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What is so great about Jesus: He answers prayers well!

Jesus told us to ask, seek, and knock expecting positive answers. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). Yet, frequently when we ask, the answer is no, or we do not find, or the door gets slammed in our face!

What is going on here? Is Christ not true to his Word? Why does he bid us to ask expecting positive answers only to get a “No” instead? 

In part, the answer to those questions is found two verses later when Jesus explains prayer:  

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! (Matt. 7:9-11)

In the context we learn two things about how the Father answers our prayers. First, we see that he is eager to give us good things. Second, that he will only give his children gifts that actually are good. 

Now this is where it gets tricky. Because he will only give good gifts to his children, when we ask for something that is actually (unknown to us) a stone or a snake, he will not give it. 

Our problem is that we do not know what will eventually prove to be a good gift. We might think that it is really good. We really, really want it! But God—who sees the end from the beginning—knows it is a stone or a snake, disguised as bread or fish. We must come to realize this about ourselves: we are neither all-knowing nor all-wise. But God is both. 

For example, we might ask for what looks like our dream job. We ask God, plead with him even. But then he closes the door. Why? We do not know all the reasons. But we may speculate about our Father’s kindness and wisdom. Perhaps in that city our child would fall into the wrong crowd, or we would be destroyed by pride, or the company would fail financially, or God has someone right where we are that he wants us to help, or … you get the idea. 

Here is the problem with our requests, we are not God. He is. He actually knows, as our loving Father, what among our many requests is good or bad. We simply cannot know what the future holds. Only God can know. We must come to understand this, accept it, and even rejoice in it. Confident that his “No” comes as an invitation to a far better “Yes,” that we cannot yet see. He has a better job, a better spouse, a better city, a better house. It may not be an easier one, mind you, but it will be better. 

In the end that is why we pray “If it be your will,” not as an out for God, but as an out for ourselves. We pray it as a recognition of our limited wisdom and knowledge, as a recognition that our Father in heaven really does know how to give good gifts to his children. In years past, I would pray “If it be your will” reluctantly, as an afterthought to modify what I knew I really wanted. Now, I often begin my prayers that way, more convinced of his wisdom than mine. Why would I want a gift my loving Father knows is bad for me? Or as one friend put it, “He will give you whatever you ask, or something even better.” 

That is why Jesus promises us, “Ask and you will receive,” because we will receive his good. We will receive what the all-knowing, all-loving Father knows is best for us. In this assurance, we can rest, and we can rejoice.