Ask, Seek, Knock

The Context of Matthew 7:7-11 in the Sermon on the Mount

Well, this morning we are back in Matthew and we're heading toward verse 12 next week, but this morning we're going to do verses 7 through 11. These all belong together, and in fact, verses 1 through 12 belong together, as we've said now for several weeks.

Verses 1 through 5 really speak to how we relate to one another as fellow believers. How do we relate to one another inside? And verse 6, which we looked at last week, is how we relate to those outside.

Do not take what is holy and give it to dogs, do not take pearls, cast them before swine. We spoke about that verse last week, and now here with verses 7 through 11, how do we bring all of this to a relationship above?

Verses 7 through 11 point us to our Heavenly Father and the way that we are to ask and seek and knock, the way that we are dependent upon Him. And we might think we're moving into an entirely new section or topic, moving away from how we relate to those inside, outside, to now focus on prayer, but verse 12 pulls us back in to show somehow verses 7 through 11 belong to everything we've seen now for several weeks.

Verse 12, of course, is the golden rule, so-called. And so we want to stay in context with what we've been seeing from verses 1 and following, but this morning our attention will be Matthew 7, beginning in verse 7.

Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. For what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?

These verses begin and end with that verb, ask. Ask and it will be given. Your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him. So asking is another way of talking about prayer, and of course prayer has been a theme in the Sermon on the Mount.

Prayer was a theme of those who are seeking and hungering and thirsting after God, and in chapter 6 not only do we have commands about how not to pray, but we have the model prayer, the Lord's Prayer in chapter 6, and then here in chapter 7 we're returning to this matter of prayer.

And this matter of prayer follows, again, Matthew 7, 1 through 6, and as William Hendrickson says, I think very helpfully, the Lord has been admonishing His listeners to abstain from judging others, that's verses 1 through 5, but also to judge, that's verse 6.

Not to be hypercritical, verses 1 through 5, but to be critical, verse 6, to be humble and patient, verses 1 through 5, but not too patient, verse 6. You see, these things require wisdom. No wonder then that God is going to have to give us the very things that we need.

As James 1 would say, if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God and it will be given to him. It's very much in line with what Matthew is getting across here. We lack the ability to know exactly how to fulfill kingdom righteousness in these ways.

Holding together Matthew 7, 1 through 5, and verse 6 is so hard that it's just above our own wisdom, above our own discernment. We need God's help. We need to ask, seek, and knock for God to equip us to fulfill this kind of righteousness, to live in these kingdom values.

And so we're commanded, exhorted to ask and to seek and to knock that we might fulfill not only Matthew 7, 1 through 6, but indeed all of the things that have been laid out for God's people in the Sermon on the Mount.

It's something that immediately speaks to prayer, as we'll speak to this morning, but also transcends that to talk about everything in the Christian life that requires God's gift, God's provision, God's grace.

So I want to break this passage down and approach it with really three questions. Who, how, and why. Who we ask, how we ask, and why we ask. That's essentially all I'm going to do this morning. We'll begin right there with who.

Asking Our Heavenly Father as Adopted Children

Who we ask. In verses 7, 8 in particular. Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks.

It will be opened.

The big thing we want to see here is that Jesus is reminding us again of the very things He's reminded us of in chapter 6, as well as in chapter 5. That we are God's people and we have a unique relationship to God through Christ by the Spirit, which is we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God.

He is our Father who is in heaven. That's a generic way that all human image bearers relate to God as creator, and perhaps in a lower case f sense there is a general fatherhood of God to man, but that's more speaking of the fact that He is a creator of us as creatures.

In the adopted sense, in the salvific sense, only those who have trusted upon Jesus Christ for salvation can rightly call God their Father in heaven. God is only known and called upon as Father through the Son, and by the Spirit, as Paul.

Says.

It's by the Spirit of adoption that we cry, Abba, Father. And so this is something that requires the triune work of God, that by the Spirit I would be brought to Christ and through Christ I would be able to behold and know the Father as my Father, and the Father would behold and know me as a son, or for some of you as a daughter.

And this all relates to how we pray, who we ask.

Who do we ask?

Not the creator in abstraction, not the blind watchmaker of deism, not the universal God as creator, but in the intimate dimensions of the Christian life, I ask my Father who is in heaven. Now there's an order to this asking.

