Luke 11:9-10 And I say to you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.… We have here no mere surmise on our part as to what becomes of the prayers which we present; it is a distinct affirmation concerning them on the part of God Himself to whom we present them. There is something very definite and precise about these words; there is no explaining them away, or attaching to them any other meaning than the clearly obvious one, every one that asks does receive, and every one that seeks does find. Prayer, however, is necessarily a matter in which two are concerned; and, as such, we have only heard what God has to say on it. What have we ourselves to say on it? Can we, from our hearts, echo God's words, and testify from our own experience to their truth? Or, rather, is not the sad and perplexing experience of every praying man this: "How often have I asked and not received, sought without finding, and knocked without any door being opened to me!" How, then, shall we reconcile these two utterances — that of God, to whom we address our prayers, and that of our own experience, as we vainly wait for an answer to our prayers? We must remember that the words in verse 10 are God's utterance as to prayer, and not man's; and we must admit the likelihood that God from the position from which He views prayer, may have laws relating to it which perhaps must be hidden from us. We must remember that in verse 10 we are not told that they that ask shall see that they receive; that they that seek shall at once have evidence that they find; but simply that they do receive, they do find. Christ reveals this to us in order that, whatever our experience may be, we may know if we cannot see, that every one that seeks does find. He does not tell us that henceforth our experience shall no longer seem to be at variance with the great statement of the passage; it must often seem to be at variance with it, so long as we live on this earth. What Christ does is mercifully to explain to us how this seeming variance may in reality cover an actual and bountiful answer to our prayers. (W. F. Herbert.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. |
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