Matthew 7:7-11
7 "Ask, and it will be given
you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for
everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Is there anyone among you who,
if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? 10 Or if the child asks for a
fish, will give a snake? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good
gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good
things to those who ask him!
To be honest, I don’t remember how
old I was, but I know I must have been younger than twelve. And it must have
been summertime or one of those few seasons in my childhood when my older
half-brother Steve lived with my dad. And I know it was a weekend, because I
was there, with my half-brother Steve, at my dad’s house when my stepmom asked
us to come downstairs for a minute. So, Steve and I paused the game of Super
Mario Brothers we were playing, headed down the hall, and descended the handful
of stairs that led down into what was understood to be the living room. There
we sat on the couch, across from my dad in his old brown Lay-Z-Boy, flanked by
my stepmom on her (somewhat) matching pink recliner. I remember thinking my
dad’s eyes sure seemed red, and the parts of his face that weren’t covered by
beard seemed sort of swollen, puffy maybe. He looked down at a stained section
of the carpet and then lifted his head, looked at Steve and me and said, “Boys,
what do y’all want?”
I have to say I was caught a bit off
guard. My dad had never really asked us anything like that before. Steve,
however, was ready right away with his request: “I want a basketball goal.” It
was as if he had those words already loaded in the chamber of his mind, and
there I sat, dumfounded simply by the weight of the question. What did I want?
What does any boy at the age want? I was unsure of what my dad was getting at,
so I asked him, “What do you mean, ‘What do I want’?” I remember him looking right
at me—his eyes were definitely red, a little watery even—and saying in a voice
that almost seemed to crack, “I mean, what do you want? Is there something you
want me to give to you?” At that age I was unaware of what thoughts, feelings,
and emotions must have been swirling inside my dad’s mind. All I knew was that
he asked me what I wanted, and so I said the first thing that came to mind: “A
go kart. I want a go kart.”
A go kart? That was my answer? A
basketball goal is one thing; they’re everywhere, on the front of garages and
old barns, in people’s driveways. A basketball goal isn’t that outrageous, but
a go kart!? I couldn’t believe I had had the audacity to request such a gift,
but my dad seemed satisfied with a response either way, and Steve and I were
allowed to return to our game of Super Mario Brothers.
A few weekends later, Steve and I
were playing in the yard with our cousins, when my dad drove up in his company
truck. There in the bed of the truck, still mounted to an old utility pole, was
a bona fide basketball goal, complete with a rusted, bullet-hole-riddled
backboard. We dug a hole in the backyard, and Steve had his basketball goal. I
knew better than to ask for a go kart.
Then, a few weekends after that,
while we were playing what was supposed to be basketball in the backyard (Steve
never stopped to consider we didn’t have a decent basketball to play with on a
goal), my dad drove up in that same company truck. This time in the bed of that
truck was the rusted, black spray-painted frame of a small, one-seater go
kart…without an engine. My dad had come
through on his promise the best way he could. We never got a proper engine for
the go kart, just an old piece of rope and our gullible little cousin Timmy to
pull us around the yard or push us down the hill going to Grandma’s house. It
didn’t matter; my dad asked me what I wanted, and in the end, he came
through…well, close enough anyway.
I think if we are all honest with ourselves
there are times in our lives when we feel that same sense of confusion, that
same sense of being dumbstruck, when we are faced with having to tell God what
we really want. Yet it seems so clear in the text we read today, doesn’t it? Ask,
and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will
be opened for you. It is almost as if Jesus is saying to us, in this
transition in his Sermon on the Mount, that God is asking us, “What do y’all
want?” God—the Maker of Heaven and Earth, the One who owns cattle on a thousand
hills, the One whose power is so great that death cannot overcome him—this God
asks us, fallen, sinful, often irresponsible people, “What do you want?” How do
we even begin to answer? How do we even begin to ask…search…knock?
Some people find it quite easy to
ask God for things; it’s often their sole understanding of prayer. When they
bow their heads it is understood as the proper posture to petition possessions
from the Almighty. Others believe that the very definition of the Christian
faith centers on the idea that God gives us wealth if we simply ask for it (and
pay our 10% directly to the church coffers of course!). You know, when it comes
to those who look to the God of the universe as little more than some sort of
Sacred Santa Claus, I am reminded of words from that Baptist saint of the
previous century, Clarence Jordan: “[God] isn't a Heavenly Vending Machine
that is set in motion by a ten-cent prayer.”[1]
Yet there are still (and always will be) those who see God as just that—a
Heavenly Vending Machine, and often they will turn to these words as their
biblical evidence: For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and
for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. They say to us that
God is willing to give us anything we could possibly want if we just ask…in the
right way…with the right kind of faith.
