The Discipline of Asking — Todd Atkinson

Well I want to turn my attention, after that good serving of humble pie, I think I'm ready to turn my attention to the Gospel of Luke, and chapter 11, to just a wonderful, wonderful portion of Scripture.

I was going to preach it last week and I just felt like I'm not ready, not ready yet to preach it last week. There's just so much riches in here. Now here we are this week and I still feel like, oh boy, dare I touch this, this beautiful passage of Scripture.

This week, but we'll have a go and do our best. So let's begin with a reading, a little longer reading from the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 11, verses 1 through 13. Well let me, let me, I'll just read it out loud.

Jesus Teaches His Disciples to Pray

One day when Jesus was praying in a certain place, when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray. So Jesus said to them, when you pray, say, Father, holy is your name, or hallowed be thy name.

Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. You might think I'm missing phrases, but I'm not. This is Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer is abbreviated compared to Matthew's. Give us each day our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. And then Jesus said to them, suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight, and he says, friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.

Then the one inside answers, don't bother me, the door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. That doesn't sound like much of an existence. I can't get up and give you anything. I tell you though, he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness, he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

Verse nine, there it is, somewhere there. For everyone who asks, no, verse nine. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened unto you.

For everyone who asks, receives. He who seeks, finds. And to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who asked this morning, Lord, that you would bless this wondrous passage of Scripture?

Lord, it's just joy unspeakable to have the very words of Jesus transmitted through the holy apostles, and to be able to read them any time, day or night, before us. Thank you. Thank you, Lord, for your words.

So, Lord, if you would just speak to us now, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, that's a fairly full passage of Scripture, 13 verses. I think when we become acquainted with this text, we tend to focus on the earlier verses, the Lord's Prayer, and not so much what comes after it.

The Persistent Friend and the Call to Hospitality

I want to focus on the second part of this text this morning. I think it's so critical to even understanding what goes before to the Lord's Prayer, and I give a lot of time, probably still not as much time as I ought to consider the Lord's Prayer, but these verses that are to follow it, I haven't always given them the same time, so I'd like to do that this morning.

It begins with this story, right after the Lord's Prayer, verses 5 through 8, the story of a persistent friend. A very simple story. He says, suppose one of you has a friend. In other words, it could be any one of you, and everybody understood this, who goes to someone at midnight because in this culture, hospitality is significant, it's primary, and it's kind of the measure of your household, how much you can show hospitality.

So suppose that someone shows up at your house at midnight, and they're asking to be fed and to be housed, and you found yourself bereft of food. In other words, you don't even have the resources to be able to care for them in the way that you'd like.

So you go to a neighbor's house, and that neighbor isn't unfamiliar with you, they're actually also a close friend, so you bang on their door until you finally wake them up, and you get a response, and you say something to them that you're sure they're going to understand.

I've had all these people, they've showed up at my house, I don't have anything to feed them, you know our culture as well as I do, I want to show hospitality to these people, and I don't have the resources, please help me out.

The man says, go away. Yes, you're my friend, but still go away. Sometimes you have to say that even to friends, don't you? You are a good friend, but please leave me alone. The door is locked, so my children are already in bed with me, we've settled down for the night, please go away.

But the man won't, he just continues to bang on the door and persist, and so it kind of ends with this phrase, he said even though he won't give the man what he asked because of the friendship, he says he will give it because of the man's boldness.

Now, the word boldness there, I'm a little in two minds how well that's translated, because maybe boldness in this text is slightly different than what boldness would mean to us. Other translations use the word importunity, which means to make persistent requests, to make pressing requests upon someone.

The word persistence is the word that's probably most regularly used, so it says he won't give this man what he wants because of the friendship, but he will because of his persistence, all right? So the word boldness is okay, as long as you understand wherein was he being bold.

There's lots of ways you can be bold. The boldness was in the fact that he was persistent and he wouldn't give up, even after the man had asked him to go away, which raises the question, what's the message of that story?

God Welcomes Persistent Prayer

Is the message of the story that God is like a grouchy neighbor? Hardly. Is the message of the story that God considers our prayers a bother? That's the word that's used in the story. He says, go away, do not bother me.

Other translations say, do not trouble me, do not pester me. So is that the message of the story? That God's like a grouchy neighbor, or if we come to him, that he considers our prayers a bother? But that if we persist in bothering him, he'll eventually give us what we want, if only to make us go away?

And the answer is no, that couldn't be further from the truth. That's not the message of the story. The message of the story is this, is if this man in the story who considers his friend's persistence a bother, and yet will still give him what he asks, how much more will the Heavenly Father answer our prayers who does not consider our persistence a bother?

