Matthew 7:7-11
Introduction
Stop for a moment and think back to when you were a child and the types of things you prayed for. That prayer that a special someone down the street would write you and note and let you know they liked you too with the little checkbox “yes”. A prayer that you could have a tail like your dog, that your eyes would be a different color, and that you would pass the math test that you didn’t study for. Here are some other great examples I found this week:
“Dear God, thank You for the baby brother but what I prayed for was a puppy.”
“Dear God, could you please send Mikey Johnson to another summer camp this year?”
“Dear God, please don’t let it rain on Saturday, the first ball I hit will be for you.”
I’m sure we each have some of our own prayers we could all chuckle at if we had the time!
Now stop again and imagine for a moment that God answered those prayers. Now some would just be wild: imagine a world filled with grown adults with monkey tails, purple skin, unicorn horns, and wings like eagles (which seem big enough to lift a child but completely useless to a full-grown adult). If prayers couldn’t be undone, it would be a rough go…and a testament to the fickleness of our youthful minds.
But think about the more serious prayers even when you were young. Siblings or parents you may not have grown up with if God listened to you. That A+ on a test you didn’t study for could have affected your work ethic, which career you pursued, and the character you have today. And this carries over into prayers we make as adults. Jobs you would have stayed in that means you wouldn’t be where you are today. Maybe completely different paths with friends and spouses. I imagine most of our lives would look very different!
So much of who you and I have become is a product of many of the “unanswered prayers” we have experienced (I’m using scare-quotes for a reason). I think most of us would easily agree that some of those “unanswered prayers” were for our good and our best. We wouldn’t want God to go back and answer those prayer for us any differently than his seeming “no” or “not yet” that we experienced. We can now see with 20/20 hindsight how God had something better for us, or at least something different and equally as good.
And yet, there are still some “unanswered prayers” that cause us pause. Those prayers that we still don’t understand why they weren’t answered. The unanswered prayers that we still can’t see any positive outcome from not having them answered. Or perhaps, we are still deep in the pain and sorrow of what we are experiencing and looking for God to change things through our prayer. Perhaps you are mad at God right now because he didn’t answer a particular prayer you have had or still seems to not answer a prayer you desperate want. This is often the problem we run into when we get this passage in the Sermon on the Mount. We hear this passage, and we can often walk away more discouraged about prayer than when we started. Yet I pray this morning that we will be encouraged and will see God’s purposes more and then ask, seek, and knock looking for:
God’s Undeserved Relationship
God’s Unlimited Love
God’s Ultimate Good
Matthew 7:7–8: Ask, Seek, Knock
Let’s start by looking at verses 7 and 8:
Ask
and it will be given to you;
seek,
and you will find;
knock,
and it will be opened to you.
For
everyone who asks
receives,
and the one who seeks
finds,
and to the one who knocks
it will be opened.
This is a very emphatic statement by Jesus. The words for ask, seek, and knock are a part of speech in Greek—the present imperative—which carries the idea of “keep asking continually,” “keep seeking continually,” and “keep knocking continually”. You almost get the sense that this is like a child who is in the backseat of the car say, “Are we there yet?” every several minutes. Jesus says we are to be like that in our asking, seeking, and knocking.
And if the grammar isn’t enough to convince us to pray in an unceasing and fervent manner, Jesus repeats the statement. The first time the language focuses on the actions: ask, seek, knock. In every way you can think we are to pursue by asking, seeking, and knowing. The second time the language focuses on the who and the receiving. Everyone or anyone who asks, seeks, or knocks like this will find satisfaction, Jesus says. They will receive when they ask. They will find when they seek. Doors are opened for the one knocking.
This emphatic nature makes it impossible for us to think that God doesn’t mean what he says: That he will give if you “keep asking.” That you will find what you are looking for if you “keep seeking.” And that you will see doors and paths open if you “keep knocking.”
