When it seems that God isn’t responding, we’re urged to ask and keep on asking, search and keep on search, knock and keep on knocking.
“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Jesus encourages us to ask God for what we need, confident that God will indeed respond to our prayers. When it seems that God isn’t responding, we’re urged to ask and keep on asking, search and keep on search, knock and keep on knocking. Though it can be discouraging when God’s answer to our prayers isn’t what we had hoped for, we continue to pray on the basis of Jesus’s promise. When we pray, God will respond, doing what’s best for us even if it doesn’t seem that way.
In Luke 11, after giving his disciples a model prayer, Jesus has some more things to say about prayer. First, he encourages us to pray with “shameless audacity”. Then Jesus adds some additional reasons why we can pray with confidence in God’s response. He says, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened” (11:9-10).
This passage uses three verbs in the imperative mood: ask, search, and knock. All three of these verbs are in the present tense in Greek, which conveys the sense of ongoing action. We could accurately paraphrase the Greek by translating, “Ask and keep on asking, and it will be given to you; search, and keep on searching, and you will find; knock, and keep on knocking, and the door will be opened for you.” In other words, the form of these imperatives underscores what we learned in the previous section. Jesus teaches us to ask God for what we need in prayer and to keep on asking until we receive it. Preachers who advocate an “ask only once” view of prayer must have forgotten what Jesus teaches here.
In this section of Luke, Jesus reinforces the fact that God will indeed answer our prayers. In fact, his teaching appears at first glance to promise that we will always get from the Lord what we request of him. That’s one way to read “For everyone who asks receives” (11:10). Now, to be sure, Jesus is saying that God will answer our prayers. But he is not saying that God will always give us exactly what we want. When we ask something of the Lord, we will receive. Sometimes God will do precisely what we request. Often, however, God’s answer is not what we were expecting, or even what we wanted.
One might say that Luke 11:9-10 points to the problem of unanswered prayer. But the phrase “unanswered prayer” is not quite right. It would be more consistent with what Jesus teaches to say that this passage raises for us the challenge we face when God’s answers are not in line with our hopes. Sometimes when we ask for something in prayer, God says “No.” Many times, in my experience, God says “Yes and no” or “Not yet.” In times such as these, we can easily feel as if God is silent. We might even wonder if God is withholding his grace from us. We see this kind of questioning in Psalm 77:7-9: “Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love ceased forever? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?”
The presence of such a prayer in the Psalms gives us the freedom to say to the Lord exactly what’s in our minds and hearts, without holding back. There are times when it feels as if God has forgotten to be gracious. You might even be in one of those times right now. If your personal theology is built on Scripture, then you know that God has really not ceased to be gracious. But it sure can feel that way. In such times, you don’t have to constrain your prayers, making sure you dot every theological ‘i’ and cross every theological ‘t.’ Rather, you are invited to speak to the Lord freely, opening your heart to him without fear or hesitation.
Jesus will address the question of God’s goodness in the next verses of Luke 11. So far, he promises that if we pray, God will in fact answer. And, through Luke’s use of present imperative verbs, Jesus urges us to keep on praying no matter what. Even when it seems as if God isn’t answering us, in faith we ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking.
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