Notice what's being said in verses 7 and 8. We're to ask, but more than just asking, we're to seek. And more than just seeking, we're to knock, and each one of these words is telling us something about prayer.

If we begin with asking, we could say that seeking is putting some activity to that asking. I ask, but I don't become passive, I don't become slothful, I ask and I seek. I ask and I prepare. Not only do I ask and I seek, but I also knock, that's to say I persevere.

If you've ever stopped by our house, you're going to have to persevere in knocking for.

A while.

You might persevere until you decide to leave, depending on when you come. Knocking is speaking to this continual, urgent act. And so there's asking, and then there's acting, and then there's an emphasis on that acting.

There's an urgency to it. Ask, first of all, ask implies that there's a need. This is the most basic thing about prayer. You pray because you have a need. You ask because you need something. You ask because you do not have, as James reminds us.

And we ask sincerely. We're not to ask routinely, in the way that the hypocrites prayed in chapter 6. We're to ask sincerely, simply, as children ask their parents. And so the question is, do we really hold the things that we're asking for, or do we just ask for the things that we're supposed to ask for?

It doesn't take long to learn Christianese in the Christian life. You know the kinds of prayers you're supposed to pray, the kinds of things you're supposed to ask for. The question here is, do you really feel that need?

Are you really asking Him sincerely? As Charles Simeon reminds us, if our hearts have not felt what our lips are expressing, our prayers are not acceptable to God. We worship God in vain when we approach Him with an empty expression, empty speech, and our hearts are far from Him.

And so the issue is, when we're asking God, do we actually feel that need? Do we own it? Do we hold it? Desires, as Simeon says, desires in the soul will be counted as prayers even if they're not expressed in words.

That's a beautiful thought. Just pause there. Desires of the soul, groanings of the spirit are counted as prayers even if they never make it out of our mouths. That's how faithful God is to us. But the flip side, words without desire are just a mockery of prayer.

Empty phrases, empty speech, asking for things we don't really feel the need for. We're just supposed to pray in these ways. We find a challenge but also a great encouragement here. We are to ask our Father who is in heaven.

As Paul would say to the church at Philippi, make your requests known to God. This is a fundamental aspect of prayer. This is an invitation for children to acknowledge their need and go and ask it, state it.

When a child is hungry, they ask. They do more than ask, they whine. They ask. They're hungry. They'll keep reminding you. They'll keep knocking. They'll act. If you're not hearing, they're going to start climbing through the cupboards themselves.

And so it is with prayer. We let our requests, we let our needs be felt and then known to our Almighty Father who cares for us. And yet we rarely take this up to Him. We don't actually feel the weight of this exhortation so we have a sort of formulaic pattern of prayer requests and petitions.

We actually have become dulled to the hunger pains as it were. So rather than hungering and asking and seeking and knocking, we just let our spiritual stomachs groan and grumble and we say, oh and yeah, by the way, please provide some bread for me today.

And we just sort of go through the motions of it. I don't think it's going to happen. I know I should pray. I'm not expecting anything. You see, this is very far from the heart of prayer. Jesus is reminding us of who we are, children in need of our Father's care.

As He's also reminding us of who God is, our Heavenly Father who knows exactly what we need even before we ask and yet we ask. That's the relationship between chapter 6 and chapter 7. He knows what you need before you ask, but ask, ask.

What does James 4 say? There are really two and only two reasons that we do not receive the things that we ask for. Jesus is saying here in Matthew 7, whoever asks will receive. Whoever seeks will find.

Whoever knocks will find it opened unto them. There's only two reasons why James says the things that we ask we don't receive. Well, the first is we don't ask. You have not because you ask not. We just don't ask.

We just don't pray. We wait.

We seek.

We strive.

We read books and blogs and listen to podcasts. We do all sorts of things. We arrange all the altar stones. We prepare everything, but we don't ask. We are the great prophet, as it were, on the mountain.

We arrange the altar stones and do everything in order. The last thing is the very first thing that we're to do. We're to pray and call upon God that fire may fall.

So that's the first reason.

We simply don't ask. And what's the first thing that Jesus tells us?

Ask. Ask.

And what's the reason that we may not receive the things that we ask? Well, James says because you ask amiss. In other words, you're asking for the wrong things or you're asking in the wrong way. You're asking amiss.

