Luke 11:9-10

Ask, and it shall be given you

The law of prayer

This familiar text is usually quoted, and rightly so, as being one of the most precious promises and encouragements to prayer which the Bible contains; but if you look at the text, it is far more than a promise encouraging prayer.

It is a declaration of the condition of our receiving any good gift from God. For reasons which may not be fully intelligible to us, God has limited His mercy. There is the treasure-house full of grace. You go up to it; the doors are locked. You must knock, or they will not be opened. There is the river of life open to all, but you may die from thirst on its banks unless you kneel. Ask, says Christ, then you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. This is really the final mystery of prayer. Why do we need to pray at all? Can love that waits to be asked be perfect love? And the mystery is deepened when you remember the very people that need God’s grace most are those that never ask for it--wicked people, indifferent people, immoral people, unbelieving people, Godless people. They are the people that need the grace, and they will not ask for it. And yet God says, “No grace unless it be sought.” Ye have not--why? Not because you do not need it. Ye have not, because ye ask not. That, I repeat, is the great mystery of prayer.

I. I do not pretend to be able to offer you any full explanation of the mystery, but there are three CONSIDERATIONS WHICH HELP TO ALLEVIATE THE DIFFICULTY A LITTLE.

1. First of all, it is clear that prayer recognizes the sovereign freedom of the human will. Oh! it is an awful thing, that human freedom of ours! Why, my brethren, God lifts His little finger, and the stoutest heart would open its door. But if God entered a heart against its will, He would not enter a heart. He would enter a ruin. And to make prayer a condition of God’s gift recognizes even in man’s deepest sin the noble freedom of the human will.

2. Then, again, prayer at least implies some sympathy of the will of him who prays with God. You know that there are cables beneath the Atlantic which connect this country with America. Now and then you read in the papers that interruption has taken place in the cable. No messages pass, and the cause of the interruption is some defect in the conveying power in the wire; some fault, as the electricians call it, in the cable itself. Well, now, just so there may be moral faults in the will which may make it impossible for God to give unless we are in sympathy with Him; and to make prayer, therefore, the condition of God’s gift is to imply inward sympathy of will with God.

3. And then, last of all, you cannot doubt--and I shall speak of that in a moment more fully--that whether we can understand the mystery of prayer or not, there is something in prayer, altogether apart from the answers which God gives to it, which justifies prayer. A great thinker once said: “I have conquered all my doubts, not with my books, but on my knees.” “On my knees”: ah, yes! And I have sometimes thought that if those golden gates of heaven were never opened for any answer to prayer to pass through, prayer would be enough by itself. There is something in the reflex attitude and influence and effect of prayer which makes prayer in itself a blessing. Ask, and the very asking is a grace. Seek, and before the answer comes you have found something worth finding. Knock, and that very knock is a blessing. But whether we can understand it or not, this is the law: I could almost put the law of prayer into a single sentence to which there is no exception--much prayer, much blessing; little prayer, little blessing; no prayer, no blessing.

II. Now, let me turn to the brighter side of this text, and ask you to consider for a few moments some of the BLESSINGS WHICH COME TO THOSE WHO OBEY THIS GREAT LAW OF THE KINGDOM. Let me encourage you to pray by these blessings.

1. First of all, I cannot find a word, though I have tried hard, to exactly express what I mean when I say that the first blessing of prayer is this: the unconscious cheek it imposes on the life. Any of you who spend half an hour every morning with God will know what I mean. You weave about your life a network of self-restraint never seen, most potent, most real, most felt when most needed. St. Paul had a word, a favourite word; and St. Paul was a very passionate man, a fiery man; but there was a very favourite word with him; it is translated most inadequately in our version, “moderation.” The Greek word menus “high mastery of self”; and that is what prayer gives a man.

2. The other day I was reading an article by one of our scientific men who has given up all belief in the supernatural in any answers to prayer, and yet he said these words: “If any one abandons prayer, he abandons one of the highest forces which mould and benefit human character.” I do not wonder at it. You could not go into the presence of God, if God never answered prayer, without receiving a blessing. When Moses was on the Mount, we read that he came down from it, and his face shone, though he wist it not.

There are shining faces in the streets of London to-day, if you have eyes to see them--men, women, not beautiful by nature, but beautiful by what is more than nature, beautiful with God’s own beauty. You look at them, and you think of the words in Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”:

“Her eyes were hymns of silent prayer.”

You look at them, and you think of those better words,

“They saw His face as it had been the face of an angel.”

3. And yet the reflex blessing of prayer is as nothing, absolutely nothing, compared with its chief blessing--and with that I wish to close--that prayer has power with God. I do not shrink from the words. The prophet Hosea, describing that night of wrestling of Jacob with God, uses these words--you will find them in the Revised Version--“In his manhood he had power with God.” Do you know what that power was? It was the power of a lame man wrestling in prayer--“I will not let Thee go until Thou bless me.” It was the power that every soul in prayer has with God to-day. (G. S. Barrett, B. A.)

Prayer certified of success

Our Saviour knew right well that many difficulties would arise in connection with prayer which might tend to stagger His disciples, and therefore He has balanced every opposition by an overwhelming assurance.

I. OUR SAVIOUR GIVES TO US THE WEIGHT OF HIS OWN AUTHORITY. “I say unto you.”

1. No laws of nature can prevent the fulfilment of the Lord’s own word.

2. No Divine decrees can prevent the efficacy of prayer.

3. Notwithstanding God’s majesty and thy weakness and sinfulness, thy prayer shall move the arm that moves the world.

II. OUR LORD PRESENTS US WITH A PROMISE.

1. Note that the promise is given to several varieties of prayer.

2. Observe that these varieties of prayer are put on an ascending scale. “Ask”--the statement of our wants. “Seek” signifies that we marshall our arguments. “Knock”--importunity.

3. These three methods of prayer exercise a variety of our graces. Faith asks, hope seeks, love knocks.

4. These three modes of prayer suit us in different stages of distress. There am I, a poor mendicant at mercy’s door, I ask, and I shall receive. I lose my way, so that I cannot find Him of whom I once asked so successfully; well, then, I may seek with the certainty that I shall find. And if I am in the last stage of all, not merely poor and bewildered, but so defiled as to feel shut out from God like a leper shut out of the camp, then I may knock and the door will open to me.

