Thank you for joining me here for Day 23 of this series, blogging through "Storyteller", the new online Bible study from Sarah Koontz at livingbydesign.org.
Today we're going to read Luke 11: 5 - 13, the parable of Asking, Searching, and Knocking ... He also said to them: “Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I don’t have anything to offer him. Then he will answer from inside and say, ‘Don’t bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I have gone to bed. I can’t get up to give you anything.’
I tell you, even though he won’t get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his friend’s persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs."
“So I say to you, keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."
"What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
In the verses just prior to today’s passage of Scripture, Jesus taught His disciples how to pray.
Now, He teaches them that there will be times that their prayers will not be answered immediately, and they will have to persevere in prayer.
This parable is what many Bible scholars call "an implied “how much more parable". This means that Jesus uses the story to make an argument from a lesser thing or concept to a greater.
In this case, Jesus is showing his disciples how an "ordinary" friend would respond to a totally inconvenient request, and then saying how much more willing and able God is to respond to our requests!!
First, Christ teaches His disciples how to pray, and then He shares a story illustrating why they need to persevere in prayer. In biblical times, there was no way to “text” or “call” ahead to let a friend know you were arriving late at night. You just showed up and hoped for the best! A first-century host would be expected to welcome a guest regardless of the time or circumstances of their arrival. (Sarah Koontz)
Through this parable, Jesus wants to teach His disciples (and us) two lessons about prayer.
First, we must be constant in our praying. Jesus wants us to be persistent in our prayer, and to pray with passion and perseverance.
This part of the parable makes me think of my dear husband. Our house alarm can be tricky to turn on, so sometimes when I need to let the dogs in in the middle of the night, I need him to wake up and put the alarm back on. Problem is, the man is a deep sleeper!! He always "appears" to respond to my request (usually with a grunt), but I know that if only ask him once, he'll go right on sleeping and not press that pesky blue button for me. Experience has taught me that persistence is what's needed - it's generally the third or fourth asking - accompanied by a few gentle nudges - that get him to wake up enough to actually hear what I'm asking!
In this parable, Jesus tells a humorous story to teach that we should approach God with boldness as His friend, persisting until we obtain the answer we need.
The difference between Christ's parable and mine though, is that we don't need to persist in prayer because God is asleep on the job, or hard to get through to.
No! But the fact is, God doesn’t always answer our prayers according to our timetable. He knows when our faith has been sufficiently built up by learning to wait on Him and trust in His power and His resources, and not our own. He knows when our submission to His will and His timing is genuine. And that is often when the time is right for Him to grant our requests.
Secondly, Jesus uses this parable to teach His disciples (that’s us) that we must be confident in our praying. In verses 9-13 Jesus implies that we must have confidence first that God will, in fact, answer our prayers, and second that God will always answer our prayers in a manner that is best for us. But this raises a very important question: Will God answer any and all prayers in the way that we desire? Will He give us anything we ask of Him as long as we just keep on asking?
Keith Throop puts it like this: "God will, will, WILL answer our prayers! Of this we can be supremely confident! But, all prayer is to be focused ultimately upon the glory of God and the accomplishment of His will. And, even when we pray for our own needs, this should be with a view to the glory of God. This is the kind of praying Jesus has in mind when we come to the verses before us this morning."
The Book of James clearly teaches that we can be confident that we will always receive things such as wisdom, or to be more faithful in living for God, if we ask in prayer. But James also clearly says: "Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures." (James 4: 2 - 3) It takes incredible audacity and spiritual blindness to ask God to feed one's own selfish, sinful desires, and to dare to think He will answer those prayers "as though He is their great credit card in the sky" (Keith Throop). E. Stanley Jones wrote: "Prayer is surrender—surrender to the will of God and cooperation with that will."
Prayers surrendered to God's sovereign will, will be answered.
When we pray without ceasing and have confidence in God, we experience the goodness of God as we truly commune with Him, rather than "talking at Him". And when we continually ask, seek, and knock, we become participants in the purposes of God, yielding our lives and wills to Him, rather than mere "spectators", waitingwith our handsout only for what we can get.
What a gift we have as Christ's followers, to be able to freely yet reverently enter the presence of the King of Heaven with boldness and security, knowing that He will bless us with His fellowship and love!!
If you're following along with this study of Christ’s parables, please would you leave a comment below, and let me know what your "takeaways" from the Scriptures have been? I'd love to hear your thoughts!