This is not a blanket statement that makes God into some divine coin slot machine and a prayer of faith pulls the lever and gets what it wants. This is not the name it, claim it prosperity teaching, this heresy that plagues especially the global south of Christianity.

No, this is nothing like that at all. The one who has been shaped and framed and trained by the values of the kingdom is going to ask things in light of that. And the one who has understood the Beatitudes and has sought the Lord, not in hypocrisy but in sincerity, is going to be the kind of person that is seeking the kingdom of God and its righteousness.

And so what do you think the asking and seeking looks like for that person? That person is asking the very things of the kingdom. And Jesus says the one who asks and seeks these things, they will not be withheld.

You may have to act and you may have to persevere, but it will not be withheld from you. And James says, yeah, and if you're not the kind of person seeking the kingdom and its righteousness, you're asking amiss.

You're asking out of your flesh or for your flesh. And God is good to not answer those kinds of prayers. These are the two and only two reasons that the things we ask for are not received. We either don't ask or we ask amiss, either asking for the wrong things or asking in the wrong way.

Beside that, we are called to make our requests known. Ask is the great command. It begins in verse 1 and ends with verse 11. What is the hymn, the line from the hymn that we often sing, thou art coming to a king?

Large petitions with you bring? If you were, as often took place in the ancient world, if you were part of an embassy to some ruler or some king, you had a group of your finest elites, your greatest orders and statesmen, you're going to make some sort of treaty or negotiate some sort of contract, you wouldn't come with something scratched out on a post-it note.

When you were finally given audience to the king in all of his splendor with the array of all of the rulers and counselors and magistrates surrounding his throne, you wouldn't show up and go, ah, where is that?

I had it on a napkin somewhere. Yeah, could we have some of this? No. You'd have this large petition. It would have been scrutinized. It would have been felt. Is there anything that we can dispense with?

What's absolutely necessary? What are the things that we must persevere in, that we cannot leave until we've obtained? That's the idea. Large petitions with you bring, but listen to this, why? His grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.

There's no end to the scroll of the Christian's petition, not when you're going to this king, because he has infinite power, infinite resources, infinite wisdom.

Ask, Jesus says, ask.

Do you ask for holiness? I think that some of the most radical changes that take place in a believer's life are toward the beginning of their walk with the Lord. Now we like to attribute that to everything being new.

It's the green recruit who, you know, is just fresh off the sands of Paris Island and he comes to the front line. He's doing everything by the book. He's got his uniform in exactly the right position, his insignia exactly where it's supposed to go.

He's understood exactly how his bags are to be packed, and then all the guys around him have their stuff hanging off, and they're using things in a way they're not supposed.

To be used.

They have all sorts of things that are not allowed in the book, and they're just staring at him sideways. You're a rookie, aren't you? Doing everything by the book. It takes some time for that vigor and excitement to wear away.

That's not the right view. I think sometimes we think, well, you know, it's all new and exciting, and the changes are so big, and that's why it seems to be so quick and so sudden and so powerful. You know, as you persevere, it's not going to be that easy.

Now that's all true, but listen, I think we can learn something from Matthew 7 here. I think one of the reasons that the changes are so abrupt, so powerful, so moving in those early times as believers, some of the sweetest times we've ever had, is those times as young believers are the times when we're asking simply, God, make me more holy.

God, there's so much I don't understand about your word. Help me understand it. God, I've lived my whole life without faith. Give me a great faith now. God, I've seen my temper, my anger. Oh, Lord, now that I know you, give me a quiet and gentle spirit, you see?

It's just the simplicity of asking. And then when you press on 5, 10, 15 years in the Christian life, you stop asking for these things. You certainly stop seeking them in the way that you did when you first came to the Lord.

And maybe you lose heart in knocking. Or, more to the fact, we tend to seek and knock without ever asking. We consign ourselves. This is going to be grueling, out of reach, spend the rest of my life. And Jesus is saying, did you ask?

Did you ask? You've done everything but ask, didn't you ask? It may be that you must seek. It may be that you'll need to knock. But have you asked? Let me state it plainly. Do you ask for God to deliver you from temptation?

That's in the Lord's prayer. Look at how many requests, how many childlike dependent asks are made in the Lord's prayer. Lord, keep me from temptation today. Lord, there's things in my mind I don't want in my mind.

