“Ask, and It Will Be Given” – Matthew 7:7–11
And as you're taking your seats, please open your Bibles to Matthew, chapter seven. We'll be looking at Matthew seven versus seven through eleven. If you're using a Pew Bible, this is on page 812 of the Pew Bibles. And let's pray as we prepare to open God's word together. Heavenly Father, we pray that as we open your word, you would give us Grace to hear your word. That you would give us grace by your Holy Spirit, that these words would not fall dead on our ears, but that you would give us eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to understand the good news of the Gospel of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and the love that you, our Heavenly Father, have for us in Christ. It's in Christ Name we pray. And then. You know the word of the Lord from Matthew chapter seven versus seven through eleven:
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
As I think about my own childhood and now being the father of several young children, as I think about those children, one aspect of childhood that strikes me often is that children can often be some of the absolute most generous people that you will ever meet. And at the same time, the same children can also be some of the selfish, most selfish people that you can ever mean. Not just my children. I'm talking about me when I was a child. I'm talking about probably you when you were a child. All children everywhere. It's this incredible dynamic of of extreme generosity and extreme selfishness. You think about a child's generosity. There is no one so generous as a child. Children don't have much, but they delight to share the little that they have with other people. When you think of a child sucking on a cheap little lollipop, a dum dum or something like that. A child loves to just take that slobbery thing out of his mouth and and offer you a lick. Would you like a lick of this lollipop? Well, maybe not. Or my children come to me and say, Daddy, daddy, Momma, let me play in the kitchen and I've made something truly revolting. Would you like to try some of it? Thank you. Hmm. I have to think about that. But at the same time, children can often be incredibly selfish.
There are times when you watch children, and the only reason they want something is not because they want it, but because someone else wants it. And it doesn't matter how worthless the item is. We could be talking about a cheap toy, could be talking about a non-functional broken toy, a stick that has recently fallen off a tree in the backyard. A really doesn't matter. This is the pearl of great price. This is worth life itself to defend. And they will do whatever if they realize that their sibling wants it or that a friend wants it. Absolute generosity. Absolute selfishness. And again, as I think about the way my heart was that that way and I think about the ways that I still in that way, I think all of this shapes the way that we interact with other people, especially when it comes to asking other people for something that we need. Very often these experiences have shaped the way we think, so that without doing too much mental deliberation or too much thinking about it, we automatically assume that either people will not have anything that is worth asking for, or that if they do have something worth asking for, they probably aren't willing to give it to us. They are unable or unwilling to give us what we need. So, for example, my parents would do absolutely anything for me, would give me absolutely anything if I asked, and I would do the same thing for them.
But on both sides of that relationship, the resources are somewhat limited. If there was truly a gargantuan need, I would not ask my parents because they don't have unlimited resources. The willingness is there, but not unlimited resources. On the other hand, someone like Warren Buffett, practically speaking, absolutely unlimited resources. But I would never think about asking him, even if I had a gargantuan need, that he could meet without batting an eye. I wouldn't ask him because he doesn't know who I am. He doesn't care about me. He would not be willing to meet those needs if I came and knocked on the door of his house to ask. Again, childhood. All of our life experiences, all of these sort of mingle together, then ultimately to shape the way that we think about God. At the end of the day when we think about God. We often don't even get so far as asking God to meet our needs, because even if we didn't say this out loud, even if we don't always consciously realize that we're doing it, ultimately we approach God with an attitude where we believe that either He will be unable to meet our needs or unwilling to meet our needs. And so when the time comes and we have a need, we don't even think to ask because either he's unwilling or incapable or incapable of doing it and we just go somewhere else and try to meet our needs for ourselves.
In this passage, Jesus is teaching us to pray. Now He's not teaching us the words to pray like he did in the Lord's Prayer. He's not teaching us about how to pray like he did in the passage that immediately surrounded the Lord's Prayer. In the previous chapter, He's not giving us techniques to pray. You know, if you just pull the right prayer level or levers at the right time, you'll get what you want. He's addressing the fundamental underlying attitudes of our hearts that shape whether we will pray or not. And so our big idea as we look at this passage is that Jesus is teaching us this when we pray, God only gives us good gifts. When we pray, God only gives us good gifts. Three parts as we look at this passage.
- God gives good gifts.
- God does not give evil gifts.
