Ask, Seek, Knock

Matthew 7:7, 8  “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; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

 In Matthew Jesus gives us an incredible invitation to come to Him boldly and with a promised response! If we ask, it will be given. If we seek, we will find. If we knock, the door will open!

So are we doing these things? Are we bringing our faith prayers to God believing that He will answer and come through?

Yesterday I took one of our young people out to teach them the importance of actively seeking God. We went up the Port Hills and stood at the base of one of the peaks. The question was “What are you prepared to do to do to get into the presence of God? Are we asking, seeking and knocking?”  After all, didn’t Moses climb Mount Sinai while he was in his 80’s so that he could get into the presence of God? And he climbed that mountain several times! We can now come boldly into the presence of God because of what Jesus did, and not because of our own good deeds - we don’t need to earn our way into His presence but this illustrates how we are to be hungry, passionate and deliberate in seeking after God.

We then climbed to the top of the hill and as I walked away for 30mins to allow this young man to spend time alone with God, I meditated on this passage.

Ask – What are you trusting God for? We can think about what we would like and we can even talk about what we are believing God for but do we actually ask? James 4:2b says ‘You do not have because you do not ask God’ so we must actually ask Him! Sometimes we don’t ask because we think we always need to be super spiritual in our requests. Of course we don’t want to get into ‘gimme’ prayers where we treat God like our own personal genie, but we also need to remember that our God is not a stingy God. So let’s ask for greater spiritual depth and all those important things but also the other things you are trusting for too, because you are important to God.

Seek – What an incredible part of scripture this is. The creator of the universe is saying to you that if you seek Him then you will find Him! This means that He is not going to play hide and seek with you. If you actively seek Him He will meet you there. How amazing is this?! James puts it this way ‘Draw near to God and He will draw near to you’. Make time for God and seek Him. Never let yourself be too busy for God because he is never too busy for you!

Knock – Sometimes we can come to doors in our lives that seem shut so tight and there is no way through. Well God has the ability to open doors that no one else can open, and shut doors that no one else can shut. So as you seek the one who opens and closes remember that when you knock on God’s door He promises to open it and allow you in.

Keep asking, seeking and Knocking – Greek present imperatives are used here in the original language which makes it slightly difficult to translate into English. (What on earth are you talking about?!) What this basically means is that we can sometimes lose a little bit of understanding in translation. This passage could be better understood by saying ‘Asking and it will be given to you; seeking and you will find; knocking and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who keeps asking receives; the one who keeps seeking finds; and to the one who keeps knocking, the door will be opened.” The emphasis here is to be persistent in your asking, seeking and knocking.

God wants to meet with you  so put time aside to ask Him for what is on your heart, seek Him with everything that is within you and knock until the door opens.