He actually likes our persistence. He even invites our persistence, enjoys our persistence. So if this man will give you what you want, even though he considers you a bother at night, how much more will the Heavenly Father give you what you want, who enjoys your persistence, even finds affection in your persistence, who loves your persistence, who adores the sound of your voice, and never gets tired of it, because he does not sleep or slumber.

There's no time of the day when he finds you a bother. He doesn't. So there's no inconvenient moment for God. There's no moment when he enjoys your voice, and another moment when he doesn't. For God, the voice of his children is always special to him.

There's a contrast even in this text of Scripture between friendship and fatherhood, you know. God doesn't answer your prayers just because you're a friend. You're more than a friend to God. More than a persistent friend, you're a son.

You're a son or daughter of God. It's an altogether different study. We're not just someone who happens to be living next to God's house. We are in God's house. We are his children, and he never gets tired of our prayers.

How do I know that? Well, the next verse says, so I say to you, ask. So this isn't a God that's bothered by persistence. He even invites you. So I say to you, I'm asking you to ask. You don't ask enough.

So I say to you, ask. I say to you, seek. I say to you, knock on the door, and I'll give it to you. Of course, if we look more closely at those words, we'll find two things. One of them is that the Greek tense they're written in, the present tense, means to ask and keep on asking.

So here's God saying, ask and keep on asking. Don't stop because your voice is never a bother to me. Seek and keep on seeking because I love your persistence, and I am never troubled by it. Knock and keep on knocking.

My door, he says, the door of heaven, you can knock day and night because it never bothers me. So I say to you, I'm inviting you. I want you to ask. I want you to seek, and I want you to knock because your prayers and your desires mean so much to me.

When Persistent Prayer Meets Disappointment

You know, this can raise mixed feelings in us. It raises hope on one hand. Wow, that makes you want to go pray. Makes you want to ask for something. Makes you want to go seek. Makes you want to go knock on the door of heaven and see what might come out of that.

But it also raises some fundamental questions like, is this too good to be true? Like, how do I square that with my experience? Because there are instances in the past where it might not have seemed to work for us.

In most instances, we could probably say, well, like, I guess I really wasn't that persistent. So those don't trouble us. Those instances, I think I asked once or twice and I didn't really ask and keep on asking.

There are other instances where we asked and we didn't receive, but perhaps it really didn't matter all that much because what we were asking for wasn't life and death. And we've long forgot that we ever asked.

But what can stand out in our minds, or at least sometimes in our subconscious, what can stand out is those one or two or three instances where we felt like we really were persistent, as persistent as we knew how to be.

And there are one or two or three instances where the outcome really did matter to us. There's probably nothing in life we wanted more than that. So the stakes were really, really high. And so we did persist and we did want and we did believe that the Father had really good things for us.

But still, the end of the story didn't turn out like we'd anticipated. And it caused something to happen that we might not even be very aware of, and that is a wounding in our relationship with our Father.

That we hear the words that He's a loving Father and answers our prayer, but there's something in our heart that undermines it when we hear that. There's some unanswered question mark in our minds where we don't even dare to ask it, but there's just the question marks that, is that really true or is it true for me?

We could say maybe that our faith has been bruised. We have faith, but it's in a bruised state. Our faith feels a little beat up over those one or two or three instances. And when we come to the text like this and we hear the words of Jesus, it's okay for us to be very forthright and real about some of those feelings.

That's why I want to take a look at those words in a little bit more detail, because I think that they tell a story. Ask, seek, and knock. And here's the question I want to ask is, what's inferred in those words if you have to ask and keep on asking?

What's inferred in that? If you have to seek and keep on seeking, what's inferred in that? And likewise, if you have to knock and keep on knocking, what is inferred in that? So first I want to ask, if you're going to ask and keep on asking, what's the concept of delay?

Things really are delayed. If you receive something when you first ask, then you don't have to ask and keep on asking. So here's a reality in the kingdom of God. That some things that we ask for, and that God even wants us to ask for, invites us to ask for, enjoys that we ask for, still, those things can still suffer legitimate delays.

Lazarus and the Mystery of Divine Delay

Legitimate delays. Remember Lazarus. He's very ill. His sisters come to to visit Jesus and they say this, our brother is ill, Lord. Please come and see him. Now take a look at that chapter in John. There is a divine delay that's occurred.

In other words, he does not come immediately. And that is not a haphazard delay. It's a significant delay. The Father does not allow him to come immediately. And what happens in that delay is that the situation they're praying for goes from bad to worse, and their brother, who they love dearly, dies in the process.