- God only gives good gifts.
Again, a big idea when we pray, God only gives us good gifts. So let's start at the beginning.
God gives good gifts
Jesus is sort of building a logical progression here. In the first two verses, He lays out this first point that God gives good gifts. Now, before we look at versus seven and eight, again, I want to situate where we are within the Sermon on the Mount.
Again, Jesus is, if we remember all the way back to the beginning of Matthew chapter five. Remember, Jesus has gone up on top of a mountain and he is teaching on top of this mountain. That's why this is called the Sermon on the Mount. And Jesus been teaching for a while. But I want to go back to Matthew chapter six, starting in verse 19 through 24. When we talked about that a few weeks ago, we talked about how Jesus was teaching us to stop treasuring earthly treasures and instead to start treasuring heavenly treasures. Then in the next passage, Jesus said, Don't be anxious. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. How do you stop treasuring earthly treasures? Will you stop being anxious about those earthly treasures as you seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. But in the previous passage, what we looked at last week, Matthew seven versus one through six, Jesus seemed in some ways to shift his emphasis. Treasure, earth, heavenly or treasure, earthly treasures. Don't be anxious. First, the Kingdom of God and then Jesus said, Judge, not that you be not judged. Now, some people see a big break there in Jesus themes, but as Jesus was talking about the difference between a legal mindset and a gospel mindset, as we talked about last week, what he was really doing and one commentator points out the connection here really well.
What Jesus was really doing is showing us that the primary hindrance, the primary thing that keeps us from seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness is that so often we are dealing with the world and especially dealing with an interaction of God in a way that is judgmental and legal, fundamentally legal. We think we will get from God if we deserve it from God, if we earn from God. And so Jesus is teaching us the antidote to this, the antidote to a legal mindset that believes that I will get what I earn and therefore I better earn it. And if I haven't earned it, I better spin my life to show you that really what you thought was unrighteousness on my part. You were mistaken about it. And I'm actually a very good person. Jesus is now showing us the gospel mindset lived out through prayer. That looks to God as our Heavenly Father, not because we deserve Him to be so, but because He is gracious and kind and has given us His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who brings us in as adopted children to the family of God. So Jesus says here the antidote to all of this, the gospel mindset, can be summarized in this progression of prayer. And then seek and then knock, asking to be given to you seek and you will find knock and it will be opened to you. Now, there's a real progression to this.
William Hendrickson says in his commentary that, well, first you have this asking and then you have seeking. Seeking is asking, plus acting. You're not just asking. You're going out to to seek it. So you're acting in some way. And then knocking is asking, plus acting plus persevering. Think about someone banging on the doors of heaven. Knock, knock, knock. Trying to get what they need there. That persistent widow there, the neighbor who is bothering you asking for something. Knock, knock, knock. Even if you're in bed, you're going to get up to stop this annoying neighbor who's going to help you. Jesus tells us in a parable elsewhere, Jesus says, We need to ask, we need to seek, we need to knock. Now, what's remarkable about Jesus words here? Is that he essentially puts no limits on what we may ask for. Do you notice that this is an open statement that Jesus says, Ask it will be given to you. Seek you will find Mark. It will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. That to be sure, the rest of the Bible and even Jesus as he moves to this passage, is going to show us that there are limitations. And this is not a health and wealth, prosperity, gospel. This is not name it and then claim it that if I just ask for God for the car of my dreams or the the job of my dreams, or the money of my dreams, of the house, of my dreams, whatever it is, if I just ask God, I'm going to get it.
I just have to speak it into existence. That's not what Jesus is talking about here. There are limitations and we're going to see the way these limitations are worked out as we work through this passage. But understand, that's not what Jesus intends to bring up right here. Jesus doesn't want to teach us this and then immediately move into the qualifications. Well, but it doesn't mean this and doesn't mean that It doesn't mean this. What Jesus is getting at is something that we need to hear, that God does hear our prayers, that God does answer our prayers even when we feel like He is not listening, even when he feels like he is not responding. As Jesus said back in Matthew six, verse 32, our Heavenly Father knows our needs before we ask him. But he instructs us. He teaches us. He calls us. Invites us to pray for those needs. Why is that? Why doesn't God just sort of sort of establish this sort of subscription subscription delivery system where everything we need just sort of shows up at just the right time in our lives, in our front doorstep? Why should we then pray? In large part, it's so that we may come to know the love that our Heavenly Father has for us to lay hold of the love that our Heavenly Father has for us, not just in our minds in theory, but experientially in the deepest recesses of our souls.