Therefore, obviously, if we aren’t receiving, finding, or seeing doors opened the problem is clearly with us. At least that is what we all think if we are honest. I mean, we all have “unanswered prayers” of some sort. Then we come to Matthew 7:7–8 and we see an emphatic call for us to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking and an emphatic promise that we will receive, we will find, and we will have doors opened. Therefore, our logic would say, WE are the problem.
Let’s make everyone squirm for a minute and go back to logic classes in high school or college:
(a -> b) (IF a) If I ask, seek, and knock, then
(Then b) I will receive, find, and have opened
(~b) (NOT b) I am not receiving, finding, or seeing
doors opened
∴ (~a) (∴ therefore) (NOT a) I must not be asking,
seeking or knocking right
That is a little shoutout for the nerds here, but that is how we all FEEL! We feel like our life with God is a math or logic equation and we have to do our part to balance the equation properly. This passage would seem to reinforce that feeling at first glance. Consequently, we believe WE must be the breaking point in this logical equation. If we would just do our part better—if we would just ask, seek, knock—then we would receive, find, and every door will be opened to us.
Wait, What IS The Problem?
Now, we all know that doesn’t sound quite right. We know we can’t make God into an equation, a cosmic vending machine that will dispense to us WHAT we want WHEN we want it. Not only does our experience tell us that isn’t true, but we know that Jesus came to that we might walk in relationship with God again. Yet passages like this still nag at us and make us think we are missing something (especially if we read them out of context).
Understanding passages like this is also complicated by the fact that the world is telling us something very similar to the worry we have with this verse. The world tells us if we just find the right secret then all things can go good with us in life. If you can just find the right diet, the right way to raise our children, the right job, the perfect retirement plan with the right sized stack of money—then everything will be good. So, in that sense, we might think this is the Christian version and we need to find the secret to asking, seeking, or knocking rightly and we will definitely get what we want.
What WE then try to do is take passages like this and go find other passages to pair with it to figure out what is the real problem is and then solve it on our own. We want to make everything about works—our works—again. We may go to places like Jeremiah 29:13…
“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
(Jeremiah 29:13, ESV)
…and we try to pair this with Matthew 7:7-8 and say the real problem of our unanswered prayers is that we don’t REALLY want it enough. It is a wanting problem. A heart problem as Jeremiah seems to say. If we only had more desire, more passion in our prayers, then God would surely listen then. I must do this with ALL my heart. So, we pray more often. We ask over tears. We seek in the middle of the night, and we knock every single hour.
This is where we keep missing the issue and forget where we need to start in our asking, seeking, and knocking. We miss exactly what Jeremiah is saying, what Jesus is aiming at here in the Sermon on the Mount, and what so many other passages in the New Testament are telling us.
The first way this statement is true for us—that we will receive, find, and see open doors when we ask, seek, and knock—is that we are to ask for GOD, seek GOD, and we are to knock that the door of heaven might be opened to us and we might see GOD! Look again at Jeremiah 29:
“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
(Jeremiah 29:13, ESV)
God’s Undeserved Relationship
Friends, don’t forget where we started in the Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes!
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
(Matthew 5:3–12 ESV)
Jesus has been showing us how we have never been able to find God, nor come back to him in right relationship, on our own accord. We are unable to live the perfect life that God required from us. We are not part of that equation that will let us get to God on our own. In fact, we are a negative number in that experience and only cause a deficit. Yet, Jesus came and did all things necessary for our salvation. Now in Jesus’s upside-down world he asks us to come in weakness and find that in Jesus we have been made whole, strong, and are being made ready for perfection with him.
Remember what we saw in this path of blessing from God in the Beatitudes:
Poor in Spirit > Mourn > Meek
Righteousness (of Jesus)
Mercy > Pure in Heart > Peacemakers
Persecution (like Jesus)
We are to realize we are poor in spirit, that we bring nothing before a holy God besides sin and rebellion, and we are to mourn the state of our soul and find meekness as we acknowledge our state before God and others around us. And our joy is that we find we can have righteousness, that we have been given righteousness—Jesus’s own righteousness—through faith in his death on our behalf!