5. Each one of these different descriptions of prayer is exceedingly simple.

III. JESUS TESTIFIES TO THE FACT THAT PRAYER IS HEARD. (C. H.Spurgeon.)

It is sense of want that makes us to seek out

It was want that caused Abraham to go down into Egypt (Genesis 12:10), Isaac into Gerar Genesis 26:1), Jacob to send his sons into Egypt (Genesis 42:2). For first, nature is proud, and loath to be beholding to any till needs must: every man naturally loves in the first place to be beholding to himself in any extremity; and if his own wit, or his own purse, or his own projects, or endeavours will help him, he will seek no further; he had rather pay than pray. Then again; life is dear, and nature is forcible to seek out for the preservation of itself, when it is necessitated and put to it, it will seek out before it suffer too much, and break through stone walls rather then famish. From hence we may conclude that there is some good comes unto us by want, some profit we may have by it. It teacheth us the worth of things most truly, and maketh us value the mercy as we should (at least far better than otherwise we would). It is the sharp winter that makes the spring to be sweet and pleasant; and the night s darkness that makes the light of the sun to be desirable: so sickness makes health more grateful; pain, pleasure more delightful; want, plenty more comfortable; and it makes exceedingly for the preservation of love and unity amongst neighbours, and towards the maintenance of civil society and commerce amongst Christians. And this is one reason why it hath pleased the manifold wisdom of God to enrich several countries with several commodities; divers gifts to several persons, not all to any one, that our wants may be supplied by their fulness, and one be beholding to another for a supply of his necessity, which otherwise would not be. Laish was a secure and careless people, and the reason is rendered to be this, “they had no want” Judges 18:10). A fulness causeth us to contemn and scorn those whom in our wants we are glad to make use of. So we read (Judges 11:6). (N. Rogers.)

True prayer must be accompanied with a sense of the want of those things we crave

When we come to God by prayer, a sense of those things we ask must be brought with us. This is required (James 1:5). “If any man lack wisdom,” i.e., if any be sensible of the lack of it and desire it. In the sense of want have God’s servants come before Him continually. So Jehosophat, “We know not what to do” (2 Chronicles 20:12). So Hannah (1 Samuel 1:6). So David (Psalms 60:11). So the Prodigal (Luke 15:17). So all the godly from time to time. This is that that puts us in a praying condition; for first, no man will ask that which he supposeth he hath no need of (Matthew 9:12); the proud Pharisee begged nothing, though he pretended thankfulness. Secondly, this is that that humbles us, and causeth us to be lowly in our own eyes; it is the having of some good that puffeth up, not the want of it. Thirdly, without a sense of the want of what we ask, we shall never earnestly desire it, nor use the means for the obtaining of it. It is want that makes us to seek out, as it did that man we heard of before, who went to his friend at midnight. Fourthly, should we have what we crave, yet without sense of want of the mercy, we should never prize it. Now there is a three-fold want that must be taken special notice of when we come to God by prayer. First of the blessing itself which we desire to have, be it outward or inward, corporal or spiritual, temporal or eternal; of what kind soever it be, we must be sensible, and have a feeling of it, and value it accordingly. A second want that we must take notice of is our own disability to help ourselves, and the disability of any other creature in heaven or earth to supply our wants. Thirdly, of our own unworthiness to obtain that we crave, we must be sensible. (N. Rogers.)

The efficacy of importunate prayer

I. WHAT IS IMPORTUNATE PRAYER?

1. It is restless.

2. Will not take either the privative “nay” of silence, or the positive “nay” of denial.

3. Nor will it take a contumelious repulse.

4. Impudent in a holy manner. I remember a story of a poor woman in Essex condemned to die: she falls to crying and screeching, as if she meant to pierce the heavens; the judge and those on the bench bid her hold her peace. “O my Lord,” said she, “it is for my life I beg, I beseech you; it is for my life.” So when a soul comes before God, and begs for mercy, he must consider that it is for his life.

II. WHY WE MUST SEEK IMPORTUNATELY.

1. God loves to be sought unto.

2. We should not be lukewarm in seeking mercy. It was a custom among the Romans, when any was condemned to die, if he looked for mercy, he was to bring father and mother, and all his kinsmen and acquaintance, and they should all come with tears in their faces, and with tattered garments, and kneel down and beg before the judge, and cry mightily; and then they thought justice was honoured. Thus they honoured justice in man, for a man condemned to die; and so the Lord loves His mercy should be honoured, &c., and therefore He will have prayer to be importunate, that it may appear by groans how highly we esteem of grace; our souls must pant and gasp after grace, the breath of the Lord being the soul of our souls, our hearts will die without it. This is to the honour of mercy, therefore the Lord will have us importunate.

3. As importunity must be in regard of God’s mercy, so it must he in regard of ourselves, else we cannot tell how to esteem it. Soon come, soon gone; lightly gotten, suddenly forgotten; I have it, come let us be jovial and spend it, when this is gone, I know where to have more; but if he had wrought for it, and also must work for more, if he mean to have more, he would better esteem it. What then is the reason, may some man say, why so few are importunate in prayer? I answer--

1. Because men count prayer a penance.

2. Men content themselves with formality.

3. Because they are gentlemen-beggars. Their hearts are full of pride.

4. Because they have wrong conceits of prayer.

(1) They have high conceits of their own prayers; they cannot pray in a morning, between the pillow and the blankets, half asleep and half awake, but they think that they have done God good service; so that He cannot afford to damn them. Lord, how do I abuse the throne of grace? how do I abuse Thy sabbaths, Thy house, Thy name, and all the holy ordinances which I go about? A man that is importunate in prayer is ashamed; but when they think highly of their prayers, they are insolent, their prayers are damned, and they too.

(2) As men have high conceits of their prayers, so they have mean conceits of their sins, they think not their sins so bad as they are.

(3) As men have mean thoughts of their sins, so they have base thoughts of God. I cannot think God will be so strict. They think God will pardon them, and therefore because of this, men are not importunate with God.

(4) Because they have wrong conceits of importunity. If a man knock once or twice, or thrice, and none answer, presently he will be gone; this is for want of manners; thou wilt knock seven times, if thou be importunate with them: they within may say, hold thy peace, begone, etc., but thou wilt not so be answered. Beloved, men are close-handed, they are loath to give; and they are close-hearted too, they are loath to take the pains to ask of God; they are loath others should be importunate with them, and therefore they are loath to be importunate with God. (W. Fenner, B. D.)