Through prayer, through answered prayer. You probably have noticed that outside, though. We're we're coming into what I believe is the best part of the year weather wise. October is my absolute favorite year of the month. And one of the parts that I like about October, certainly not all of them, is the knowledge that as the weather is sort of stair stepping down as it's cooling down. One of the things that that means blessedly is that road construction season is nearly over. You can only do road construction when there's a lot of warm weather. And you know how this goes, right? You have sort of the favorite path, the favorite route that you take. Often that involves some sort of highway or maybe just a street where there's two lanes or maybe three lanes. Well, sometimes that will get shut down from 3 to 2 or 2 to 1 or maybe 3 to 1. And that creates this incredible bottleneck. Right. The traffic that can flow so easily when everyone could sort of spread luxuriously out on those two or three lanes suddenly gets forced all together and everyone has to learn to take turns and to merge and to zipper merge and whatever you're supposed to do there, who knows? But the problem is that it bottlenecks your route to wherever it is you're going, and it takes so much longer and it's so inefficient and you find new routes because you can't stand to go through your beloved route when it is so bottlenecked.
This is how we view God. That He is the bottleneck to getting what we need. Oh, sure. We're probably willing to acknowledge there are cases where God answers our prayer. If you wait in that line long enough, you're going to get through. You just might have to double or triple your travel time. So why not just find another route altogether? We believe that God will be the bottleneck to meeting our needs, to giving us what we ask for, helping us to find what we seek, and to opening whatever it is that we are knocking. And Jesus is saying that, in fact. The bottleneck is us. As James writes in James four verse two, You do not have because you do not ask. And we have to be honest. He's got an on the nose. He's nailed it. Very often we have these perceptions of God that one way or another we just don't think that He will meet our needs. Either he is unwilling to meet our needs or he is incapable of meeting our needs. Either way, we are going to find an alternate route because it's way too slow. It's way too inefficient to get to our needs through God and prayer. So what Jesus will eventually say as we work through this passages, yes, there are limitations.
Yes, there are qualifications. Again, this isn't a health and wealth, prosperity, gospel, but what Jesus is saying here is not so much borne out of a concern that we might abuse prayer by asking too much. Jesus concern here is that we neglect prayer by appealing to God in prayer to little. If you think that God is a bottleneck on your desires, why don't you start by praying to Him a prayer of confession? For the sinful way that your heart is characterized. Your view of God. Whether you'd say it out loud, whether you'd even articulate it this way in your hearts, if you think about your actions and how often you appeal to God in prayer to ask Him for what you need. All of us fall short of this implicit dependence and trust upon God that Jesus holds before us here. Ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find. Knock. And it will be open to you. We just don't behave that way. And our prayer lives reflect that. What Jesus starts with is the statement that God gives good gifts. But we have to ask, well, does he always give good gifts? Sometimes anyone who's prayed knows that we don't immediately get what we ask for. This isn't one day shipping that drops from a drone in the sky onto our front doorstep. Does God ever ignore our prayers to give us even evil gifts instead?
God does not give evil gifts
Well in the next section versus nine and ten, Jesus goes on, God gives good gifts. But now he says that God does not give us evil gifts. And so he goes to an analogy, a rather absurd analogy. He says, Ah, which one of you? Verse nine, If a son asks him for bread, we'll give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a serpent. Now, the way this is translated here is a little weaker than the initial translation. It is indeed a question, sort of a statement, but there is a negative word in here. And the gating particle that Linsky, one of the commentators on this, translated this way. He will certainly not hand over a stone to his son. Right. He will certainly not give a scorpion instead of a serpent, would he? That's sort of a question. In other words, this is so absurd, I don't even have to ask the question. But you see what I'm saying? This wouldn't under any sense happen, would it? Well, why then, does Jesus speak so absurdly if this is indeed absurd? Which is? It is. The reason is because we think this way about God. Again, we might not say it. We might not even articulate it in our mind. But implicitly, we essentially worry that God isn't going to give us what we ask for. Not only that, but He might give us something evil.
