I are to express
our deepest desires (Rom. 10:1).
In
this text Jesus has taught us that God the Father is willing to give us good
gifts. The question is why then are our prayers not answered? This is a
question for you to ponder.[2]
*If the messages from this blog have been a blessing to you and you want to give to support this ministry, you can write your check to:
KENADARKWA LLC
Kennedy A. Adarkwa, PhD
6402 Redding Court
Arlington, TX 76001
*If the messages from this blog have been a blessing to you and you want to give to support this ministry, you can write your check to:
KENADARKWA LLC
Kennedy A. Adarkwa, PhD
6402 Redding Court
Arlington, TX 76001