Importunate prayer

I. SIGNS OF IMPORTUNATE PRAYER.

1. The prayer of a godly heart.

2. The prayer of a pure conscience.

3. A prayer full of strong arguments.

4. A stout prayer.

5. A wakeful prayer.

6. A prayer that will not be quiet till it get assurance that God has heard it.

II. PRAYERS THAT ARE NOT IMPORTUATE.

1. A lazy prayer. That man that ploughs his field, and digs his vineyard, that man prays for a good harvest; if a man pray to God never so much, yet if he do not use the means, he cannot obtain the thing he prays for. Even so it is with grace; a man may pray for all the graces of God’s Spirit, and yet never get any, unless he labour for them in the use of the means. God cannot abide lazy beggars, that cannot abide to follow their calling, but if they can get anything by begging they will never set themselves to work. So, many there be, that if they can get pardon of sin for begging, then they will have it; but let such know that the Lord will not give it for such lazy kind of praying. God gives not men repentance, faith, &c by miracles, but by means. Thou must then use the means, and keep watch and ward over thine own soul, that so thou mayest get the grace thou prayest for.

2. A prayer that is not a full prayer, never speeds with God; but an importunate prayer is a full prayer, it is a pouring out of the heart, yea of the whole heart (Psalms 62:8).

3. Snatch-prayer is no importunate prayer; when men pray by snatches, because of sluggishness, or because their hearts are eager about other business.

4. Silent prayers are never importunate. Many go to God, and tell God they must needs have mercy, and fain they would have mercy, and yet they are silent in confessing the sin they should. Hast thou been a drunkard, and dost thou think that the Lord will for give thee for crying, “Lord, forgive me,” etc. No, no, thou must insist on it, and say, “Against Thy word I have been a drunkard, my conscience told me so, but I would not hear; I have felt the motions of Thy Holy Spirit stirring against me, and I regarded not; now if Thou shouldst turn me into hell, I were well requited; so many sermons have I neglected; I have wronged others in this kind, and I have been the cause why many are now in hell if they repented not. I have prayed for mercy, yet with the dog to his vomit have I returned, and therefore for all my prayers Thou mayest cast me into hell for ever; and now I have prayed, yet it is a hundred to one but I shall run into my old sin again; yet as I expect forgiveness, so I desire to make a covenant to give over all my sinful courses, and I am justly damned if I go to them again.” Such a kind of prayer the Lord loves.

5. Seldom prayer is no importunate prayer; when the soul contents itself with seldom coming before the throne of grace; an importunate soul is ever frequenting the way of mercy, and the gate of Christ; he is often at the threshold before God, in all prayer and humiliation.

6. Lukewarm-prayer is not an importunate prayer; when a man prays, but is not fervent, when a man labours not to wind up his soul to God in prayer.

7. Bye-thoughts in prayer keep prayer from being importunate; as when a man prays and lets his heart go a wool-gathering. I remember a story of an unworthy orator, who being to make an acclamation, O earth! O heaven! when he said O heaven, he looked down to the earth; and when he said O earth, he looked up to heaven. So, many when they pray to God in heaven, their thoughts are on the earth: these prayers can never be importunate. When a man prays, the Lord looks that his heart should be fixed on his prayer; for our hearts will leak, and the best child of God, do what he can, shall have bye-thoughts in prayer. Consider O Lord (saith David) how I mourn (Psalms 55:1.). There was something in the prophet’s prayer that did vex him, and that made him so much the more to mourn before God. But as for you that can have bye-thoughts in prayer, and let them abide with you, your prayers are not importunate; the heathen shall rise up against you and condemn you. I remember a story of a certain youth, who being in the temple with Alexander, when he was to offer incense to his god, and the youth holding the golden censer with the fire in it, a coal fell on the youth’s hand and burnt his wrist; but the youth considering what a sacred thing he was about, for all he felt his wrist to be burnt, yet he would not stir, but continued still to the end. This I speak to shame those that can let anything, though never so small, to disturb them, yea (if it were possible) lesser things than nothing; for if nothing come to draw their hearts away, they themselves will employ their hearts.

III. How TO GET IMPORTUNITY IN PRAYER.

1. Labour to know thy own misery.

2. You must be sensible of your misery.

3. Observe the prayers of God’s people.

4. Get a stock of prayer.

5. Labour to be full of good works.

6. Labour to reform thy household. (W. Fenner, B. D.)

The prayer of faith

The prayer of faith includes the following attributes:

1. Earnest desire.

2. Submission.

3. Dependence.

4. An earnest and diligent use of means.

5. Deep humility.

6. Faith.

7. Perseverance.

8. An absorbing regard for the glory of God.

(The Preacher’s Treasury.)

The value of prayer

Undoubtedly, God’s rule of action in nature we have every reason to regard as unalterable; established as an inflexible and faithful basis of expectation, and so far embodying the essential conditions of intellectual and moral life, and, for that reason, not open to perpetual variation on the suggestion of occasional moral contingencies. Petitions, therefore, for purely physical events other than those which are already on their way--e, g., for the arrest of a heavenly body, the diverting of a storm, the omission of a tide--must be condemned, as at variance with the known method of providential rule. But a large proportion of temporal events are not like these, dealt out to us from the mere physical elements; they come to us with a mixed origin, from the natural world indeed, yet through the lines of human life, and as affected by the human will. The diseases from which we suffer visit us in conformity with the order of nature, yet are often self-incurred. The shipwreck that makes desolate five hundred homes is due to forces which may be named and reckoned, yet also, it may be, to the negligence which failed to take account of them in time. Wherever these elements of character enter into the result, so that it will differ according to the moral agent’s attitude of mind, it is plainly not beyond the reach of a purely spiritual influence to modify a temporal event. The cry of entreaty from the bedside of fever will not reduce the patient’s temperature, or banish his delirium; but if there be human treatment on which the crisis hangs, may so illuminate the mind, and temper the heart, and sweeten the whole scene around, as to alight upon the healing change, and turn the shadow of death aside. The prayer of Cromwell’s troopers, kneeling on the field, could not lessen the numbers or blunt the weapons of the cavaliers, but might give such fire of zeal and coolness of thought as to turn each man into an organ of Almighty justice, and carry the victory which he implored. Wherever the living contact between the human spirit and the Divine can set in operation our very considerable control over the combinations and processes of the natural world, there is still left a scope, practically indefinite, for prayer, that the bitter cup of outward suffering may pass away--only never without the trustful relapse, “Not my will, but Thine, be done.” (James Martineau, LL. D.)