We see some good aspect of God providing for us in our lives, and we don't look at that and say, That's evidence that my Heavenly Father loves me and I can continue to trust him and ask him for what we need. We look at that and say, Oh no, when's the other shoe going to drop? Look at God's good gifts and see that as a reason to distrust him. We're waiting for God to bring the hammer down to to sort of loosen that string, to drop the anvil on our head as though we're really coyote. We think that way about God. We worry that God doesn't care about us. Or maybe that he's that sort of masochistic, overly aggressive personal trainer, that it's no pain, no gain. And I'm going to take you through the pain to get to that game. That is not who we have in heaven. D.a. Carson says in this passage, he says what fundamentally is at stake is a person's picture of God. Whatever you imagine God to be, you will pray to him in accordance with that picture. If you believe that God is out to hurt you or that God is at least not willing to help you, you will pray to Him. From that perspective. But if you recognize what Jesus is saying here, that our father, who is in heaven, is both able and willing to help us. Then you're going to go to him in prayer. So one of the questions to ask is what am I most afraid of in prayer? Why don't I immediately appeal to prayer? Do I think God is incapable of meeting my needs? God.
Ultimately, there's something I have to handle about myself, and I go on to just sort of put my head down and deal with it. Or do you mistrust God's fatherly kindness toward you? God had been so wounded by at least other people in this world. And maybe I feel like you have wounded me in certain situations that have come up in the past. I'm not sure I can entrust this to you. But Jesus says, Think about it for a moment. If you have a father in heaven, what even your earthly fathers give you stone instead of bread or a serpent instead of fish. Well, God does give good gifts. God never gives evil gifts such a thing as absurd, even in human relationships. But still, we know that God doesn't give us everything we ask for when we ask for it. What then, can we really expect from God?
God only gives good gifts
And Jesus closes out. This line of thinking brings us all the way to his conclusion. Verse 11. The third point where he he's telling us that God only gives good gifts. God gives good gifts. God does not give evil gifts. And in fact, point number three, God only gives good gifts. And so Jesus says in verse 11, if you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him? What's so interesting about the Jesus point in verses nine through ten? Is that Jesus wasn't saying there when he was talking about the stone for bread and the serpent for a fish.
He wasn't saying that God is just like our earthly fathers. But God is just like the fathers who wouldn't give stones for bread or serpents for fish. It was actually saying that God is infinitely better than our earthly fathers. Whatever span of the range of of the goodness of earthly fathers you may have experienced, God is infinitely better than your earthly father. And so we would never expect an earthly father to do some of these things. How much more infinitely would we expect God to do? Far more above what we can think or imagine. We can always expect good God only gives good gifts, is what Jesus is saying here. But there's a key qualification if you if you tease out what Jesus is saying. So Jesus saying we will receive, we will be given when we ask, we will receive and find when we seek. We will have it open to us when we knock. But Jesus is saying so, so that we won't be given a stone for bread or a serpent for fish. But there is an exception here. What happens if we are the ones asking for the stone? What happens if we are the one asking for a serpent? And what Jesus is saying is that God would never give such evil gifts to His children when we ask for the wrong thing.
God will give us what is good instead. So there's an extraordinary promise here in verse seven ask and it will be given seek and you will find knocking. It will be open to you. And it's met with an extraordinary qualification. If you being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more does your Heavenly Father, your father, who is in heaven, know how to give you good gifts to those who ask him? Which means that just as much as earthly fathers wouldn't give an evil gift when a good gift was requested, God goes so much further and then he wouldn't give an evil gift when an evil gift is requested. But he only gives us good gifts. He protects us. He filters through our prayers with his infinite wisdom to give us not what we deserve, thank God in heaven to give us not even what we ask for, but to give us what is truly good for us. And he alone knows what is good. You know, I once worked for a man with whom I had a very close relationship of trust, and I was working in a startup company. It was a lot of fun because he gave me permission to dream without limits.