Cleanse my mind today, Lord. Lord, there's ways I'm thinking I know aren't right. Ways I'm feeling that are crooked. Lord, straighten that out. Help me today, Lord. Do you ask for victory? Do you ask for progress and sanctification?

Do you ask for health and provision? Do you ask for a greater love? Do you ask for fresh influences of God's grace? Do you ask for joy? Lord, I feel cast down today. Lord, give me some joy. Lord, warm me up today.

I'm like a zombie right now, emotionally, Lord. Help me to be sensitive. Help me not to be dull. Do you ask, brothers and sisters? Well, asking is where we begin. It's the thing that we cannot skip. It's what Jesus returns to.

But asking's not the only thing. We're also to seek. And seeking implies a certain activity. We're to seek the kingdom. That involves all sorts of activity. That involves self-denial. That involves picking up a cross.

That involves exercising great faith and courage. That involves being salt and light in the most difficult and dark relationships and places of your life. There's all sorts of things that go with seeking.

So we don't ask as some sort of passive formula, as some sort of coupon code to be scanned for the Christian life. Asking almost always comes with seeking. And then knocking, as we said, implies perseverance.

You know, when the metaphor of the door is used in scripture in relation to prayer, it's often used in terms of mission or kingdom expansion. Paul, several times in his letters, speaks of his mission in terms of prayer as a door that needs to be opened or a door that has opened.

And so he'll say to the church at Corinth in chapter 16, pray that a door would open to us, an effective door would open. In 2 Corinthians we read, basically that's exactly what happened. And he says in chapter two, verse 12, a door has been opened unto us for the word.

Or he's asking believers to pray, like in Colossians four, pray that a door would open for the word so that we can speak the mystery of Christ. What he's encouraging them to do is view the mission, view the expansion of the kingdom as though it's coming against closed and bolted doors.

And he's saying, keep knocking, brethren, keep knocking that the door may open wide.

For the word of God.

Now we know this knocking in our lives in times of intense trial, or when we're perhaps concerned to shod about the health of a loved one. When someone very near to us is sick, we know exactly what knocking in prayer looks like, don't we?

We find ourselves ceaseless in prayer, praying often, praying continually. For things outside of that, for things that don't seem to be urgent, we don't knock hardly at all. And Jesus is saying that we need to capture something of the urgency of knocking.

Only the one who asks and seeks and knocks will find the things of God opened, supplied, given to them freely. Now that's a point we're gonna come back to at the very end this morning, this idea of knocking.

But let me get back to the original point,.

Who?

Who are we asking? Who are we seeking? Whose door are we knocking upon? It's our Father who is in heaven. Jesus is talking about our need, our dependency as children. Not everyone is a child of God, only those who are again born of God are children of God.

John 1 .12, to all who did receive him, that is Jesus, those who believed in his name, he gave them the right to become children of God. And it's these children of God who, because they've come to know God through Christ by the Spirit, feel their need for him.

They see all that is missing in their life, all the needs and fears and hopes that they have, and they instinctively go to call upon their Father. So if you do not belong to the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit, that this verse is not for you.

This call, this exhortation, this promise, this encouragement, it's not for you. You pray to a brass sky outside of Christ. It's only those who know God, who rightly call him Father, and he rightly owns them as his own, that have these great and precious promises that his ear is ever open toward them.

He knows their need. And therefore, all who ask will receive, all who seek will find. Whoever knocks in this way, to them it will be opened. He's seeking to overcome our hesitation, our slack, our fear.

He knows that somehow we feel asking and seeking and knocking might work for others, but it just is not going to work for us. And so he reminds us, you're not viewing him as your Father in heaven. You're viewing him perhaps as some arbitrary, unknowable God that's so distant from you he has not a passing concern for you.

The reason we ask, the reason we seek, the reason we knock is because of who we ask. It's our Father.

It's our Father.

Asking by Faith and Submitting to God's Response

Well secondly, how do we ask? Verses nine and 10, the two big things I want to see and hear are, we ask by faith. And then we ask in such a way that we submit to God's response. That's a very, very important point.

So faith and submission in prayer. Listen, what man is there among you who if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? Something about the character of God, the goodness of God, that affects how we ask.

We know why we ask, but now how do we ask? And how do we respond to the answer that is given? Well of course, everyone asks. Everyone asks for help. Spurgeon, this is a wonderful little insight from Charles Spurgeon, the great preacher of the last century.