Is the prayer of faith always answered?

I haven’t time to answer that question as I should like to do; but faith must have a warrant. A good many people think they have faith enough when they ask for certain things; yet their prayers are not answered, and they wonder why. The trouble is, their faith had no warrant. For instance, if I should go out to meet the army of Midian at the head of three hundred men with empty pitchers I should probably be routed. Gideon had a warrant. God told him to go, and he went, and Midian couldn’t stand. We have got to have some foundation for our faith, some promise of God to base our faith upon. Then again, if we don’t get our prayers answered just as we want them it is no sign that God doesn’t answer prayer. For instance, my little boy when he was eight years old wanted a pony. He got his answer; it was “No.” Was his prayer answered? Of course it was. I got him a goat. A pony might have kicked his head off. A goat was a good deal better for a boy eight years old than a pony. It is a foolish idea to think that God has got to do everything you ask. You will notice that the people whose prayers are recorded in the Bible didn’t always have their prayers answered just as they wanted them to be, but often in some other way. In all true prayer you will say, “Not my will, but Thine, be done”; and all true prayer will be answered if you have made it in that spirit. God likes to have His children ask for just what they want, even though the answer He will give may be Very different from what they expect. I want my children to ask me for what they want, but I don’t give them all they ask for by a good deal. So make your requests known unto God, and the peace of God shall keep you. Look at those three men of Scripture that take up more room than any other three men in the whole Bible--Moses, Elijah, and Paul. Look at Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament. They didn’t get their prayers answered in the way they wanted them, and yet God answered their prayers. You remember Moses wanted to go with the children of Israel into the goodly land, the promised land. You can imagine how strong that desire was after he had been with them for forty years wandering in the desert. He wanted to go into the promised land, and see his children settled in their home. But it wasn’t the will of God that Moses should go. And that wasn’t because God did not love Moses, for He took him up into Pisgah and showed him the whole country. A great many years later Moses did stand in the promised land, on the Mount of Transfiguration. His prayer wasn’t answered in his way. God had better things in store for Moses; and certainly I would rather be on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus Christ, and Peter, James, and John, than to have had to go over and fight as Joshua did. So we are not to think that God doesn’t answer our prayers because He doesn’t answer them just in the way and the time we want them answered. Take Elijah. If there ever was a man that knew how to pray it was Elijah. In the power of prayer he stood before Ahab and wrought wonders. After all that he prayed that he might die under the juniper tree. Was his prayer answered in his way? Why, he was the only man under that dispensation who was to go to heaven without dying. I heard of a little boy, four years old, who asked his father to let him take a razor in his hand. His father said, “Oh, no, my boy; you will cut yourself.” Then that little fellow just sat down and cried as if his heart would break. A great many grown-up people are just like that--they are praying for razors. Elijah prayed for a razor--he wanted his throat cut. But his prayer wasn’t answered that way. God wasn’t going to take his life, or let him take it. He had something better for him. And now look at Paul. No one takes up so much space in the New Testament as Paul, and if there ever was a man that had power with God he had it; and yet he prayed three times that the Lord would take the thorn out of his flesh. The Lord said, “I won’t take it out, but I will give you more grace”; and Paul said, “Thank God! I wouldn’t have it taken out now if I could. I have got more grace by it.” If you have got a thorn in the flesh remember that God has sent it for some wise purpose. God sends us tribulations for our good. Paul said he gloried in persecutions, because they lifted him nearer to God and made him more like Jesus Christ. (D. L. Moody.)

Revival always possible

A plain, shrewd man, in one of the daily,, prayer meetings, said that praying for a revival is “just like digging for water. Suppose a community as ignorant of the terms of obtaining water as we are of the conditions of revival. They apply to a scientific man, to know whether there is any way to obtain a constant supply of living water. They rather infer, from the fact that it rains tremendously sometimes without their help, that the supply of water is one for which they are ordained to wait passively, and that when it does not rain in their vessels, they must wait as patiently as they may. But if there is water to be had otherwise in a dry time, they would make any exertion to get at it. “Certainly there is,” their teacher responds, “water everywhere, water without limit, under your very feet.” “How shall we get it.” “By digging for it.” “How far must we dig?” “Five, ten, twenty, or even a hundred feet; in some places a thousand feet will not reach it. But no matter; if it is five thousand feet down, digging will invariably bring it. All you have to do is to dig till you find it.”

Seeking and finding

A young lady was seated in a cottage in the North-West of Spain, trying, in very imperfect and recently-acquired Spanish, to make plain the way of salvation to a group of poor villagers who had assembled to hear her. She had just said: “Jesus is able to save you to-day; is there any one here really wanting salvation?” Immediately a curious-looking little man rose from his seat, and throwing himself on his knees in the centre of the room, the tears streaming down his weather-beaten cheeks, cried out: “Oh, I do want to be saved! I would rather have the salvation of my soul than all the good things in this world.” Unable to express herself as she would, she said: “Only Jesus can save. Seek Jesus.” In his ignorance and superstition, the poor peasant took her words literally, and started off after the meeting to seek Jesus, climbing the mountains, hunting the pine forests and the sea-shore, lie did this for three days and nights. At length, weary and disheartened, he threw himself on the ground, in a field, and, with his face on the earth, groaned out his agony of soul to the God of heaven. In His tender compassion lie heard this poor man’s cry, and filled his soul with joy and gladness, enabling him to trust in the unseen Lord. He had sought the bodily presence of Christ--a mistake very natural to a man always seeing images of the saints, while the living Saviour, by His Holy Spirit, lifted the veil from his understanding, and revealed Himself, the Light of life, more present and real than any earthly object. When he next appeared at the meeting, his face shone with the joy of heaven, as he told of the wonderful change God had wrought in his soul.

Adam’s sons are a generation of seekers

but all are not happy in finding what they seek: but you must know that there is a two-fold seeking; one right and true, when all due circumstances are observed therein; that fails not. And there is another kind of seeking, which is unsound and hypocritical; no marvel if that be unsuccessful.