We were again early on and we could we didn't totally know what we were going to end up doing. And so he just gave me the opportunity, just dream and imagine the most outlandish goals for what our company could be doing. And I could go to him and I could ask him for the moon in terms of resources and time and support for some of these goals. And he would often say, yes, but here's the thing. He would always critically evaluate what I would say. He would listen. He would listen eagerly, supportively. But many times, just as he often said yes, he would often say no. But the relationship was so good there that I always knew that what he said. No, It's like, okay, well, I do need to probably be walked back from this. This would be a silly idea. And if really if I think about it, I can probably understand this. He has the good of the company at heart because I knew that he's so often said yes and that sometimes not always, but some of those things would work out really well as we were trying to build this, and it was really exciting. But even his wisdom was limited. Sometimes I would propose something ridiculous and he would say no. Other times I would propose something ridiculous and he would be persuaded and say yes, and it would still go in a bad direction.
But God is the one who has infinite wisdom. There is no lack to his wisdom. And what God says yes to and what God gives us instead of the things that we ask him for is always good. Now, understand, this does not mean. That everything that happens to us in our life is good. But the promise we have from elsewhere in Scripture, again, is its bounding together these extraordinary promises. And so ordinary qualifications is that everything works together for good, for those who love the Lord and who are called according to his purpose. That's Romans 828. Not that everything is good, but everything works together for good. So Jesus, as he's speaking to these underlying expectations of our heart, he wants us to question what is our trust of God? Do we trust him to ask what we need from here? Well, how do we apply this? Well, in some ways, the application is simple. We need to ask. We need to seek, we need to knock. But as we've done repeatedly, as we've studied the Sermon on the Mount, I want to point out how Jesus is unveiling his own role in all of this and what he teaches. He's again, he's never teaching directly. He's never sort of putting himself forward directly in what he teaches through the Sermon on the Mount. But he always is doing this indirectly throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is sort of teaching this absolute truth that sort of gives us the boundaries to all of God's will and purposes in this world.
It's sort of like if you if you've ever done a puzzle, it's like Jesus is laying out the corner pieces and the edge pieces to put together this puzzle. I'm terrible at puzzles. I don't do this, but I understand that to start, you have to do the edges right. You need to see where the boundaries are and then you can sort of work your way in the middle. Well, that's what Jesus is doing here. But what you have is a puzzle that you just have the outline of and you can't see what's in the middle of it. At the heart of this puzzle is Jesus Christ and what the rest of this gospel, the gospel of Matthew is going to reveal is how Jesus fits into this extraordinary promise about prayer. And where Jesus fits is that when we ask of our Heavenly Father, the very reason that God gives us what we ask of Him is because we have been united to Jesus through faith to become the members of His body, the limbs and organs of his body, so that when we ask for something. It's God giving it to his son. We're part of the Body of Christ in such a tight union and communion, such an inseparable union and communion with Him that we are Christ, but we are so united to Him that God treats us as though we were His son, his beloved son, in whom we are well pleased.
God answers our prayers for the sake of Jesus. This is why we pray in Christ's name. God doesn't give us these gifts in isolation, and He certainly doesn't give it on the basis of any legal merits by which we have earned something from him. God gives these gifts to his children, who is in his only who are in his only begotten son by grace, as we are united to Christ through faith. Do you know Jesus? Do you believe in him? Do you trust in him? Have you been united to Christ by faith? Understand the missing link between the Father who is in heaven, who graciously loves his children, and who is able to do far more abundantly than we could ask or think? The missing link between you and your father is the Son. Jesus Christ, who is speaking to us through his word in this passage right here. Do you know him? Do you trust him? Is your view of the fatherly heart and compassion of God shaped by the fact that the same Jesus came into this world to secure these blessings for you by doing nothing less than giving up his own life and suffering for you to die on the cross. Do you know Jesus? Are you trusting him today? If not, believe in him. Turn from your sins and look to Christ in faith and you will be saved.
You will be transformed. You will be united to the Jesus who speaks. The Jesus on the Father is pleased to grant all things in heaven on earth. Seek first the Kingdom of God, seek first the King, Jesus Christ and His righteousness and all these things that you need will be added to you. If you do know Jesus this morning, the application for you is to take him at his word. We should pray much more. We should ask for much more. We should seek far more diligently. We should knock for more persevering only. Why not? Because we are treating God as a vending machine in heaven that you just shake him enough for the gifts that you want are going to knock loose and you're finally going to get it. That's not what we're talking about here. We pray to know him, to relate to him, and to know him in his character and his love. Why don't we come to God more in prayer? Because we honestly, in the bottom of our hearts, from the depths of our souls sinfully believe that it won't accomplish anything that God is either unwilling or incapable of meeting our needs. And we need to repent from that in prayer and then ask of what we need from God in prayer. This is the cure to our unbelief. Ask him. Seek from him. Knock at his doors. The doors of heaven. And as Calvin says, what happens in prayer is that in prayer, we come to submit our desires to the will of God in order that He may give us nothing more than what he knows to be advantageous.
