In chapter 6, Jesus had been teaching that we don’t need to be anxious about the necessities of life, because God will provide them if we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.  In this passage in chapter 7, we see that God promises to answer His children’s prayers, and to give them their needs. 

1].                   JESUS ENCOURAGED US TO ASK FOR OUR NEEDS TO BE MET

In Matthew 7, Jesus encourages His followers of all ages to make requests of Him and promises that He will answer.  Notice in Mt 7:7, what Jesus says will happen, when we do what He says.  “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” What more encouragement could we get to pray? The verbs ask, seek, knock are present continuous tense. We need to keep on doing these things.

If it’s only a matter of (keeping on) asking God,  seeking His face,  and knocking at the door of heaven for our needs to be met, then why don’t we get more answers to prayer? 

Why Don’t We Get More Answers To Prayer

James in his epistle gives two reasons in i and ii. 

i. We don’t ask God in prayer for our needs to be met.

Jas 4:2  You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.

• We don’t humble ourselves to pray. It is often true as James puts it, that we do not have, because we do not ask. If we don’t bother to make the effort to pray, then it’s like closing the door to God’s provision. We may verbalise our needs to ourselves or to others, but we fail to bring them before God.  He can supply that which we cannot supply for ourselves. 

There may be many reasons why we don’t ask Him to provide our needs. 

• We may not see God as a loving Heavenly Father who delights to hear and to answer the prayers of His children. 
• We may have deep-seated resentment\anger towards God for what we feel He has allowed to happen to us in our lives.
• We may not feel very special to God, and because we don’t feel good about ourselves, we imagine God doesn’t think too highly of us either.  We may feel very unworthy. That sort of attitude needs God’s healing, and can be healed. 

 ii.       We ask from wrong motives. 

That’s what James wrote in James 4:3.  “When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”

That’s why I believe it’s right to ask God to heal us, not just for our sake, for our own personal benefit, but for His sake, that we might be the more able to serve Him in this world, with the time we have left to live for Him.  

If this life is a gift from Him, that these bodies of ours are not just ours, but His, then it’s right to expect that God will work for our benefit and to His greater glory by bringing the healing He knows we need.

iii. We pray but we don’t recognise the answer to our prayers.

We may have prayed expecting that God is going to answer in exactly the way we assume. But God knows our real needs, and He will be working to meet our needs in ways that He knows are most appropriate for us. That’s why St.Paul wrote that we had to be watchful as we pray. Col 4:2, “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.”  Watchful to see how He is going to bring His answer. His answer may be much deeper, much more beneficial than we might have imagined.  As we learn to pray with thankful hearts and with open eyes for the answer God is providing,  we will recognise His loving hand at work in our situations. 

God will answer our prayers in His way, in His time and through whom He wishes.

2.                    JESUS PROMISES TO ANSWER WITH GOOD THINGS. 

In Matthew 7, Jesus goes on to say that the answers to our prayers will be beneficial, and not harmful.  Many people don’t realise just how much God loves them as His children. In this passage He’s trying to get His disciples to understand just how motivated He is to answer prayer.  He makes the comparison between God as a Father, and earthly fathers, by saying that if earthly fathers are motivated to give good, beneficial things to their children, so is He.  But then He draws the contrast, if they who are imperfect give good gifts, then how much more will He who is the perfect Father, give good things to those who ask Him.  When the Heavenly Father gives, it is generous, not stingy; it is more than enough. 

• In Acts 3 a lame man, a beggar, asked for money, but God uses Peter and John to bring far more than he expected.  He was healed.
• Christians throughout the ages can testify to the fact that God sometimes surprises them with His answers to their prayers. They ask for mercy, and He gives them an abundance of love, acceptance and forgiveness. 
• Or like the prodigal son who repented of his former way of life in sin, and returned home, saying, “Father, treat me as a servant in your home,”  His father takes him back as a beloved son,  fully restored, fully forgiven.
• St Paul wrote, Eph 3:20,  “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us.”  Immeasurably more (far more abundantly). No matter what we can dare to ask in our greatest faith; no matter how much we might imagine God can do, He can do immeasurably more.” 

What’s the limit? You and I can never know.  It is immeasurably more than I can ever ask or ever imagine. 

 What are we meant to believe? The limited experience of people in their answers to prayer, or what God says in His word?

3.                    WE ALREADY HAVE IN CHRIST, WHAT WE ASK FOR IN HIS WILL.  (In the “Bank of Faith” in Heaven). 

The word  “ask’, used in Mat 7:7, and in the following verses, means humbly presenting our requests to the One who promises to hear them and Who longs to answer them.  

• Mt.18:19, Again if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”
• Mt.21:22. Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith. (Mk 11:24). 
• Jn 14:13,14. ” Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it”. 
• Jn 15:7,16. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you… 
• Jn 16:23-26  Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, He will give it to you in my name. Hitherto have you asked nothing in my name; ask and you will receive, that your joy may be full. 
• James 1:6  But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 
• 1 Jn 3:22, we receive. “and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.”
• 1 John 5:14-15 we have obtained. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15  And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” They are now ours in Him, to be released in His way and in His time.

An Encouragement From the Preface to Charles Spurgeon’s book, THE CHEQUEBOOK ON THE BANK OF FAITH.

“A PROMISE from God may very instructively be compared to a check payable to order. It is given to the believer with the view of bestowing upon him some good thing. It is not meant that he should read it over comfortably, and then have done with it. No, he is to treat the promise as a reality, as a man treats a check.

• He is to take the promise, and endorse it with his own name by personally receiving it as true. He is by faith to accept it as his own. 
• He sets to his seal that God is true, and true as to this particular word of promise. 
• He goes further, and believes that he has the blessing in having the sure promise of it and therefore he puts his name to it to testify to the receipt of the blessing.
• This done, he must believingly present the promise to the Lord, as a man presents a check at the counter of the Bank. 
• He must plead it by prayer, expecting to have it fulfilled. If he has come to Heaven’s bank at the right date, he will receive the promised amount at once. If the date should happen to be further on, he must patiently wait till its arrival; but meanwhile he may count the promise as money, for the Bank is sure to pay when the due time arrives.”

God has made great promises in His word. He can also fulfil them as we act upon them in faith and with the right motivation. That is, to live to His glory!

Blog No.499 posted on Sunday 17 September 2023