Ask, Seek, Knock

 Not everything that we desire is ours at the start.   Many of us, when we look at the things we have in our lives see that there are some things missing.  In some cases, these are unavoidable needs that a human being on earth cannot live without – food, water, shelter, clothing.  In other circumstances, these are deep unfilled desires and passions that God has put inside of us that cry out to us from our inner man, longing to be attained.



Jesus is no stranger to our unfulfilled needs and desires.  As long as we have given ourselves fully to serving Him and have died to all things selfish and have made it our only objective to live for His pleasure, then its safe to say that the cravings of our hearts were likely put there by Him.

I know personally that I often go to sleep with my imagination running wild, picturing tons of American youth with uplifted arms caught up in Heavenly ecstasies singing chorus’ of praise to Jesus – my desire for awakening in America is almost cellular.  Its as much a part of me as my awkwardly pointy elbows or the birthmark near the bottom of my chin.  It defines a big part of who I am.

Hannah, the wife of Elkanah ,was a woman defined by desire.  She was so stricken by her longing to have a son, that it consumed her appearance and made her to seem drunk in the eyes of Eli the priest.  Yet, when man saw a drunk, God saw a woman who refused to let her unfulfilled passions to drag her into an abyss of depression, but whole heartedly flung herself upon the mercy and grace of God.

When you give yourself fully to God you’ll start to notice things growing on the inside of you.  Passions that you can’t fully communicate.  Desire that you can’t pin down with words.  Yet they remain in you.  Giving shape to your day-dreams and secretly with you as you make your choices.  You’ll find yourself like Hannah, with a spiritual cry that comes from such a deep place that to go after anything else would be an utter…..waste……of……time.

It is to saints of this condition that Jesus addresses His famous words on prayer in Luke 11:1-13.  In this passage we see Jesus disclosing that there is a Father in Heaven who sees the very thing that He has planted inside, and He unlocks the secret of how to see if fulfilled.

Ask and it will be given to you

The picture that Jesus draws is one of relational persistence.  Where we look at the things that God has put inside of us and bring them to Him.  This is the battle of prayer and faith.  We have a conversation with God, saying “God I want revival”, “God, I want to start this business” or “God, I want to raise my family right”.  But the dialogue doesn’t end there.  Eventually God will speak to us and implant within us a promise that ignites faith.  And while our journey may be one that ebbs and flows from great expectation to near minimal I’m-not-sure-whats-going-to-come-from-this-but-I’m-still-showing-up-because-I-want-to-believe; either way we walk through our lives leaning into God’s grace to create in us an expectation of Him fulfilling the desires He put in us.

Seek and you will find

The image on this one is that of Luke Skywalker going to visit Yoda – seeking the secrets of the universe.  To seek for something, implies looking for the know-how, or trying to understand the practical's of how it will be accomplished.  Here we would ask God as well as look for others who have gone before and already paved a path about what are some tools to actually see that business take off or what are some ways to reach unbelievers to get that revival started.

Knock and the door will be opened

The final idea is that of a person actually trying to do whatever it is that God has put in his heart.  Knock is an action verb.  The hand is touching the door, hoping that as we take our steps that God will put something into the works that will cause the door to respond to our action and open up.   This is when take the step of faith and try to practically apply the wisdom that we believe He gave us.  This is the Wright brothers actually deciding that they are going to get into the weird little automobile with wings that they have created and are going to see what happens when they push it to a certain speed.

Then after we have done these things we take the wisdom that we have learned from our previous successes as well as the understanding we gathered from our failures, bring it back to God and then repeat it again.  And while the world might see a man or woman who tried something, mostly failed but had a little bit of success – God sees someone who just spend all that time with Him and He cherishes it.

We might not always get instant microwaved fast-food results to all of our prayers, but if we persist with God in believing not only will what He put in us come to fruition, but we will have walked with Him during the entire process and will know Him more as a friend than we would have if He just gave it to us all at the snap of our fingers.

So keep on keeping on.  Never stop dreaming big with God.  Never stop learning and never be afraid to fail.