I've used this quotation before. I'm not even sure who said it, but prayer is not the bending down of God's will to us. It's not that we are beating up the doors of heaven, asking God to finally see what is truly good that apparently he's blind to or has lost track of or sight of. Prayer is not bending God's will down to hours prayers. When God lifts our wheel up to His ears in prayer, we give voice to our desires and the Holy Spirit, working through the Word of God begins to convict us and to clarify. No, that wouldn't be good. Remember what the word promise is that, though? That seems like it would be good. It will not ultimately be good. In prayer, we make our requests known. And the Holy Spirit, again, is to bring Scripture to mind, to give us wisdom. We see this in Jesus's posture lived out when he says, Father, if there's any way take this cup from me yet, not my will, but yours be done. That's a model for us. The Holy Spirit leads us to understand that that's the exemplification of wisdom and prayer and prayer. The Holy Spirit teaches us to pray by the Word has. God doesn't limit that. We can ask, but God limits what we can ask as we are increasingly conformed to God's will and wisdom through the Word applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
Trading is something like being a rock and a rock tumbler. You know, a rock tumbler is you have these rough, unformed gemstones and you put them in a rock tumbler and you start off and you apparently have never used one of these, but you have like a high grit external and you tumble them around as they're banging against the other rocks in that tumbler and as they're banging against the gritty surface. It shaves off a layer and we go to God once and we beat on the doors of heaven and we ask him, God begins to take a gritty layer where he exposes our motivations and exposes our selfish desires. It's not just children. It's still me. It's still you who are selfish. When we come to God in prayer and He begins to expose that to us, and then we come back to prayer. And maybe now it's not a heavy grip. Maybe it's a medium sort of grit. Now we're seeking, though, in a finer way, and we come to God again and God begins to tear us down and to teach us His infinite eternal councils, where God is working all things together for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purposes. And then we go back to prayer. And it's no longer this medium grit.
It's a fine grit. Now we're knocking on the door of heaven and God is shaping us and refining us again. Not we're making the last prayer and a sequence of prayers that we have to make for God to hit the number before He will give us what he wants as though this were a legal transaction. But for God to finish this process of molding our hearts, we're bouncing our hearts off of God. And as he bounces them back to us, each time he's shaping and refining us in through prayer. So practically speaking, this means that we should pray without a filter. Again, the thing about children and I understand we get this again as we age, we don't have a filter or we lose the filter we have. We just blurt out whatever's on our mind. And that's a terrifying thing to go out with a child in public and you don't know what that child is going to say and they don't have a filter. That's how we should pray as uninhibited children with our Father who is in heaven. Do you have people that you can speak to without a filter? People you can go to and just share your hearts with? God? It should be far more so because he knows what's in your heart. He knows what you need. You can lay it all before him. Don't self-censor. But as you pray, you know, when you speak to these friends and sometimes just hearing your own words, you realize this isn't why he's according to the Bible.
Or sometimes these trusted friends can tell you what you need to hear. You're right. You're right. I'm looking at that wrongly. When we pray without a filter and we let God by his word and wisdom, guide us in our prayers, he begins to shape us and transform us. God has resources, infinite resources to do far more abundantly than we can ask or think. And he is our loving Heavenly Father, who only gives us good gifts. Let us ask let us seek that his knock that it may be given to us, that we may find it, and that it may be opened to us in accordance with God's will, in the name of Jesus Christ. Let's now pray, Heavenly Father, We pray that you would give us Christ, that you would teach us to love Jesus, your Son, that we would, by His love, know your fatherly love and care and compassion for us. Father, We ask all of this because we don't have enough faith. We pray that you would teach us to pray by your Holy Spirit, Speaking in us, praying in us, groaning in us in prayers to deep for words to lead us to be reoriented to you and toward your goodness and your compassion to your children. Teach us to trust you so that we might ask, seek and knock for what we need. We pray this in Christ name. Amen.