Luk 11:1-13 - Ask the Father, and He Will Answer You
“Come on, do it, ya little punk. Punch me. Go ahead, I can take it.” My step-dad wanted me to punch him in the gut. (I was a lanky young teenager at the time.) Now, normally, it’s a pretty bad idea to slug someone, but my dad wanted me to hit him. He had served many years in the Navy, and he was proud of his toughness. He wanted to demonstrate to me and, probably more importantly, to himself that he still had it, still was tough, still could take a shot and keep going.
Our Father in heaven has no need to show His toughness, to us or to Himself, but He does want us to see clearly something in His character that we otherwise wouldn’t. He wants to demonstrate His fatherly love and His desire to provide for us. Clearly He has no need to prove it to Himself. He does this to reassure us of His intentions and His unfailing ability. And so He says, “I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” In fact, He encourages us to be persistent, like a little child asking for something over and over and over. “Ask the Father, and He will answer you.”
Now why and how would He do this? You know how annoying it is when your child keeps on asking you for something. You know because you were once a child yourself and you did the same thing to annoy your parents into giving you what you wanted. God tells us to be like that child, to keep on asking, because He loves us as His own dear children, and He wants us to know this; He wants to demonstrate His love. He invites us to ask Him. Yes, even ask Him over and over, because He wants us to know that He always listens to our prayers, because He loves us. And yet, we also must understand that He desires to give us the very best, and sometimes that doesn’t exactly line up with what we expect.
Why should God need to demonstrate that He loves us as His own dear children? Don’t children automatically know and rely on the love of their parents? Don’t children assume that their parents will provide for them? They do, especially the littlest ones. But what about when a child has been disobedient? Do you think children assume that their parents will be eager to provide for them and love them, when they’ve been awful little brats or worse?
About a month ago, a five year old boy in East Orange, New Jersey, accidentally shot and killed his four year old brother. What must have been going through the young boy’s mind when he realized what he had done? I think it’s safe to say that he didn’t think his parents would love him.
When Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, in that moment, when they realized that they had disobeyed God, when they began to realize that their decision would bring death as a consequence, they must have felt the same way, and even worse. How could their Heavenly Father love them? They couldn’t imagine it. They had done the one thing in all Creation that God had commanded them not to do. They were filled with fear and hid. They did not think that God loved them. Why should He?
When God’s Law forces us to take stock of our situation and realize that we are sinful from birth and that we daily sin against God in our thoughts, words and deeds, then we feel the same fear; we hide from God, run away from Him. We certainly don’t go to Him and persistently ask Him for what we want.
Now, probably, you haven’t done anything so drastic as kill another. Perhaps you don’t feel much fear toward God. Maybe it’s just not all that big a deal to you. First, what a terrifying situation. The injured party is angry over sin and almighty, and you’re ignoring Him? And secondly, how insulting to God!
Perhaps you feel that God would never be so terribly angry with sin that He would condemn someone to the endless torments of hell. Some even go so far as to say that there is no such place. You want to tell God that? His Word is clear. “The soul that sins shall die.” Jesus said, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Why should God love us? We have sinned. We try so subtly to manipulate everyone around us that no one notices, but God knows what we are doing and that we are doing such things to advance what we want to see happen. We are ever so self-centered. Why should God love us when we have trouble seeing even into the dark depths of our own souls?
There is no reason in us that He should love us. There was no reason that He should have loved the disciples. He knew that they would soon all desert Him in fear. God knew their inmost thoughts. And yet because of something in Him, He loved them and He loves us as His own dear children. We see a very dim reflection of that sort of love in the love that parents have for their children even when their children are disobeying them or getting into trouble.
Despite their sins, despite the sin of Adam clinging to them, Jesus heard the disciples request and He listened and He answered. He taught them the most perfect prayer we have. (Now not all of it is recorded here for us. We know the rest from Matthew’s account.) And then Jesus encouraged them to be persistent in their prayers and to trust that God would hear them.
He would know. And He was the only one who could know. Up until the very moment that God forsook Jesus on the cross, the Father listened to every prayer of His Son and answered them. Jesus knew the goodness of the Father. And Jesus knew where He was headed. He knew that His perfect life, the sinless life of the Son of God, would take Him to that horrible cross. Love would compel Him to take upon Himself our sins and die with them blamed all on Him.
It could be no other way, for in no other way could God’s love for the fallen world be reconciled with His utter hatred of sin and everything touched by it. And Jesus knew that this plan of salvation would work and that He would arise on the third day to give life to God’s children. Believe it, fellow redeemed.
This is the Jesus who teaches His disciples to pray. And He is the one who tells us that God always listens to our prayer. But God does not listen to us because we “got it.” He listens to us for the sake of His Son. He listens to us because He is gracious and kind.
That’s why it was so significant that Christ was teaching the apostles to pray and that’s why it is so significant that Christ is teaching us how to pray. He knows the Father’s heart. He and the Father are one.
“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Notice that God’s answer to our prayers is more than we could ever imagine, because while in our minds we might be praying for this or that, the new creation of God, that which is born again not of flesh but of the Spirit, that part is asking continually that the Father and Son would send the Spirit to be with us, to dwell in us, to undo the curse of Adam and the death we deserve by our deeds. And the daily bread and other things we ask for, God does not forget, though He always knows what is better for us that we even know. That’s what He promises to be giving to us.
Now Jesus’ teachings don’t sound like the standard fare at the Christian book store. Prayer is not some religious form of self-help. It’s not pop psychology that’s merely meant to make you feel better. It’s not some formula for success in life. Jesus’ teaching here is not a practical, step-by-step guide to praying more powerfully.
What Jesus tells the disciples and us today doesn’t make much sense according to the ways of the world. He tells them to pray incessantly, like a friend who dropped by unexpectedly in the middle of the night to borrow some bread, who just won’t quit knocking on the door.
This isn’t some better technique, guaranteed to produce better results. This is God saying, “Come on, punch me.” “Come on, try me, so that you will know yourself that I love you as my dear child.” “Ask and it will be given you.” “No restrictions, ask for what your Christian heart desires, and then look with faith on how I answer you.”
Ask the Father, and He will answer you. Because He loves you as His own dear child. He will always listen to your prayer and He always desires to give you the very best. This is the great blessing of prayer. As Luther put it in his hymn:
Amen, that is, it shall be so.
Make strong our faith that we may know
That we may doubt not but believe
What here we ask we shall receive.
Thus in Your name and at Your Word,
We say, “Amen. Oh hear us, Lord.”