Then, as we realize the mercy God has given us, we should be merciful as well to others, especially in our desire that they may see the mercy they can have in Jesus as well. Similarly, we are to be pure in heart as our Lord is pure, and those who pursue making peace as our God made peace with us through his own blood.
Yet, we do not find that the world applauds us, but rather, as they did with Jesus, they will persecute us for living in this truth Jesus is preaching here. Because the world doesn’t want to acknowledge the truth nor acknowledge Jesus as God.
We find here, in the Sermon on the Mount, that God has done it all and IS all that we need. What we should be asking for, seeking after, and knocking for first and foremost is that we might KNOW God and that he would KNOW us. He is all we need, and he is meant to be our ultimate joy. We find that WHO we are with in this journey of life is the all-satisfying savior that we are meant to find. He is our joy, not the path nor the provisions he gives us.
The first problem you and I face as we come to a passage like Matthew 7:7–12 this morning is that we still come thinking much of ourselves. We miss that the God of ALL blessings is offering relationship with HIMSELF. And in relationship with him we find that every possible need is fulfilled in him—through Jesus Christ.
Meanwhile, while God offers himself, we focus on our temporary problems and needs. We miss God’s undeserved relationship he is offering us. This is what James says we do:
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
(James 4:3, ESV)
In fact, James continues in chapter four to tell us that when we focus on our own passions we are focusing on the same things as the worldly desires, and in doing so, we are not seeking right relationship with God. Focusing on OUR passions is what makes us like the world—seeking our own good first. And being like the world—friends with the world and caring most about what they care about—means we are enemies against God.
This is the same, upside-down logic that Jesus has been trying to share with us and his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. Mourn. Be meek. Humble yourselves. And we do this IN ORDER THAT we may draw near to God and he will draw near to us!
We too quickly ignore our relationship with God and instead pray for the things that come WITH that relationship. We see the beauty of God in very real ways in our life—whether it is our salvation or God’s very real provision at crucial moments in our life—but rather than remember our state of need and dependence and the fact that our relationship with God is the most beautiful joy we can ever know, we quickly go back to self-reliance and focus on the THINGS of God and this life instead of God himself.
There is a real risk that as we begin to fixate on the things of this earth and our temporary circumstances and needs that we run the risk of becoming like the second seed in the Parable of the Sower:
“As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.”
(Matthew 13:20–21, ESV)
Here, the second seed is truly joyful and thankful for the good news of the gospel of Jesus (the seed), yet when he doesn’t get every kind of joy he wants all the time, he endures only for a while, as Jesus says, and then falls away in the difficulties. He had no true root in knowing and trusting God. We see many places in Scripture where God says that true Christian commitment preservers and is necessary for our growth. We are told that we are to put our hand to the plow and never look back in Luke 9:62. We are told those who draw back never belonged to Christ in 1 John 2:19. Perseverance is a necessary part of Christianity.
In fact, I think it is God’s grace to show us that our life with God must be based on our relationship with him and our relationship with him ONLY if we are to preserver with him. Perseverance is not found in the “things” nor the condition of our present situation. As an analogy, what kind of relationship would you feel you have with your spouse or friends if they were only there with you when things were going good and they were getting what they needed from you? That is not a deep relationship that will pass the test of time. It is no different from God. It is not a real relationship with God if it is only based on the quantity of the possessions or the quality of the situations we receive from him.
Application
Main Street, the first application we should take away from Matthew 7:7–8 today is that we cannot forget the God who has given us his undeserved relationship! We find the way to this relationship is only possible in our weakness and not in our strength. We find this possible in our dependence, not in our abilities. Our faith in Jesus comes through our acknowledgement of our brokenness and need, and then we find that God has provided for all our needs in Christ Jesus our Lord:
“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”
(Philippians 4:19, ESV)
Our asking, seeking, and knocking must first and foremost be about finding and knowing our God more than any need or want we perceive in our life. Our God has provided us with a way to come back into his loving embrace through relationship with Jesus Christ. What sweet grace! And here he promises we will definitely receive what we ask for in relationship with him.