1. Some there are that seek what they should not seek, but rather shun.

2. Others seek recta, but not recte: right things, but they seek not rightly.

3. Some fail in the quando; they seek, but out of season.

4. Some again seek, but not in the place right.

5. Others fail in the sicut; it may be they seek in due time, and in the right place too, but they fail in the manner of seeking, they seek not as they should. Some seek without eyes; they have the eyes of sense and reason, but that of faith is wanting; they seek ignorantly, and unbelievingly, their eyes are not opened, they know not what belongs to their peace. Some seek, but without a light. Some seek, but without humility, proudly and boastingly; not upon their knees, but tiptoes. Some seek, but without sincerity; fictitiously and hypocritically. Some seek, but not purely and chastely; they seek nor grace for grace’s sake, nor Christ, for Christ’s sake Hosea 7:14; Isa 6:26). Some seek but not fervently and earnestly: “They seek not as for silver” (Proverbs 2:4). Lastly, some seek not constantly and perseveringly: “Seek the Lord and His strength, seek His face evermore,” saith David (Psalms 105:4). Wherefore, be we encouraged to “set our hearts to seek the Lord aright” (1 Chronicles 22:19). Seek what you should seek, seek where you should seek, seek when you should seek, seek as you ought to seek, and rest assured that your labour shall not be in vain; you shall find. In seeking for earthly things at man’s hands we often fail; but if we seek the best at God’s hands we always speed. We may go to the physician and seek health, but meet with death; we may go to the lawyer and seek for law and justice, and meet with injustice and oppression; we may seek to friends for kindness and favour, and find enmity and hatred from them! All that seek to men speed not, though their requests be never so just and honest (as we find Luke 18:1). But whom did God ever send away with a sad heart that sought Him sincerely. Suetonius reports of Titus that he was wont to say that none should go away from speaking with a prince with a sad heart. God likes it not that we should go from Him with a dejected spirit: it is our own fault if we do. (N. Rogers.)

The subjective theory of prayer

[That, namely, which restricts the value of prayer to the influence it exerts on the man who prays.] On this thing, Dr. Bushnell says, “Prayer becomes a kind of dumb-boll exercise--good as exercise, but not to be answered.” Let the Saviour’s words be carried out in the various figures used, on this theory, and its absurdity becomes at once apparent.

1. He bids us “ask.” Imagine a child asking for some favour, or for the relief of some want, and standing, hour after hour, repeating his requests, and being told by the father: “Go on asking, my child; it does you much good to ask. The longer you ask, the more good it will do you. Do not expect to receive anything, however, as the principal benefit of asking is that, by and by, you will not want anything, and will cease to make any request.”

2. Jesus bids us “seek.” Imagine a mother seeking a lost child. She looks through the house and along the streets, then searches the fields and woods, and examines the river-banks. A wise neighbour meets her and says: “Seek on; look everywhere; search every accessible place. You will not find, indeed; but then seeking is a good thing. It puts the mind on the stretch; it fixes the attention; it aids observation; it makes the idea of the child very real. And then after a while, you will cease to want your child.

3. The word of Christ is “Knock.” Imagine a man knocking at the door of a house, long and loud. After he has done this for an hour, a window opens and the occupant of the house puts out his head, and says: “That is right, my friend; I shall not open the door, but then keep on knocking. It is excellent exercise and you will be the healthier for it. Knock away till sundown, and then come again, and knock all to-morrow. After some days thus spent, you will attain to a state of mind in which you will no longer care to come in.” Is this what Jesus intended us to understand? No doubt one would thus soon cease to ask, to seek, and to knock, but would it not be from disgust? (W. W. Patton, D. D.)

Urgency in prayer

The emphatic reduplication of the injunction marks what stress the Speaker laid upon it. So does the rising scale of intensity in the words employed: ask--seek--knock. To seek is a more industrious, and solicitous, and animated kind of asking. We ask for what we want; we seek for that which we have lost: and this sense of loss sharpens at once our need and our desire. Again: to knock is a description of seeking at once most helpless and most importunate; since he who seeks admission at his friends’ door has nothing else to do but go on knocking till he be answered. The asker will study best how to state his plea when once he gains a hearing, but may never care to seek another opportunity. The seeker will make, or watch for, opportunities of access to the patron whose favourable ear he hopes to gain, but, often baffled, may grow weary in his efforts. The knocker must simply trust to the force of patience and of repetition, sure that if he knock long enough he shall be heard, and that, if he continue to knock long enough, he must be attended to. It would be impossible to teach with greater emphasis the idea that prayer is a laborious and enduring exercise of the human spirit, to which we need to be moved by a vivid, unresting, never-ending experience of our own need, and in which we ought to be sustained by a fixed certainty that God will hear us in the end. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.)

The reasonableness of prayer

The principal objection which the thought of our time makes to the efficacy of prayer is based upon the scientific idea of law. Law, it is said, reigns throughout the universe, and is unchangeable and deaf to all entreaty. The truth of all this must be ungrudgingly conceded. If it were not true, if the order of nature were not invariable, there could be no science. No stronger proof that there is an intelligent and benevolent Power, upholding and directing the course of nature, can possibly be given to a thoughtful mind, than its unbroken order and the invariable methods of the Divine will. Such, then, is the Reign of Law, and no man, it is said, can grasp the conception and enter into intelligent sympathy with it, without abandoning the fond conceit that God will grant a favour to one of His creatures on being asked to do so. It may have been pardonable to pray for rain, for health, for freedom from pestilence and famine, when these things were supposed to depend upon the caprice of an omnipotent will, but the scientific idea of law renders these prayers absurd. Well, now, I do not pretend to give a complete answer to this objection; but I have a sufficient answer. It is the commonest fact of human life that man makes the forces and unchanging methods of nature the servants of his will. In this way he makes natural forces perform achievements which, when compared with any merely natural occurrences, might strictly be called supernatural. Now, if man, with his limited knowledge of the laws of the material world, can make them serve his turn in so many ingenious and surprising ways, while their order goes on unbroken, surely an Almighty and all-wise God, by skilful combinations of existing forces, and without departing from a single method to which His wisdom is pledged, can execute the behests of His own will. Surely He has not given man a greater liberty than He has left Himself. But this answer I have given is met by two objections.