But what about those times when God
doesn’t give us what we want? When we ask, but do not receive? When we search, but
find nothing? When we knock, and knock, and knock and nobody’s home? What about
those times when we are kneeling by the bed of our cancer-stricken loved ones,
praying in the fullness of our faith for God to take the disease away, only to
watch them get worse and eventually leave us? What about all those months we
pray for God’s direction, hoping to find a job, praying for a child, searching
for a word from God, yet we hear nothing? What about all those times when it
seems God closes a door and doesn’t even bother to crack a window? Do we take
those experiences and use them to justify a belief that Scripture is wrong,
that Jesus is lying to us here? Or do we take those experiences and somehow
deconstruct our own spirituality and say to ourselves that we just weren’t
praying hard enough? Before we are ready to rip these verses out of our Bibles
or chalk them up to prosperity proof texts, let’s listen again to Jesus’ words
in verses 9, 10, and 11: “Is there anyone among you who, if your
child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will
give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good
things to those who ask him!”
Now, let’s just for a
second, re-imagine Jesus’ words here and apply them perhaps more directly to
our context. Suppose Jesus said something like this: “Is there anyone among you
who, if your child asks for food, will give a bag full of Tootsie Rolls? Or if
the child asks for a toy, will give a semi-automatic handgun? If you then who
are evil (in relation to God), know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” You see, it isn’t always about
getting exactly what you ask for; it’s about receiving what God has for you,
which in the end is a good gift.
Think about it this way: let’s
suppose all your life you’ve wanted a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle Super Sport,
black with white racing stripes, black leather interior, and a 454 big block
with pop-up cowl induction, mated with a 4-speed manual transmission—it’s your
dream car. You’ve prayed for this car. You’ve saved for this car, and finally
the day comes when you can buy this car. On the way to the classic car dealer,
however, you pass several gas stations with signs advertising unleaded for well
over three dollars a gallon. You take count of how many trips you make in a
day, how many people are in your car pool, how many baseball games, dance
rehearsals, and church services you’ll have to drive to every week. Before
you’re even halfway to the dealership, you turn around and head back home.
Because, after all, the minivan doesn’t have that many miles on it, and it gets
pretty good gas mileage.
Or let’s suppose you and your spouse
have had your eye on the perfect house. It’s on a tree-lined street, with two
stories, a two-car garage, and a fully finished basement. The kitchen is fit
for a world class chef and all the appliances are brand new and your favorite
brands and colors. You’ve prayed for this house. You’ve saved for this house,
and finally the day comes when you can make an offer and put a down payment on
this house. As you leave your existing home, you begin to recall all the
memories you’ve had there; you hear your children playing in the yard, and you
realize they’ll need money for college and you’ll need money for those thin
times in your life. Perhaps you realize the best thing to do is find a more
sensible, suitable home to raise your family, because having a big house with
nothing to fill it is senseless.
You see, it isn’t that God doesn’t
give us what we want, though, if you read the text one more time, just a bit
closer, you’ll see that Jesus actually never says that. He simply 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.” Note that
he doesn’t say, “Ask and the thing you want will be given to you; search, and
the thing you hope to find, you’ll find; knock, and the door will be opened to
everything you wanted.” No, Jesus simply says when we ask, we’ll get an answer,
and when we search, we will find something, and when we knock, the door will be
opened for us to see inside and walk through. And I think that is where we
become most uncomfortable, for we know that God will answer us when we ask, and
we know God will lead us should we be searching, and we know God will open
doors should we knock. However, the good gifts that God gives us aren’t always
exactly what we have in mind, yet somehow, if we are faithful to ask and
faithful to follow through, we find that God never gives us the wrong answer—He never gives us bad gifts.
Frank Staggs in his commentary on
this passage says, “The need for consistent prayer is not because God is
reluctant to give but because we need to be conditioned to receive.”[2]
If God is able to give us all that we will ever need, and if He knows our needs
before we ask them, then why should we have to ask in the first place?
“[B]ecause we need to be conditioned to receive.” Perhaps all those times you
have turned your prayers to God—asking, searching, knocking—you have thought
that God was not listening, that He was not going to answer. Yet, if we stop to
consider Jesus’ words before us today, perhaps we may come to realize that God
is in fact answering our prayers, but the answer may not be the one we want.
Perhaps when we ask, search, and knock and it seems God won’t give us those
things we ask for, we begin to understand that perhaps those things were not
the best gifts God could give to us. Perhaps if we let go of our fear of what
God may have for us, if we let go of our hesitation to search for God’s will
and direction in our lives, if we are truly willing to ask, search, and knock,
perhaps then we will truly discover that God indeed is able to give
good things to those who ask him! Perhaps when we are willing to let go
of what we think is right, of what we think is best, when we realize that the
gifts we ask for pale in comparison to God’s good gifts for us, then we may
truly understand what it means to ask, search, and knock. Then may we
understand that the God of Creation is about giving good gifts to those who
ask. Then may we understand that the best gift has already been given, and all
we need to do is ask.
Let us pray…
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