Ask. Seek. Knock. And start first and foremost by asking for more of God. Seek his very presence in the Holy Spirit and through his word. Knock on the door of heaven in constant prayer wanting to be face to face with God as much as possible today. That is our first application this morning, to know:
God’s Undeserved Relationship
Don’t lose your first love Main Street. Ask, seek, and knock after God’s undeserved relationship that we might walk with him daily through faith in Jesus.
The Cynic
Now, I can hear the cynic out there: “Oh, so you are saying I really shouldn’t pray about my job, my family, or my current situation. Just pray that I should have more relationship with God. That will fix everything (*sarcastically*).” Now I know none of us would want to say it that way as though relationship with God is a second-rate prize. But are we really saying that asking, seeking, and knocking is only about our relationship with God and not about the very real situations and needs we may have? Well, yes and no—how’s that for clarity!?
Yes, first and foremost we should keep praying and seeking first God and his kingdom—a shortcut way of saying God and all the things he loves and values—his very nature. We want to know and be known by God! Remember what Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
(Matthew 6:31–33 ESV)
We start with wanting to know God and to know his righteousness and ask him to grow that righteousness in us. And he promises he will provide all that we need.
Here is the amazing part about our prayers—our asking, seeking, and knocking. One of the ways we learn and grow in our relationship with God is to ask him for anything that we need! If our hearts are focused on truly wanting to know our God and his love for us, then asking will never draw us away, instead, it will reveal more of God to us!
That is what we see here in Matthew 7. The language of this passage won’t let us think that God doesn’t want to hear about our real day-to-day needs and desires IN the asking, seeking, and knocking after him. In fact, asking about our real situations is part of how we get to know and love God more. So no, we can (and must) ask about other things, but yes, it is always going to be about knowing God more!
God’s Unlimited Love
Let’s look at where Jesus goes next in verses 9 through 11:
Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?
If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
God really does want us to ask him for our needs and our desires, but he wants that rooted in our love and knowledge of him. The language here is that of father and child—an intimate relationship. There is a synergy that asking for our real needs will help strengthen and lead us into real relationship with God and help us to see him more as our Good Father. And what Jesus wants us to realize here in this analogy is how wonderful God’s fatherly love is for us.
If our first problem when we come to Matthew 7:7–11 is that we are quick to abandon our love of God for our love of HIS things, the second problem we have is we think too little of God’s love FOR us.
Now, that may seem odd and not true to many of you. If I asked many of you about how much God loves you, you likely could talk to me for several minutes about the good news of the gospel, what God has done for you in Jesus, all the ways you know God’s love is deep and wide for you, and how you trust in this. And yet, practically, when things get hard, we often think too little of God’s love. In fact, we may often feel like God might enjoy being a little mean to us sometimes. That sounds horrible to say out loud, so let’s let someone else say it for us:
Sadly, many of God’s children labor under the delusion that their heavenly Father extracts some malicious glee out of watching his children squirm now and then. Of course, they are not quite blasphemous enough to put it in such terms; but their prayer life reveals they are not thoroughly convinced of God’s goodness and the love he has for them. Jesus’s argument is a fortiori [to the stronger]: If human fathers, who by God’s standards of perfect righteousness can only be described as evil, [and they] know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will God give good gifts to them who ask him? We are dealing with the God who once said to his people, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”
(Isa. 49:15)
Carson, D. A.. Jesus's Sermon on the Mount and His Confrontation with the World: A Study of Matthew 5-10 (p. 146). (Function). Kindle Edition.
We at times think God’s love is small, and it is evident in how we don’t trust God and how we struggle to pray to him. Sometimes we don’t really want to ask, seek, and knock as Jesus says here. Not because we don’t want relationship with God himself, but because we are unsure if he really wants relationship with us and if he really loves us. We assume that what seem like “unanswered prayers” are just him being mean to us. That he is against us.
But Jesus tells us here that is not so at all! We really have no idea the depths of love that God has for us, but we can get glimpses of it. We may at times glimpse it in a parent’s love for their children, Jesus says—in their willingness to put all things aside to give their children great and magnificent gifts. But this is only a taste of the love that God has for us. God’s love really is the stronger example.