1. It is said man’s interference with the order of nature is obvious, it is a visible interposition, but who has ever marked the point where God interposes? If he counteracted one law of nature by another to meet the pleadings of His petitioners, would not science have detected His supernatural agency? Certainly not. No scientific man can explain what Force is, upon what its variations of intensity depend, or how its changes of form are brought about.

2. But then, there is another objection--that it is inconsistent with the wisdom of an omniscient God to suppose that He would ever alter His plan at the request of His creatures. Without pressing the answer that, as a God intent upon moral ends, it is part of His plan to leave room for answers to prayer, there is the obvious fact that God actually allows human beings to alter His plan, for His plan means here the original order of nature. The free will, the caprice, if you like, of human beings is constantly originating changes in nature which would not have been if they had not been, or would have been different if they had been other than they are. Now surely what man, for the purpose of his education and progress, has been permitted to do, God, having an eye to the same purpose, must be free to do Himself. The objections against the reasonableness of prayer from the point of view of the scientific conception of law, if valid at all, are valid for a great deal too much. They all imply that man is not free, that every thought of his mind and act of his will are as much determined for him by fixed laws as the course of the wind or the advance of the tide. And if this were true responsibility would be at an end; benevolence and murder would be simply different aspects of nature, like sunshine and storm. Religion would be a mere dream, resembling the fantastic forms of the mist as it catches the changing currents of the passing breeze. But there are very few who would not passionately reject a conclusion that contradicts our consciousness, and writes “vanity” over all the noblest and most pathetic passages of human history. (E. W. Shalders, B. A.)

Ask and it shall be given you

This is a very defective world. Everybody says so. We have here only the rudiments of things. There is beauty and there is blessing; but only in fragments. The consequence is that we hear endless murmuring and complaining.

1. “Ask and it shall be given you,” is the reply of God. I have given you half; the other half is in My hand. You build a house, and one stone is wanting to complete it; you search everywhere, and are angry because you find it not. It is with Me; I have kept it purposely, that your house may not be built without Me. You build a ship; but the rudder is not forthcoming. I have kept it, that you may ask and receive, and discover that the whole is My gift.”

2. Ask in the right quarter and it shall be given you.

3. Ask in the right way. Let God prescribe how we shall ask Him.

4. Ask for the most essential gifts first. Men on a wreck would ask for a sail, not for an embroidered garment.

5. Ask for regulated tastes and desires. This one gift will cut off at once a thousand occasions of murmuring.

6. Ask with importunity.

7. Ask in faith. (G. Bowen.)

Ask and it shall be given you

Perhaps you shrink from the very thought of mentioning your desires to God. You know enough of the character of God to be aware that the desires which occupy so large a place in your mind, are such as could not be communicated to Him without shame. After all, the best thing, in fact the only good thing you can do with these desires, is to take them to God and expose them to Him, and ask Him in infinite mercy to deliver you from them. Those wrong desires are your worst enemies, and until you be delivered from them there cannot be the dawn of salvation for you. Death came into the heart of Eve in the form of a desire for the forbidden fruit; and blessed would it have been for her if she had hastened to the tree of life seeking deliverance from that internal foe. Ask, then, for the Spirit of power-and of truth to come into your heart, and subdue the vain desires that war against the soul. To have been brought to desire that which is good, is itself an infinite gain--far more to be esteemed than mines of gold and silver. Yes, a man with right desires and nothing else, is at the foot of a ladder leading up to a throne of life, light, and immortality; and bending angels hold out to him their friendly hands.
Whereas a man with wrong desires, though a thousand camels fail to convey his riches, is wending a way that descends more and more precipitously to night and everlasting confusion. (G. Bowen.)

The principle of the text illustrated

“We want a railroad into Italy,” cries the world, “and can go no farther for this mountain. What shall we do to find a way?” “There is no way,” Heaven answers, “except to your persistency; but if you seek, you shall find; if you knock, it shall be opened unto you.” And so the seeking of the answer to that prayer of the nations is entrusted to the keen sight of men whose searching will never tire until the way is found. The knocking is with hard steel at the hard rock, and it is only a question of persistence and endurance; then at last it has come to pass that even the heart of the unwilling mountain is won, and its midnight sleep driven away; and where for countless ages there has been only an utter and unutterable silence, there is now the mighty response of an answered prayer in the thunder of the locomotive. (R. Collyer.)

Every one that asketh receiveth

We have here no mere surmise on our part as to what becomes of the prayers which we present; it is a distinct affirmation concerning them on the part of God Himself to whom we present them. There is something very definite and precise about these words; there is no explaining them away, or attaching to them any other meaning than the clearly obvious one, every one that asks does receive, and every one that seeks does find. Prayer, however, is necessarily a matter in which two are concerned; and, as such, we have only heard what God has to say on it. What have we ourselves to say on it? Can we, from our hearts, echo God’s words, and testify from our own experience to their truth? Or, rather, is not the sad and perplexing experience of every praying man this: “How often have I asked and not received, sought without finding, and knocked without any door being opened to me!” How, then, shall we reconcile these two utterances--that of God, to whom we address our prayers, and that of our own experience, as we vainly wait for an answer to our prayers? We must remember that the words in Luke 11:10 are God’s utterance as to prayer, and not man’s; and we must admit the likelihood that God from the position from which He views prayer, may have laws relating to it which perhaps must be hidden from us. We must remember that in Luke 11:10 we are not told that they that ask shall see that they receive; that they that seek shall at once have evidence that they find; but simply that they do receive, they do find. Christ reveals this to us in order that, whatever our experience may be, we may know if we cannot see, that every one that seeks does find. He does not tell us that henceforth our experience shall no longer seem to be at variance with the great statement of the passage; it must often seem to be at variance with it, so long as we live on this earth. What Christ does is mercifully to explain to us how this seeming variance may in reality cover an actual and bountiful answer to our prayers. (W. F. Herbert.)