He said, by instinct, man first turned to God in paradise. Everything that Adam needed was supplied to him. And there was a sense where he was constantly in communion with God. Always talking, seeking, asking.

Now, as a result of the fall, though a sad, dis-crowned monarch, there lingers in our memory shadows of what man once was. A remembrance of where our strength was once found. And therefore, no matter where you find a man, you will meet one who in his distress will ask for supernatural help.

Why is it that atheists, as it were, cry out to God in foxholes? Or men on their deathbeds in agony feel this instinct to plea with God. There is something within man, this supernatural instinct to ask for supernatural help.

And a man prays, an atheist prays in this way because there is something in prayer. There is something to asking God. We instinctively, almost subconsciously recognize that there is a relationship we have to the one who made us, and we are dependent upon him, and we must call, we must ask, we must seek him.

There's something to prayer. Spurgeon goes on. When the creator gives his creature the power of thirst, it's because he created water to meet that thirst. When he gives his creature the power of hunger, it's because there's food to correspond to that hunger.

So when he inclines all men to pray, it is because prayer has a corresponding blessing associated with it. And we know that that blessing, that answer is only found through Christ. It's only those who can come to God as Father, which means it's only those who have faith in God.

They pray by faith, they ask in faith, they know God by faith. Have faith in God. The writer of Hebrews defined what faith is for us. Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

By it, the men of old gained approval. They know that God was, they knew God, they walked in reverence with God, they trusted in the promises of God, they walked in the service of God. Faith is that kind of confidence, that kind of conviction.

I can't see it, but I live in light of it. I can't fully understand or know it, but my whole life is, as it were, entrusted, thrown upon it. And faith is the key to the life of God's people. We remember times where Jesus did not perform many miracles, why?

Because the people lacked faith. Other times, Jesus required those whom he healed to have faith. Do you believe I'm able to do this? We learn that in order for anyone to be pleasing to God, they must have this faith.

The one who would ask, the one who would seek, the one who would knock, it is impossible to please God without faith. And so the one who asks, the one who seeks, the one who knocks, knows something about God by faith, and they know that God is a rewarder of those who diligently search him.

So the question is, do we pray in faith? There's a way that we are to ask, right? Again, going to James. We have not because we ask not. That's the first and main problem. We're just not asking. Second problem is we ask amiss.

Well, let me introduce a third problem. When we do ask and we ask rightly, are we asking in faith? That's what James 1 .6 says. Let him ask in faith without doubting. The one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven, tossed by the wind.

Let not a man suppose he'll receive anything from the Lord if he's a double-minded man, unstable in all of his ways. There's a faith that means I'm not asking to hedge my bets. I'm not seeking as if it was 50 -50.

I'm not knocking as though I hope I got the right God. You know, I'm just praying for the man upstairs, whoever that man may be. That's not what we're talking about. It's a double-minded man. That's an unstable man.

This is not a man who's asking and seeking and then leaving that prayer closet and going to do the very opposite of the things that he allegedly prayed for. This is not that kind of instability, that double-mindedness, that doubt.

This is a prayer born of conviction, of confidence, even in things unseen. That's the man who asks in faith. That's the man who receives. This is a calling for faith, not only in the power of God, but in the goodness of God.

Faith in the wisdom of God. This teaching does not mean if we pray and our faith is so ironclad, so strong that we don't even let a doubt begin to enter into our mind, then that quality of faith is going to secure whatever we're asking for.

No, absolutely wrong. It's all about mustering up enough faith to get the things that we want. That's all asking amiss. That's not even the right conception of prayer,.

Nor of faith.

We're not talking about a new technique in prayer. Lloyd-Jones, in writing on this topic in his studies on the Sermon on the Mount, he was lambasting in his days as a boy who grew up during the Welsh revivals of 1905 and 1906, seeing the Spirit of God poured out upon hundreds and thousands of people at meetings.

And then he saw, as a young adult, those same people trying to remanufacture that kind of effect. And so they say, well, we're going to go to the same place. Does anyone have an old bulletin from that?

We're going to do the same hymns. We're going to have the same people take the same role. We're trying to remanufacture this outpouring of the Spirit of God. And Lloyd-Jones was saying, you cannot do it.