God’s love led him to lay aside his Godly prerogatives and come to earth and serve us (Philippians 2:7). His love led him to the cross (1 John 4:10). And it was his love that was poured out on us through his Holy Spirit given to us in Jesus Christ (Romans 5:5). The supply of God’s love is there for me and you and it is an endless well of love stored up and ready to be poured out on us! That can never be in doubt and what Jesus is trying to convince us of in the Sermon on the Mount. That is what we are to see in Jesus’s image of the good gifts from our earthly fathers as representing the even more amazing and good gifts of our heavenly Father. That is what we are to see in Jesus’s reiteration that we should ask, seek, and knock and we will receive, find, and see doors opened. The repetition is a reminder that God has the abundance of all things that we could ever need, and we should never doubt that.
That is our second application this morning. We want to know both:
God’s Undeserved Relationship
God’s Unlimited Love
Don’t think too little of God’s love. Ask, seek, knock knowing the supply of God’s love is unlimited. He wants to shower you with his endless and sure love.
God’s Ultimate Good
I think we can all agree easily with those two conceptually, especially when we see prayers answered. We all know we should seek relationship with God first, because he came and sought relationship with us. We know we should trust God’s loves for us because we can see his great love for us in Jesus. And when we see God answer prayers, it really affirms us to know that God is there, he loves you, and he is for you.
But it is often our next questions that derail our trust in those answers: “How then is an “unanswered prayer” love to us?” And that comes with another question: “What do I pray for then when I ask, seek, and knock if it may not be answered?” Both of these questions are what Jesus is trying to teach us THROUGH this passage today.
God wants us to come and know him as a loving father who has all that we could ever need or want. He wants us to be the children who know their kind, loving, gentle, and firm Father well and not fear to ask him anything. But God also wants us to have the assurance that our Father will never give us something that his much greater wisdom, knowledge, and experience assesses is not in our best interest. Like a good Father who keeps us from a hot stove, a Red Rider BB Gun, or even our tenth dessert, we need to learn to trust him that our asking is ultimately to see him provide what we really need and to know him more.
You may have heard this taught before, but that is exactly what we see here in Matthew 7:9–11. Jesus tells us:
Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?
Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?
Jesus doesn’t tell us God will give us the bread. He just says we won’t be given a stone—something inedible. He doesn’t say we will be given a fish. He just says we won’t be given a serpent—something that will harm us. In that sense, Jesus is saying that there are no “unanswered prayers.” God just didn’t give you what you asked for—he gave you what you needed.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ask. We should ask for anything and everything! Sometimes our biggest problem is we aren’t truly seeking that relationship with God nor do we trust his love, so we don’t pray. And as James says:
“You do not have, because you do not ask.”
(James 4:2c ESV)
This is exactly what Jesus is teaching us in Matthew 7:7-11. IF we truly are seeking first our relationship with God, and IF we believe God’s love is unlimited and always available for us (both things he has encouraged us about throughout the Sermon on the Mont), THEN we will ask for anything and everything.
“Really?” you might say. Anything? Yes! Ask about anything and everything. And keep asking!
Yet if we are truly asking from a foundation of wanting to know God and we know his love is a never ending well for us, we need to be willing to believe that in every yes, no, not yet, or the quietness of uncertainty we will surely begin to see and know our God and the depth of his love for us more. Regardless of his answer. The asking is part of the process of HOW we grow in our relationship with our God and how we begin to see and love HIS ways morel. But only if we really are willing to ask and trust his ways.
Let me give you some examples. Remember one of our youthful prayers from earlier?
“Dear God, could you please send Mikey Johnson to another summer camp this year?”
If Mikey not being a summer camp will make you worship and love God more, then Mikey won’t be there. That is a small thing for God to do. But if Mikey is there, you must be willing to trust that God wants you to learn more about his ways and that he is only doing this through love. He has some ways in which you are to learn about him, his unlimited love for you, and how this will be good for you. Maybe God wants you to learn to pray more each day for strength to rightly care for Mikey Johnson, whatever that may entail. Maybe he wants you to be there to encourage and help Mikey see more of God THROUGH you. The possibilities really are endless, and it will only be through your asking and seeing what God does or doesn’t do that you will begin to know God more, treasure his ways, realize his love, and behold his ultimate good for you.