If a son shall ask bread

The illustration of the egg and the scorpion is not to be found in the parallel passage of St. Matthew. It introduces no new thought, but only strengthens the emphasis of what has been said already. It may be observed that the stone represents to us useless gifts, the serpent and the scorpion, things which are actually pernicious. If human fathers would not give either the one or the Other to their children, it is inconceivable that our Father in heaven will mock the prayers of His children who call upon Him. And if He does not mock them, what will He give in answer to His children’s prayers? In the Sermon on the Mount our Lord says that He will give “good things”; here the language is more definite, “the Holy Spirit.” The comparison of the two suggests that the best things which we can ask of God are spiritual blessings; we may ask many things which seem good to us, and they may not really be good; but the Holy Spirit is a perfect gift; it must always be well for us to ask for it; it can never be to our detriment to receive it; therefore, while we are cautious how we ask for other gifts, we may always be instant in prayer for greater and still greater influences of the Holy Spirit upon our hearts. (Bishop H. Goodwin.)

You foolish, ignorant children of the great Father in heaven doubt and mourn because the things you pray for are often denied you; but put yourselves, for a moment, in God’s place, so far as to consider the prayers of your little children to you--children whose folly, as compared with your wisdom, is as nothing to your folly when compared with God’s wisdom.

1. Your child comes to you one day hungry, and begging for bread, and, seeing a round, flat stone by your side which bears some resemblance to a loaf, he asks you for it, not for food, but for stone, supposing it to be bread. You do not give it him, but you take him by the hand and lead him home, where there is bread in plenty. The child is hungry, and as you lead him on he is not only hungry, but grieved and sad. “My father,” he says, “whom I have been taught to love and trust, will not even grant me such a simple necessary as a loaf of bread to appease my hunger.” You do not give him the thing he prayed for, but are you not fully answering the child’s prayer? What he prayed for really was bread, and it is bread that you are about to give him; the cause of the child’s grief lies simply in his own childish mistake about the stone.

2. But Christ takes a further case, and not quite a parallel one. Your child, hungry again, comes to you as you wander through the meadow by the river, and asks you for a fish; and seeing a shining thing by yon which he takes to be a fish, he asks you for that, that he may get his hunger satisfied. Again you refuse him, and again he is grieved and perplexed at your refusal as you lead him to the well-spread table at home; but this time you have led your child not merely, as before, from a stone, which would simply have failed to satisfy him, but you have refused him a serpent, which would have poisoned him.

3. And now, Christ would say, these are just the kind of prayers which are constantly rising up from us to our Father in heaven, and the seeming want of answer to which awakens in us such constant doubt and murmuring and complaint.

(1) A stone may look very much like a loaf to a little child, and health or wealth may look very like peace of mind to us; but what if God knows better than we do?

(2) A serpent may look very like a fish to a child, and worldly prosperity in any form may look very much like well-being to us; but what if God knows that prosperity would be to us, net only like a hard stone to a hungry child, utterly unsatisfying and quite harmless, but like a venomous serpent that has a deadly sting? That is just what prosperity has been to many a man--it has poisoned his soul. And that, we may be very sure, is what prosperity would be to us, if God denied it to us.

4. We have been considering hitherto the denims of God to our prayers, for it is they assuredly which perplex us most. But does God merely answer our prayers by denying them? Is it His care merely to shield us from harm, without bestowing upon us any actual, positive good? Not so. “Every one that asketh receiveth.” Not only is the foolish request denied, but some real and bountiful blessing is actually bestowed. If you refuse the stone or the serpent to your child, still you do not leave him to starve. “If ye then … Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” “Yes,” you say, “the Holy Spirit; but look at our manifold daily needs as they throng together in our morning prayers; will this one gift of the Holy Spirit supply and satisfy all these?” Not all your desires, for you desire stones and serpents, which would break your teeth and poison your life; but all your needs the Holy Spirit can supply; and, more than that, in no other way, except through the Holy Spirit, can your needs be supplied in that bountiful way in which God delights to supply them--in the way, that is, which enriches your spiritual life at the same time, and by the same means as your natural life is enriched. (W. F. Herbert.)

The common articles of food on the shores of the Lake of Tiberius were fish, bread, and eggs. The poor look for nothing else to-day. (E. Stapler, D. D.)

A scorpion

This crab-like member of the articulata is very common in Palestine, where more than eight species are known. The most dangerous variety is the black rock-scorpion, as thick as a finger, and five or six inches long; others are yellow, brown, white, red, or striped and banded. During cold weather they lie dormant, but at the return of heat they crawl forth from beneath the stones under which they have lain hidden, or out of the crevices of walls and chinks of other kinds, and make their way, not only to the paths where men pass, but into houses, where they get below sleeping-mats, carpets, or clothes, or creep into shoes or slippers. They are carnivorous by nature, living on beetles, insects, and the like; but they sting whatever frightens or irritates them. Occasionally the sting causes death. (C. Geikie, D. D.)

The commanding object of prayer

I have been thankful a thousand times that God does not absolutely and unconditionally promise in His Holy Word, any temporal, worldly, sensible blessing in answer to prayer, but only the gift of the Holy Ghost. The order of His kingdom would have been subverted if He had. I know not if there would have been in that case any true prayer for the Holy Ghost at all. The one great, unconditioned, unqualified promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit is purely personal, individual. No absolute promise anywhere that a saint shall receive the Holy Ghost for others by asking, or that on his praying acceptably, it shall be given to other than the one that prays. “To them that ask Him.” (G. F.Magorm, D. D.)

God’s character viewed through man’s higher nature

Consider the use which is here made of human nature by our Saviour in the interpretation of God. By direct analogy our Master taught us to infer the nature of God. If ye, then, being evil, being selfish, imperfect, give good gifts to your children; if parental love, poor as it is, is not so poor but that it will give to the child what the child wants and asks for, within the limits of his own benefit; if ye, being low down in giving power, do these things; if it is simply impossible for a child to appeal to a father or a mother for necessary things without a response, and without the benefit, how much more shall your heavenly Father, &c. Jesus stands and says, “Your Father is ineffably more a Father than you.” Here, then, is our Master taking the great facts of human experience, and laying them as a part of the argument over against the Divine nature, and saying, “This which in you exists in miniature, in the imperfect condition, exists in God in transcendent measure, magnified, augmented, deepened, enriched, more fruitful and more powerful. If we have the products of the temperate zone out of our half developed affections, God is tropical, eternal summer. (H. W. Beecher.)

