Adrian Rogers was a motivator, an encourager, and a leader of the faith. He was also passionate about presenting scriptural application to everyday life circumstances, and you'll hear that in today's message.
Now let's join Adrian Rogers. And verse 7 is one of the grand, grand promises in all of the Bible. It tells us how to get our prayer answered. The time will come if the time is not already here, when the most important thing for you on this earth will be for God to answer your prayer. These are the words of Jesus. And if you cannot believe these words, you have no right to believe you're saved, for the same Bible that promises salvation promises answered prayer.
And if you can't believe one promise, why should you believe the other? Our Lord says, Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. For what man is there of you?
whom? If his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
If he then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him? Dr. C. Roy Angel used to be a noted pastor in Miami, Florida, when I was a boy. One of the things that Dr. Angel would do in his preaching was to tell stories.
He was a great illustrator of messages with stories. And he told a story one time of a shepherd boy who was out tending a sheep. And he happened to look down, and the shepherd boy saw the most beautiful flower he believed he'd ever seen. He got down on his hands and knees to look at that flower, and it was so beautiful that he dug it out of the earth, root and all, and cupped it in his hands and brought it up closer to his face to look at it. When he did that, there was a mountain nearby, and it seemed as the entire mountain would open up as if there were doors in the mountain on great oiled hinges, and the doors swung open. And the sunlight went into the side of that mountain, into that great vault in the mountain, and the boy looked in there, and he saw all kinds of treasures, gold and silver and diamonds and rubies and sapphire.
He'd never seen anything like that. He went in there and set the flower down, and he began to gather the treasure, rubies and diamonds and emeralds and gold. His arms were full of treasure.
He's just a shepherd boy, and now he's wealthy. He takes the treasure and begins to make his way out of the mountain, and he hears a voice that says, don't forget the best. But he has the gold. He has the silver. He has the rubies, the emeralds, the sapphires. He looks around. Is there something he didn't see? Is there anything better than this?
No, he's got the best. And he starts out again, and the voice says, don't forget the best. He looks around one more time.
What could be better than this? He walks out again into the sunlight, and when he does, the great doors in that mountainside close and disappear, and he looks in his hands, and he has nothing but dirt. And the voice says, the best was the flower that was the key to the vault, and you left it locked inside the vault. That's only a story.
Of course, that's not true. Just a parable, just a story, just a fable. But, friend, the best, the key to the vault of all of God's treasure is prayer.
Don't forget the best. Now, you're gathering treasure every place, but the key to the vault is prayer. Jesus said, ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you'll find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
Three things I want you to see today. First of all, as we look at this passage, there is a promise to claim. Our Lord says, if we will ask, if we will seek, if we will knock, it shall be given to us. There is no substitute for prayer, not eloquence, not intellect, not energy, not enthusiasm, not intention. There is no substitute for prayer. I believe the greatest unused and untapped resource in the world is prayer. It's not if somehow we could harness lightning or somehow tap into the resources of the mighty tides of the ocean as they ebb and flow.
The greatest untapped, unused resource is not some use of atomic energy. It is prayer prevailing prayer. What fools we are if we don't pray. Why the poverty of so many Christians?
Why the powerlessness of so many Christians? There is one answer, and it is prayerlessness. I don't have a failure in my life but what it is a prayer failure.
I don't have a sin in my life but what proper prayer would have avoided it. I don't have a need in my life that cannot be met through prayer prevailing prayer. Now, why does God want us to pray anyway? You know, we've already studied in the Sermon on the Mount that our Heavenly Father knows what we have need of before we ask Him. So why ask Him? Why ask God to do what He already wants to do, and why ask God to do something for us when He already knows that we have need of it? That's a good question. Why has our Lord commanded prayer?
Why? Well, when we pray, we don't pray to inform God. God already knows. We don't pray to instruct God because God has a will. What we do is not inform God or instruct God, but we invite God. We invite God when we pray.
Now, what does that mean? Well, you see, God wants to do some things in us, and God wants to do those things through prayer. Why does God tell us to pray?
First of all, there is the fellowship factor. Remember there in John the 15th chapter, Jesus said, If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, then ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. John 15, 7. If you abide in me, what does our Lord want us to do? Does God just simply want to give us things, or does God want us to have fellowship with Him? God wants us to have fellowship with Him. And so, therefore, God says you're going to pray, and prayer is the way of you abiding in me and my abiding in you. And that way you and God do it together. God could do it without you.
You can't do it without Him, but He will not do it without you because God wants you to have that fellowship with Him. Remember a while back I told you about somebody coming to pick me up in a private airplane to go someplace? And we're sitting up there side by side in the cockpit. I don't know anything about flying an airplane. But he said, Do you want to fly this thing?
