KEEP ASKING

Keep Asking

[Jesus said,] “Keep on asking, and you will be given what you ask for. Keep on looking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds.”Matthew 7:7-8

God is seeking people who will give themselves to earnest, persevering prayer. In these verses Jesus instructs us not to pray just once or twice for what we desire but to repeatedly come to him in the same way the persistent widow in Luke 18 did—to ask and keep on asking, to look and keep on looking, to knock and keep on knocking—and we will receive, find, and experience the opening of doors. If we could simply kneel down, ask for what we want, instantly get what we prayed for, and then run back to our own pursuits, our spiritual life and interaction with God would be superficial and minimal, and we would experience little growth. It is in the places where we have to persevere in prayer that we learn persistence in prayer, receive the most blessing, see our faith growing stronger, and most glorify God. It is when we persist in prayer that God prepares a person or works behind the scenes in the problem we are praying about.

Is there something about which you sense that God wants you to persevere in prayer until the answer comes? Write it down, and seek him today and every day until it’s done!

LORD, thank you for your promise that those who ask receive and that when we seek, we will find. Grant me the grace to persevere, to keep on asking, seeking, and knocking until the answer comes. Thank you for the power and grace of your Spirit, who gives me the strength to persevere in prayer even when I am at my weakest moment and ready to give up.

IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO BEGIN TO PRAY, NOR TO PRAY ARIGHT, NOR IS IT ENOUGH TO CONTINUE FOR A TIME TO PRAY; BUT WE MUST PATIENTLY, BELIEVINGLY, CONTINUE IN PRAYER UNTIL WE OBTAIN AN ANSWER.George Müller (1805–1898)