The Spirit is sovereign in this way. It's not mustering up the right order. It's not putting the stones in the right arrangement. It's not having enough faith. No, it's not putting God at your whim. The Bible rejects that kind of thinking entirely.

God is not some genie in a bottle that our means of grace can rub and manipulate according to our desire. I'll give you an example. Paul prays for thorns to be removed, and they are not. That wasn't because he was lacking faith.

Let me give you another example. A church, a Herod, seeking to imprison those who are spreading the contentious gospel of Jesus Christ in the midst of the Israelites, the Jews. And Herod captures them, including Peter.

And Peter's in prison, and the church is there gathered, and they're praying for Peter in Acts chapter 12. And God miraculously breaks open the chains, converts these jailers, as it were, under the gospel.

They're later executed by Herod. Peter, going out to the gate, knocks on the gate, and the servant girl leaves that prayer meeting, hearing the knocking, and she goes to the gate and thinks she's seen a God.

It's Peter. We're just praying to be released tonight. And she goes in. Peter's out there. She's lost her mind. Stop interrupting us. We're praying for Peter's release. He's been released. Quiet, woman, go away.

We're praying.

The church prayed for Peter, and he was delivered. The church prayed for Stephen, and he was martyred. This is not about our will. This is about God's will. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, it will be done for you.

That's a beautiful little statement there in John 15, 7. What does it presuppose? The one who is abiding in Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ's words are abiding in him, is going to ask and desire things in a certain way.

What kind of wish would you have if Jesus' word was abiding in your life fully? Well, let me ask it a different way. It's a thought experiment. The Son of God was given the Spirit without measure, because the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in him.

So Jesus had the indwelling Spirit of God without measure, without limit. If ever there was one in whom the word of God dwelled richly, it was the Word incarnate. And he asked whatever he wished, and it was done for him.

But how did he ask? Father, glorify yourself. I've come to do your will. Father, take this cup from me, but nevertheless, not my will, your will be done. It's presupposing something about the one who's asking, seeking, and knocking.

What does it mean for that word to abide? Whatever we ask, 1 John 3 says, whatever we ask, we receive from him.

Why?

Because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight. Again, the same thing. What does it presuppose about the one asking, seeking, knocking? They're asking and seeking and knocking upon the ways of God.

I wanna hold to your commandments. And so I'm asking, Lord, help me. And God's supplying, God's opening, God's answering. I wanna be pleasing in your sight, Lord. Help me to submit to your will. And so God is answering, God is giving.

This is the confidence, he says later in 1 John 5, that we have before him. If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. So the fact that people are praying doesn't mean we can be automatically assured that his will is the very thing we're asked for.

It's in praying that we understand the will of God and then we respond to it in the same faith we ask, we respond to it in submission. The faith that asks for God's will in prayer is the faith that submits to God's will in answered prayer.

Very, very important we understand this. Let me just say it again. The faith that asks for God's will in prayer is the faith that submits to God's will in answered prayer.

Do you see?

So this is not let go and let God. This is ask, seek, and knock. This is not I need to start working and only then will I definitely receive the thing that I'm asking for. That's not a upgrade to prayer, adding works to your faith.

That's a degradation. As an old preacher said, the meaning of prayer is not that I force my will upon God, but that I bend my will to his. That's the meaning of prayer. Now what man is there among us who if his son asks for bread gives him a stone or if he asks for a fish gives him a serpent?

Well, if you've understand the goodness and the power and the wisdom of your father who is in heaven, you'll recognize that often in your life, the problem is you're asking for stones instead of bread.

You just are too naive, too immature to realize it. Often we're saying, father, feed me the rocks and the pebbles and the gravel. Lord, can I have a scorpion for a pet, please? I promise I'll take good care of it.

We often fail to discriminate between stones and bread. In an underhanded way, Jesus is reminding us of that. If you being evil, the father is good, we're not able to discriminate what is purely good from what is purely evil in the way that God can.

Because there's darkness that runs its way all through our lives, all through our flesh, but in him there's no darkness at all, no shadow, no turning. So we're not able to discriminate in the way that our wise heavenly father is able to discriminate.

He discerns what is actually bread for us and what is actually a stone, what is actually a meal versus what is actually toxic or poisonous. We do not share in God's wisdom knowing what is ultimately good for us because sometimes the best things for the Christian are the hardest and the most painful things for the Christian.