I said, If I can, if you'd tell me what to do. So he said, Do thus and such. And so here I am flying that airplane across the United States. Now, he's sitting right there. His hands are on the control, and my hands are on the control. He could do it without me, but I couldn't do it without Him.
But it was a lot of fun to fly that airplane. And as I was flying that airplane, this man and myself were having wonderful fellowship. You see, friend, when you pray and God answers, you abide in Him, and He abides in you, together we are laborers together with God.
2 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 1 says, We are workers together with Him. And so there's the fellowship factor. That's one reason you pray.
There is the development factor. There's nothing that will grow you as a Christian more than prayer. You see, when you abide in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He abides in you, then you're growing as you pray. Have you ever wondered why God doesn't answer your prayer immediately?
Because He wants you to grow some more. You see, a boy asks a girl for a date. She looks at him, and she says, Well, he doesn't use good manners. He's not courteous. He doesn't dress neatly. He's got dirt under his fingernails.
And there are other things about him. His shoes are not shined. He says, Well, I just don't think I want a date.
Thank you. I'm busy. Well, he wonders, Why didn't she go out with me? I wonder what it could be. He asked a friend, Why do you think that Susie would not date me? He said, You want me to be honest with you? Well, yes, you've got bad breath. Me? You've got bad breath.
You ask me, I'm going to tell you. Well, I didn't know I had bad breath. So he goes in, and, you know, he drinks a glass of iced scope, and he brushes his teeth, and then he asks again. She still says no.
He goes to his friend again, Why do you think she wouldn't go out with me? I said, Well, look at the way you're dressed. Look how... Your shirt is dirty. Is that shirt dirty?
Why, of course, go look in the mirror. And on and on this goes, and one day he comes. He looks sweet. He smells sweet. He is sweet. And he says to her, Please go out with me. She says, I believe I will.
And they have a wonderful date. Now, that's a small illustration, but, you know, sometimes we come to God and we say, God, please do this. But there's something God wants us to do first. Prayer is the way of developing our lives. And we ask God for something, and God doesn't give it to us. And we go back and say, Why didn't God answer my prayer? And the Holy Spirit says, There's sin in your life. The Holy Spirit says, You've been selfish.
You've been carnal. You see, there's the fellowship factor in prayer. There is the development factor in prayer. God is growing us in through prayer. And, of course, there is the dependency factor in prayer. Jesus said in John 15, Without me, you can do nothing. You see, if God were to answer our prayers just automatically, then there would be no growth. But if we never had to pray, there would be no dependency.
Prayer is God's way of bonding us to him. And so there is a promise to claim, a wonderful promise, a wise promise, ask, seek and knock. But secondly, listen, not only is there a promise to claim, there is a process to follow. Have you ever noticed these verbs, ask, seek, knock?
That's a process. That is an intensification from asking to seeking to knocking. Ask, you receive. Seek, you find. Knock, it shall be opened unto you.
That is an intensification and an escalation. So there is both a promise and a process in this verse. The promise is that God will hear us. But there is a process of asking, seeking and knocking.
Now let's look at the first one, asking. That is, you express your desire. There is something you want. You come to God and you ask him for it. Do you know the greatest problem in prayer is not unanswered prayer? It is unasked prayer.
Most of us don't even get to the asking part. And James says you have not because you ask not. Unoffered prayer is not merely a tragedy, it's a sin. God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you, is what Samuel said. God forbid that I should sin in ceasing to pray. Over and over again the Bible not only invites us to pray, the Bible commands us to pray.
The Lord Jesus in Luke 18, 1, the Bible says of him, And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. The Lord Jesus said in Mark 14, verse 38, Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. Every time you sin, it is because you fail to pray as you ought. Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.
The apostle Paul said, Be careful for nothing. That is, don't worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. The reason you are so full of care and worry right now is you've not truly learned how to pray. In everything by prayer and supplication, you are to ask God for everything that you need. You know, a good test of anything, whether it's right or wrong for you to have it is, can you ask God for it? Now, if you don't feel you can ask God for it, you really don't have any business with it. You see, we're to pray about anything. If it's wrong to ask God for it, it's wrong to have it or to do it. Don't divide your life up into the secular and the sacred. Don't say, Well, there's certain things I can pray about and certain things I don't pray about because God's not interested in those things.
Oh, no. Can you imagine Jesus living that way? You see, to a Christian, all things are sacred. Every day is a holy day. And every object is a proper object of prayer. Pray about everything. You say, Well, the little things, I just pray about the big things. Well, can you imagine anything big to God?
