My grandson is outside, right now, having his own personal garage sale. I set up a table for him by the sidewalk, where he has placed a few random toys. He is shouting out to anyone who passes by. My motives are not entirely pure. He came home from school with, shall we say, a surplus of energy the first two days of the week, and I am exhausted. Not from doing anything, really; just from watching him. He is a whirling combination of nearly breaking things, pestering the dogs, making loud noises, and persistently asking inconvenient questions. The other day, he purchased $200 of Google play games, characters, etc. on an unsuspecting adult's account. Now, he is learning a little lesson in the value of money. The garage sale was his idea. Sometime very soon, he will learn that his mother was able to get the purchases nullified. And, no, it wasn't my account. He was a little discouraged, but then a neighbor gave him $2 for an action figure. Thanks, neighbor, for a few more minutes of peace.
If you have read this blog before, you know that I like to talk about my grandson, Ashton. It is easy to find illustrations about the love of God from your own relationships with the people you love; especially the little ones. Of course, most of the things that are important to us, or ought to be important to us, center around relationships. The idea that God is a trinity teaches us that relationship is the transcendent theme of the universe. OK, that might be a little heavy, and I can almost see your eyelids lowering, so maybe that is a topic for another time.
In Matthew 7, Jesus, said, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you.". I picture Ashton doing the asking, seeking, and knocking, because he is so persistent. His mother was that way. My youngest had a way of planting her wishes in you by the power of suggestion, and my oldest was too polite to ask for a lot of stuff. But Ashton was like his mother. There was always somewhere she wanted to go, something she wanted to have or try. The idea of the verbs in the verse is to keep on asking, seeking, and knocking. Jesus says that the person who keeps on asking, seeking, and knocking will be rewarded by receiving, finding, and having the door opened to them. To illustrate the truth of the promise, Jesus appeals to the nature of our relationship to our children. If we know how to give good gifts to our children, should we expect anything less from our Heavenly Father?
I am claiming this promise for some of my prayer requests. You know, occasionally, I have asked God for something, and He has given me an answer right away. Most of the time, I have to wait. I don't think this means to keep on repeating the same prayer to God every time. In fact, in the previous chapter, Jesus tells us not to be like the pagans, who use meaningless repetition. I think it has more to do with steadying your own faith. If we have asked God for something, we can look forward to the answer by thanking Him. We can remind ourselves that God loves us and has heard our prayers. We can remind ourselves that He has promised to give us our requests, when we ask in faith. We can ask God to show us what to pray for. We can even ask God for the faith to believe. And, yes, we can make the request again, if it helps our faith. The key is our faith. Is it more an act of faith to leave our request at His feet, when anxiety would have us ask over and over? Or does it take more faith to persist when it would be easier to leave things the ways they are? Does it make sense to keep asking God for something he has already promised to give you? On the other hand, when Hannah asked God for a child, nobody had promised her anything. But she persisted until she received a promise, and God gave her Samuel.
There is a similar principle at work when we praise Him or worship Him in prayer or song. Does God not already know everything we are telling Him? Yes. It is for our benefit. I will freely admit that I am not able to fully explain what I believe to be supernatural communion between God and man. But, whether it is prayer or praise, it is our faith that completes the connection to God. Truly, it is believing that makes it so.