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Everything in blue is identical in the Greek text word for word. So these words are meant to be memorised word for word. They have a rhythm to them to make it easier to remember so it should not be hard but this is our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ making sure you have words of life. Have you got the message?

So lets look at the saying piece by piece.

First we have

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ⁸For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Jesus says more or less the same thing twice. That means it is important!

First he give three commands followed by a promise

"Ask and it will be given to you;

seek and you will find;

knock and the door will be opened to you.

Then he puts it another way this time as action and promise.

⁸For everyone who asks receives;

he who seeks finds;

and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

First he says do this and you will receive the promise and then he says those who do what he says receive the promise.

We have to connect with this saying by doing what Jesus commands. We have to take action. It is no good having a command if you do not do what Jesus says. So understanding the commands has no value unless you carry them out. So the challenge this morning is: Are you asking? Are you seeking? Are you knocking?

So let us look at these three in turn.

First you are commanded to ASK.

To help us unpick what this means lets turn to

James 2:2b-10 Page 1215

You do not have because you do not ask God. ³ When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

⁴ You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. ⁵ Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us? ⁶ But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says:

“God opposes the proud
but shows favour to the humble.”

⁷ Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. ⁹ Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

So the first reason that God does not answer is that we don’t ask! We have reasons for this. God is not interested in me, God is to be asked for the big things in life, not the day-to-day happenings, I am not sure whether God would approve, I am not sure I actually want God to be shown to intervene in my life… What’s your excuse? But they are excuses and we stop and put all sorts of caveats in this verse because somehow we think Jesus got it wrong. He simply said ASK! So ask.

Then we move on to when we ask and do not receive. God’s word is quite clear that the problem is not with God it is with us wanting what is not good for us. This is an area that we can tie ourselves up in because we often cannot see our motives. The Psalmist 139 had the right approach, he said

²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

What James points out is that selfish pleasure is a temptation that seeps into our prayer life all to easy. What I want is to be healthy, happy and wealthy enough to do what I want to do. But that is not the way, that is not a kingdom mindset, that is not the disciple’s path. Jesus did not ask for the stones to become bread and neither should you. Jesus did not ask for the easy life, he would never have come to earth in the first place, Jesus prayer life is full of the Father’s will, the disciples’ spiritual needs and glory of God.

So in James we learn that Ask and you will receive has to do with us turning away from the selfishness of this world to the presence of God in humility and in the cleansing that comes from Jesus.

. Secondly, you are commanded to SEEK.

OK, you put down your mobile. When do you think about it again? When you need it. When I was Assistant Head, I had a diary that contained every teacher and every pupil’s timetable and every other bit of information that might be needed in the day to day running of a school. If I lost it, it was a cause for a major panic. So colleagues would tell where they had seen it. Even when I hadn’t lost it! I needed it!

You Need Jesus! Not just on Sundays or first thing in the morning but all day every day. And when you loose contact, you need to seek him! I believe it is the key reason for our ineffectiveness. It is not that we do not have the opportunities or that we do not do the right things but that we do not seek the Lord. Listen to these words of comfort.

^{Jeremiah 29:11} For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴ I will be found by you,” declares the LORD,

You will seek me and you will find me if you seek me with all your heart.

So much of our lives are half-hearted tottering between dependence on God and being a 21^st Century citizen of this earth. We are more concerned with the words of the Prime Minister than we are of the King of Kings. We are more worried what our friends think of us than what Jesus thinks of us. God has plans for us good plans and once we know that we will seek him. And we need to seek him with all our heart. If that sounds familiar it should, we are commanded to love the Lord your God with all your heart. If we are to love him we will need to seek him. He is the fountain of life, the source of our energy, the place of peace.

Seek him and live!

Thirdly, you are commanded to KNOCK:

Knocking might suggest that you are shut out. So I want to correct some traditional church myths. The gates of heaven are open and it is not Peter we meet but Jesus!

.1. Heaven – an open door Revelation 3:8

So let us never think of heaven as sealed up and off-limits. For those who have received Jesus by faith, there is no cross-examination, no waiting around just a warm, forgiving vibrant Saviour waiting for you.

2. Jesus is knocking at the door of your heart

Revelation 3:2014-22

²⁰ Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

²¹ To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne. ²² Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

This is strange news to us. We think he is welcome but if you read the context, we are talking of a half-hearted, one foot in heaven , one foot in the world, trying to get the best of both worlds. And Jesus is knocking because you have not welcomed him if you think that this world has even comparable offers. He alone should be your joy because there is nothing outside of Christ that can satisfy the spiritual longing of our souls.

3. an open door for the gospel Colossians 4:3-4

³ And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. ⁴ Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.

4. Keep knocking until you get an answer.

The sense of knocking seems to me to be persistence. Knock once and walk away or do you wait, knock again, wait, knock again. If you know someone will answer, you do not walk off, you stay, you wait and you knock again. That is a call to keep on praying. God is listening to the unanswered prayer. Unless he has said “No!”, wait and pray again. Wait and pray again.

What Jesus says is that God will answer prayer:

⁸For everyone who asks receives;

he who seeks finds;

and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

⁹ “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Know that God is a God of grace, longing to bless his people. So often we are bogged down by unanswered prayer and we lose faith and enthusiasm for prayer. But look, you did not buy rubbish for your children at Christmas! -maybe not everything that your child asked for because either you could not afford it or you did not consider it good for them. So it is with God, in fact more so with God. His grace is as inexhaustible goldmine of goodness. He just longs for you to ask, seek and knock so that you can explore his promises, grow into the Kingdom. But I want to highlight one word in this passage, GOOD. God is not malicious, he will not give you what is not good for you. So if you are demanding wealth, health and happiness. Be warned, they may not be good for you.

So what is good for you? What should we be asking God for?

I want to give you a warning here.

If you ask for faith will God teach you about faith or give you opportunity to develop faith?

If you ask for love will God teach about love or give you opportunity to learn how to love?

If you ask for joy, don’t expect happiness because his joy runs deeper than that.

If you ask for peace, will he not put you in a storm where his peace can be demonstrated?

This is when we discover that maybe we would rather not have what is GOOD for us,

The disciples’ life is about learning on the job from experience not just from a book.

But I hope you have the courage to ask because if you do who knows what you may discover as you walk with him.

This is where Luke’s parallel passage is so helpful. This is probably Jesus speaking on another occasion but it makes clear that THE GOOD GIFT is the Holy Spirit. So we will end this service this morning calling on God to send his Holy Spirit.

In asking for the Holy Spirit we are asking that Christ will be formed in us. We are asking that we may bear the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

This year in Powerhouse we have changed the focus to explore not only our vision for mission, our responses to the love of God, but also asking seeking and knocking for the fruits of the Holy Spirit to grow in us. So this Thursday we focus on faith. And through the year we will focus on Faith. Peace, Hope, Joy, Love and an evening praying “Come Holy Spirit”. I hope you will be there because that is where today’s theoretical training will be turned into a practical experiment in discipleship.

I want to end highlighting again that God is longing to give Good Gifts to us, so Ask Seek and Knock

⁸For everyone who asks receives;

he who seeks finds;

and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

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