I wrote on the side of my Bible, sometimes things go from bad to worse in the will of God. You have to chew on that one for a while, don't you? I have no other way of understanding the story of Lazarus.

So when Jesus does show up on the scene, it feels a little bit late. And their hearts and their faith is a little bit bruised. So you know the first thing they said, Lord, if you had just been here, this wouldn't have happened.

There's a bit of hurt in that. There's a bit of disappointment in that. And there's a reason why the Holy Spirit put that in Scripture. I love that about the Bible. It doesn't have to shy away from those moments, pretend they don't happen, because they do happen.

And every one of our journey has those times. And that's why stories like that are included as a comfort and encouragement to every one of us. Lord, if you've only been here, where were you? That's what it implies.

Where in the world have you been? And he says, I tell you, if you just believe, even in the face of delay, you will see the glory of God. Oh, there's so much we could talk about delay. All I want to do is raise your eyes to see that in God's economy, delay is not a punishment.

God wasn't punishing Lazarus. He wasn't punishing his sisters. He wasn't withholding good. He was making way for something greater. He was making way for a resurrection. Oh, we could go on and on and on about talking about delay.

I have a shortage of time, so let's go on to the next one. What's implied in the word seek? If you go to seek for something, it's implied that it is hidden. Hidden. There is an entire study in the Bible on hiddenness.

Seeking What God Has Hidden

Things that God hides. And again, he doesn't hide them to punish you. He doesn't hide them to play with you or toy with you or to torture you or to trouble you. But he does hide things. Proverbs 25, verse two says this, it is the glory of God to conceal a matter or to hide a matter.

It's the glory of God to conceal a matter. It's his glory. There's actually something glorious about it. When I grew up, usually once a year, usually at Easter, there was a very small, fairly delectable objects, chocolate in thin paper, hid all through the house, sometimes through the whole backyard.

So the purpose of it was that there was some joy in seeking it out. There was some adventure in seeking out. My parents didn't wake up that morning and go, this is a great day to aggravate Todd. We could just give this to him, but no, let's make him look for it.

Let's really bother him and aggravate him and, uh, and see how much we can trouble him and bother him. No. And they said, we've got something for you. And we've hit it. Everything in you, when you're a little guy goes, really?

And now it's fun. The game is on. It's an adventure. I'm going to go look for this. And yet we don't see how that our heavenly father, there are things he hides. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.

You know how the rest of the verse goes? It is the glory of Kings to seek it out. It's the glory of God to hide something. It's the glory of a King to seek it out. So here's this, this, this, these twin truths.

So it's the glory of God to hide a matter begs the question, why would he hide it? The second half of the verse answers the first half to make you seek for it, to heighten value, to heighten, to heighten anticipation.

I think that one of the things that most troubles Canadian Christianity is that people get plumb bored and have lost the sense of spiritual adventure. So you know what the Lord does? He puts a little adventure back.

He says, I tell you, I got something for you and I'm going to hide it and you're going to go seek for it. I was asked to go speak at a, at a movement a couple of years ago, national movement in Canada.

And this is where this text became so real to me because I felt the Lord gave me a prophetic word for this movement. And it was this, the secrets that your movement need, the ingredients your movement need to become everything God wants it to become.

God has hidden those secrets. Where is he hidden them? He is hidden them in other youth movements. Why? As you get to know them and honor what's in them, God is going to give you secrets. Some of the secret secrets of your success are hidden in those other movements.

And the Lord wants you to go and honor them and learn them and get them out. And the secrets to some of their success is hidden in yours. You have things that they need to be everything God wants them to be.

God hides things to make you seek a little bit, ask a few questions and press into him and to pray again. So much more we can, we can give a series on the things God hides and the invitation to our hearts to seek a little bit.

Don't be haphazard. Don't be lazy. Go seek a little bit and know that he has something to give those who will seek it. Thirdly, knock and keep on knocking. What does knocking infer? That what you're asking for is blocked.

Knocking Through Spiritual Obstacles

It's like it's on the other side of a door. You ever feel like sometimes you ask and ask, asking, you're just like, that's it. Is anybody even listening to me? And it just feels like there's mountains between you and what you're asking for.

Well, consider the call of John the Baptist. If you said to John the Baptist, how do you see your calling in life? He says this, I'm the voice of one calling in the desert. Prepare the way for the Lord.

I make straight paths for him. I make every valley filled up and I, and I make every mountain and hill made low. So one of his personal callings is that he says, I, I speak to mountains. I make them come low.

It's prophetic language, especially in the language in the prophet Isaiah, this idea of there being mountains between you and God, but that the prophetic anointing would enable you to speak to mountains, speak to those obstacles, speak to those impediments and to see them removed.