The Holy Spirit

In the Greek of the New Testament the word rendered “Spirit” is the word constantly employed to denote “wind”; and the idea which it suggests is that of an influence in the realm of souls corresponding to the wind in the material world--subtle, untraceable, yet everywhere felt, all-penetrating, all-powerful--with a diversity of operations, too; now a whispering breeze, then an air-torrent; now breathing in calm contemplation, then inspiring a might before which the powers of evil are scattered and broken. Do you ask in what this Spirit is? Ask rather in what it is not.

I. THERE IS A HOLY SPIRIT IN NATURE. Far be from us the theology which relegates creation to the mythical past. God as truly creates, as He created, the heavens and the earth.

II. GOD’S SPIRIT IS ALSO IN HIS PROVIDENCE, and in our whole experience of life.

III. THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD IS IN ALL THE PURE LIVES, GOOD EXAMPLES, AND BENEFICENT HUMAN INFLUENCES THAT ARE AROUND US.

IV. THE HOLY SPIRIT IS IN JESUS CHRIST. The old liturgical formula, “The Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father and the Son,” is not the “mere dogma of a creed, but the fundamental truth of the Christian life.

V. But this is not all. Between human beings presence is COMMUNION. Without word or act, influence, clearly felt and recognized, goes forth from one to the other, especially from the more powerful spirit of the two, if the weaker be confiding and loving, so that a revered and cherished presence is always felt to be a power. Thus must it be of necessity with the Divine presence, and so have all felt it who desire so to feel it.

VI. If this Divine influence, this Holy Spirit, be not a mere dogma, but a vital and present reality, IT BELONGS TO US TO SEEK IT, TO PREPARE FOR IT, TO WELCOME IT. (A. P. Peabody, D. D., LL. D.)

The gift of the Holy Spirit

I. THE GIFT. The Holy Spirit is the essence of all good things; He is the highest good. This is the first promise of the gift to the disciples.

II. THE GIVER. The heavenly Father is the Giver, and the one thing which I notice about Him is the great willingness with which our Lord says He gives this blessing.

III. THE RECEIVER OF THE SPIRIT.

1. Who may receive into his soul the Holy Spirit? A man may be imperfect and in some respects “evil,” and yet receive the Spirit. The disciples were “evil.” The Saviour says so here. Yet He encourages them to ask for and expect the Spirit. Put away the thought from your minds that you must wait until you are holy before you can get the Spirit. You never will be holy until you receive the Spirit.

2. How is He to be received! By simple asking. Let us say, “Lord, teach us how to pray,” and, having learned how to pray, we shall only need to ask for the Spirit, and He will be given us. (A. Scott.)

The Holy Spirit in relation to missionary work

Let us try to realize our dependence upon the Holy Spirit for every spiritual power essential to the accomplishment of our missionary work. Consider our dependence upon the Holy Ghost.

I. As THE SOURCE OF ALL SPIRITUAL ILLUMINATION.

II. AS THE IMMEDIATE SOURCE OF ALL HOLINESS.

III. AS THE SOURCE OF OUR SPIRITUAL UNITY.

IV. AS THE SOURCE OF SPIRITUAL JOY. And now there are three questions which I wish to put.

1. Are we filled with the Holy Ghost?

2. Is a new Pentecost possible to us?

3. How is the fulness of the Spirit to be obtained? (Griffith John.)

Simply to ask

I was told lately by a young man who had been in Scotland, that he came one day to a gate, when the gate-keeper’s little girl ran down and shut it, saying, “You have not to pay anything to pass; you have only to say, ‘Please allow me to go through.’” The young man did as he was directed, and simply repeated, “Please allow me to go through,” and the gate was immediately opened. The owner just wished to preserve the right of entrance; that was all. So, simply “ask, and it shall he given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (C. H.Spurgeon.)

Answered prayers

If in a whole generation tens of thousands of men are praying to God for the things which they need, and if the result of their prayers, in long periods, is to give them larger judgment, better balance, more of those qualities which go to make manhood, then these results are an answer to their prayers. It may not be an answer to individual prayer; it may not be a specific answer to prayer; but it is larger and better than that--it is an answer to prayer such as God sees to be best adapted to thewants of those who pray. I hold that his prayer is answered who rises into the presence of God in such a way that for the time being he feels that he is in the Divine presence. In other words, I think that the whole tone of a man’s moral sense and of his intellectual life will be altered by having stood consciously in the presence of Supreme Wisdom, Purity, Goodness, and Power. One day when I was with Mr. Hicks, the painter, I saw on his table some high-coloured stones, and I asked him what they were for. He said they were to keep his eye up to tone. He explained that when he was working in pigments, insensibly his sense of colour was lowered or weakened, and that by having a pure colour near him he brought it up again, just as the musician, by his test-fork, brings himself up to the right pitch. (H. W. Beecher.)

Our privilege to ask largely

There is not the slightest intimation that we can trespass by a too frequent application. It is a challenge to our faith. “Ask”; and it looks out upon the infinite. It is for our faith to extend it, and to apply it to what treasures of grace and goodness we please. Can we not see that large asking and large expectation on our part honour God? Suppose some friend of ours, whose wealth is known to be practically unlimited, should declare his readiness and willingness to supply all our wants; suppose he should put into our hand a book of “cheques,” all signed by his own hand, and the amounts left blank for us to fill up in need with such sums as will meet every possible exigency; and then suppose we go about half-starved, groaning with leanness and faintness, or only halfclothed, shivering in thin rags, and the shame of our nakedness bowing us down to the ground. How such a demonstration on our part would shame the truth and generosity of our friend! To ask largely of God (as Elisha asked of Elijah) will prepare us to receive a large blessing. It will control our working; it will shape our plans; it will honour God. (A. L. Stone.)

Prayer an unfailing refuge

When I am out of heart, I follow David’s example, and fly for refuge to prayer, and He furnishes me with a store of prayer. I am bound to acknowledge that I have always found that my prayers have been heard and answered. In almost every instance I have received what I asked for. Hence, I feel permitted to offer up my prayers for everything that concerns me. I am inclined to imagine that there are no little things with God. His hand is as manifest in the feathers of a butterfly’s wing, in the eye of an insect, in the folding and packing of a blossom, in the curious aqueducts by which a leaf is nourished, as in the creation of the world, and in the laws by which planets move. I understand literally the injunction--“In everything make your requests known unto God,” and I cannot but notice how amply these prayers have been met. (Fowell Buxton.)