Ask, Seek, Knock: What Jesus Really Meant About Persistent Prayer

The power of prayer is not found in ritual, in a convention of practices, or in set words that pass for social norms. God wants us to drop everything else, forget the respectable, and come to Him, and beg Him to work. Sometimes God will say no to your prayer, but you
feel compelled to break all the rules and just beg Him to work anyway.

If you are a parent with a daughter traveling into danger or a son ill with cancer, you will do everything you can to help that child. You will try to protect her, pay the doctors and hospitals, beg everyone who might have an answer. You will knock on doors, ring doorbells, send emails, start telethons, pull stunts. You no longer care what anyone
thinks. You just want your child to live. You would die so she might live. That unreserved passion is what God wants from us. More than our money, more than our time, more than our efforts, more than even our words. He wants our hearts, our minds, our souls.

The Prayer That Refuses to Let Go

God wants you to come and knock on His door in prayer. Bang on the walls in worship. Rattle the windows of His temple and beg Him to love the one you love. God loves your child, your grandchild, your friend more than you ever could.

He wants your heart to turn to Him so that He will turn His blessings toward you. Sometimes those blessings are not exactly what we asked for, but God knows what we need better than we do ourselves.

James 5 says something similar. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect. The King James Version translates the last sentence even better: "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." There is power in the prayer of a person who is fervent in his or her persistence.

Do you have a need you would like God to address? Do you want to be more like God and less like fallen humanity? Is there a loved one about whom you are worried sick? Are you concerned for your own needs? Go to the altar. Get on your knees and beg God. Bring Him your petitions. Begin with God and end with God.

Cry out, "Lord, make Your name holy in my life. Bring Your kingdom into this world and start with me. O Father, change my son's life. O Son of God, heal my daughter's heart. O Holy Spirit, come and fill my mother with Your grace to bring her joy in the midst of her depression. Lord, forgive me my sins just as I forgive others. And please help me not even to be tempted to sin against Your holiness."

Keep praying to God. Keep blessing God. Keep begging God with shameless boldness to work until He blesses your prayers. Recognize God may bless you in a different way than you expect, but beg Him to bless you and your loved ones anyway. He wants to bless you, so, ask Him and watch Him bless. Then, after He blesses you and your beloved by answering you with His very presence, bless Him again.

What "Ask, Seek, Knock" Actually Means

Jesus says, "So I say to you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."

The tenses of the verbs in the first part of this passage are all in the present tense, rather than the aorist. What does that mean? The aorist indicates a one-time act, while the present tense indicates an ongoing reality. This means ask, seek, and knock are not to be understood as ask once and knock once. It is not, "Lord, I gave You the prayer, I'm done." The idea is, keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking.

Prayer is marked by a continual present action. When a time-bound person encounters the eternal God, time itself becomes inhabited by the eternal present. The limits of history enter communion with limitless reality. You literally stop being merely a creature bound by time and become a creature communing with the One who is above, beyond, before, and after time in history.

Why You Will Not Want to Leave His Presence

When I am in communion with God, studying or hearing His word, worshiping or praying to Him, I often forget where I am, and sometimes even a sense of who I am. Why? Because I am in the presence of the Blessed One, my Creator, my Redeemer, my King. And I never want to leave. God's presence means everything to the believer enraptured by His glory.

As a child, I found peace through trauma in the presence of my God in worship. I used to pray, "Lord, make me a doorkeeper or a janitor or anything in Your church. I'll clean the toilets as long as I can be near You."

God, who is our Father, wants to be near us too.

The Father Who Wants to Bless You

When our five children lived at home, and we found ourselves overwhelmed by their needs and our limited resources, there were times I wished the children would just sleep. I see some parents and
grandparents who know exactly what I'm talking about. I just wanted some peace and quiet.

But as they grew older and began moving out, I found myself increasingly regretting the fact that now they were gone. By the time our third child went to college at Oklahoma Baptist University, I was in utter tears.

Now there is no greater joy than being a father who can give to their needs and to the needs of their children. I find myself calling or texting them: "Mom and I want to come over and care for your children this afternoon so you can rest. Let me buy you dinner tonight so you'll be blessed and not worry about your resources. Mom and I are going to do this for you, or that."

Why do we do that? Because a loving parent wants to bless his or her children.

Jesus knew this. So, He turned the conversation toward the example of earthly parents and their children, setting up a comparison, and an elevated one at that. When a child is hungry and asks for food, will a parent give him something that will hurt him? No. If that baby wants some strawberries, I give her strawberries, not scorpions. Her stomach hurts because she is growing, and that's why she cries. She wants food, so I bless her with good food. I slice her boiled egg into small pieces. I tear the bread into bits. I spoon out the yogurt.

Similarly, Jesus says, God wants to bless us, His children. Then He drops in a reminder of how much greater God is than we are: "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give to you?"

The comparison hurts, doesn't it? God is infinitely superior in His goodness. We are so limited by our sinfulness. If sinful parents want to bless their hungry children, how much more does the good and loving and blessed God want to give to us, His children?

How to Pray Like You Need Him

He does want to bless. Sometimes we don't know what we need, but He knows, and He wants to bless us. The goodness of God and the desire of God is to bless us more than we want to be blessed ourselves.

He is so good. God is better than any earthly mother or father. God blesses us the most when we find ourselves in constant dependence upon Him, looking to Him just like a baby looks to her mother from the high chair.

"Bless me, Father, bless me, please. I'm so dependent on You. I need You, God. I need You more than I need anything in this world. I need You more than this world. I care about nothing but You, God. In Your presence, feed me continually with the blessing of Your presence. O blessed God, more than food or clothing or shelter, I need You. I need You personally."

Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking. The Father on the other side of the door wants to bless you more than you know how to want it.