This is also why one of my pastor friends encourages parents to let their children pray for their dead dogs and cats to be in heaven. Because here’s the truth: If God needs your dog to be in heaven so that you can most enjoy God and be satisfied in God, each of your past dogs or cats or guinea pigs will be in heaven, waiting for you. If not, you won’t feel slighted in the least!
I use examples like these two because they seem easier to agree with than many of the other real-life adult prayers we struggle with. But the truth is no less true despite the struggle. Even when we pray for a child who is sick and they still die, even when we pray for a spouse we desperately want to have care for us but who leaves anyway, or when we pray for the physical pain that just won’t go away and yet wake up tomorrow and it is still there, this is still an opportunity to see and know God better and begin to glimpse his purposes and love for us even in the “unanswered prayers.” They really aren’t “unanswered prayers”—just ways we still need to know and understand our God and his loving care for us better THROUGH the asking, seeking, and knocking.
We are called to ask, seek, and knock that we might see and know:
God’s Undeserved Relationship
God’s Unlimited Love, AND
God’s Ultimate Good
God is always working for your ultimate good in everything he is doing.
Summary
Yes, God wants to hear prayers about anything and everything you may need or desire. Lift those up to him as much as you would like. In fact, beginning to believe what Jesus says here in Matthew 7 is how we will begin to have the faith to pray audaciously big and incredibly risky prayers. We will need that if we are going to reach Boise and the Treasure Valley more with the gospel of Jesus.
However, unlike that child in the backseat of the car, know that God’s quietness may also be his way of growing you and showing you more about him, his plans, and his love for you. Yes, no, or not yet can all be blessings to us from a Father who loves us infinitely more than we deserve, and who knows us better than we know ourselves.
Main Street—ask, seek, knock. First and foremost to see God, but also to see and know his love for you as a good Father who wants to provide exactly what you need today. The process of asking for anything and everything—when grounded in your desire for RELATIONSHIP with God and when supported by your belief in God’s never-ending love—will only end up drawing you closer to him through the asking. This is God’s process to grow us and help us know:
God’s Undeserved Relationship
God’s Unlimited Love, AND
God’s Ultimate Good
So don’t be scared of the quiet or the no. Still pray and ask God. You may see him answer you prayers. And the quiet and the no are often the times where we are being called to grow in our knowledge of God and his love in ways we have yet to imagine. He is using those moments to bring us into his very nature and character.
Even more amazing, we can trust this process! Think of our savior, Jesus, and his prayer life. In the garden of Gethsemane he asked his Father to take the cup of sacrifice from him in Luke 22:42. And the Father was quiet, an implied no. Jesus still trusted his Father’s unlimited love and desired his relationship so much that he continued on that he might know the joy of his Father (as we are told Hebrews 12:2). We too can trust that anything that happens in this life is meant to bring us the same joy of knowing the Father as ask, seek, and knock and then as we keep moving forward to know and love God and trust him.
Response
Main Street, what is God asking you to consider this morning? We have talked about three main points this morning:
God’s Undeserved Relationship
God’s Unlimited Love
God’s Ultimate Good
Maybe you need to spend some time this morning asking, seeking, and knocking that God might reveal more of himself to you. That you might know the joy of relationship with him more today. Perhaps you need to ask God to show you, through your prayers, that his love really is unlimited and ask him to help you see that in the things he gives you, the ways he reveals himself to you, and how you see doors open to you. Pray bold and audacious prayers! And—perhaps—there is a certain prayer you often hold up to God, or need to hold up to God, where you need to ask God to help you trust in his ultimate good for you, even if the answer to your prayer is no, not yet, or silence.
Pray
Communion
Benediction
“My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.”
(Philippians 4:19–20 ESV)