And so sometimes there is a mountain between you and what you're asking for. It doesn't just seem like there's something blocking you. There really is. It is there, but it isn't there without a cause.

And it is not there as a subtle form of punishment is because knocking, knocking on that door, knocking on that obstacle is something that the Lord uses to make us everything he wants us to be. The real key to ask, seek and knock is found in verses 11 to 13.

The Father Gives the Holy Spirit

And it's found in a true understanding of the heavenly father, which of you fathers, if your son asks you for some, for a fish, we'll give him a snake and said, so which a human father, he said, would do that son comes to you.

I need something to eat. I'd like a fish. And instead would give him something that would harm him, give him a snake instead, something that could bite him. Or if he asked for an egg would give him a scorpion.

Like if there is ever a father in the world that would do that, we would think of that as being the most dysfunctional father, like even in the world, sometimes things like that does happen, but there's a, there's a social horror, a repulsion to that.

But if you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to his children. So which father here hasn't ever given a good gift to his children? How much more will your father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those that ask him?

So I think of myself, I actually like giving gifts to my children. I'm a gift giver by nature. I love it. So do I think I'm more giving than God? Do I think I'm a better father than he is? Do I think I'm more generous than he is?

The fact that I like giving it, but I think I got to beg and plead him to do it? Do I think he fundamentally doesn't want to give me something, but that I love giving? That makes me somewhat more generous than him.

And how backwards that would be if there's even this much generosity in my heart. Guess where it comes from? You have to see it amplified by a million times. If I enjoy giving gifts even that much, and I enjoy lots, how many millions of times is that amplified in the source of giving itself?

He loves giving. Why does he raise the Holy Spirit? Because it's his most precious gift. If he could give the Holy Spirit, anything else is his most precious gift, his most holy gift, to those who will just ask.

Praying Through Fatherhood and Sonship

I'm afraid I've run out of time. If you take those truths sometime this week, and then go read the Lord's Prayer again through the lens of those truths. Jesus said, pray like this, my father who is in heaven, the first thing you have to pray, learn, he said, with prayer is a correct understanding of your father.

And if you understand he's a father who loves to hear your prayers, and loves to give good gifts, then everything else that follows in the Lord's Prayer is not difficult to ask. Join me in prayer. Father, in this brief time to look at your word this morning, would you heal our hearts where they have been bruised?

Would you heal our faith where it feels eroded? From anything, Lord, that has made us lack confidence in asking. To know that our prayers and our faith is not a bother to you. That you find our persistence delightful, and never tire of our voices.

You are more than a friend, you are a father, Lord. And if we know we have that kind of a father who invites us to ask, you're the kind of father who will hide things to make us seek, seek them out. You're the one that invites us to knock and don't give up, because knocking produces something in us.

Father, I pray that in these days that we would see an outpouring of your Holy Spirit like we have never seen before. The gift of the Holy Spirit be poured into our hearts by a loving Father, because your Spirit is one of your most precious gifts.

If we could receive that gift, everything else would seem easy to ask for. Your Spirit and your Son. Oh Lord, oh Lord, pour out your Spirit afresh on us, as our Father. Lord, even this morning, for those who just feel weary, for those who feel empty, and for those who feel bruised and broken, pour out your Spirit, Lord.

I ask because I know that you love doing this. You invite me to ask, and never get tired of my asking. So Lord, in these coming months, as you lead us into a deeper understanding of your Fatherhood, and as you lead us into a deeper understanding of our Sonship, then lead us into a mighty outpouring of your Spirit, and we'll drink deeply the gift of a Father.

We'll just drink deeply from our Dad in heaven, from our Abba. Oh Lord, hallelujah. Visit us in our homes. Visit us in the day hours and in the night hours. Visit us in our precious gatherings. Visit us in 55 plus.

Visit us in boomers. Visit us in cell groups, connect groups, Lord. Visit us over coffee with a friend. If it wasn't for your Word, we wouldn't even know this about you. If it wasn't for Jesus, who came to reveal your Father, oh thank you.

Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. Lord, take us now to the presence of a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Take us. May the grace of the Lord Jesus, may the love of God the Father, and may the friendship of the Holy Spirit be with us all now and forevermore.

I'll be blessed. If you have any needs whatsoever, we have a prayer time team at the front, Richard Crowe and Roger Halverson. Any need whatsoever, it'd be our delight to pray for you. Please come and join us upstairs, and if you would be so kind as to just turn around and invite some, say, hey, will you come and have a muffin with me?

Come and have a coffee with me? Particularly, Lord, or particularly if it's someone you just don't know, and take someone by the hand and take them with you. We'll go upstairs and fellowship together.