Or can you imagine anything too small for God to be interested in? Yes, pray about the big things. Yes, pray when your child is sick. You can also pray for a parking place.
God is a God who is over all. God knows your needs. You say, Well, what if I want a wrong thing? Should I pray about that?
Yes. God already knows you want a wrong thing. Tell him you want a wrong thing and tell him it's wrong for you to want it and ask him to fix your water. Listen, pray about all things and everything by prayer. But God can't answer unless you ask.
You have not because you asked not. First of all, he says ask. That is a desire expressed. But then he says seek.
And that is a discovery experienced. Because, you see, many times we ask for the wrong thing. Many times we don't know what to ask for. Many times we're not in an asking position.
Many times the things that are lost are unknown to us. And so true prayer, true asking is linked with seeking. It may be the will, the purpose of God that we need to seek. Remember what James says? You ask and receive not because you ask amiss.
You ask for the wrong thing. And so sometimes we need to seek the will of God. We need to say, Dear God, is this your will? Sometimes we need to seek the very presence of God. God wants to do something in us before he does something through us. And James in that classic passage on prayer in James chapter 4 verse 8 says, Draw nigh to God and God will draw nigh to you. Maybe it's the presence of God that we need to seek as we pray. Maybe it's the power of God because James also said in James 5 verse 16, The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.
And that word effectual means powerful, stretched out prayer. You know, we pray so many little giddy, frivolous, nigh, lay me down to sleep type prayers. Many of us pray and 15 minutes later we could not even tell you what we ask God for if our life depended upon him. Because we do not pray with seriousness.
We do not pray with intention. One day a lady called me and she said, Pastor, I need you to come over to my house. I've got a prayer burden and I want you to pray with me. I said, I'll be there.
I went to her house. I said, what is the prayer burden? She said, Pastor, it is my son. He is a drunkard. I want you to pray with me for my son. And then she said, and his wife has just been diagnosed with cancer.
My son is a drunkard. My daughter-in-law has been diagnosed with cancer and I want you, my pastor, please to pray with me. I said, I will. She said, I've asked my son to come over.
I said, wonderful. So the three of us were there, the drunkard son, the mother who was concerned, and the pastor. And we got down on our knees and began to pray. And she prayed, and I prayed, and then she prayed, and then I prayed again. And that boy, that man, I say he was, oh, maybe 35, he looked at me and he said, pray, preacher, you ain't praying. Well, I thought I was praying. I thought I was doing a good job. But he said, preacher, pray, you ain't praying. Well, I think I got a little louder and a little faster. I thought maybe it had something to do with the tone or the rhythm or maybe I needed to groan a little more, do something.
I'd never had anybody challenge me like that. He said, you ain't praying, preacher. So I prayed a little more. And then I looked up and she was gone.
I thought, just me and this boy here, and he doesn't think I'm praying. And then I heard a sound in another room. And so I just stopped, since I wasn't praying anyway, and got up and looked in that other room.
And there she was, her face down in the carpet. And I just paused to listen to her pray. I heard her as she went up through the skies, push open the gates, right to the throne room, past the torn veil.
I heard her walk right in and get hold of the altar. And I listened to her pray. And I heard the anguish of her heart. I heard her prayer. I heard her faith. I heard her do warfare with Satan. I heard her remind God of his promises.
I heard her pour out her heart, her life, almost to death for that boy. I heard her pray. And I think maybe perhaps sometime in the past, that boy had heard his mama pray, and that's the way he was saying to me, preacher, you ain't praying. I learned a lesson about prayer that day, about what it means to get hold of God in prayer. That, my friend, is not only asking, it is seeking prayer. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. But not only are we to ask, that's a desire expressed. Not only are we to seek, that is a discovery experienced as we find what we seek for, but Jesus says we are to knock.
And that, my friend, is a determination expressed. To knock means that we will not stop until we know that we have the thing that we have asked of God or God tells us no. Knock, and it shall be open unto you. Now, there are many stories in the Bible about knocking. Knocking, as a matter of fact, this same passage that we have here in Matthew is expounded in the Gospel of Luke.
And Luke tells us a little bit more about what it means to knock. I want you to turn to Luke chapter 11. Now, Matthew, Mark, Luke, just turn to Luke chapter 11. And look, if you will, in verse 5. Jesus is giving a parable, and here's what Jesus said.
And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go to him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves, that is three loaves of bread. For a friend of mine in his journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him. And he from within shall answer and say, trouble me not. For the door is now shut.
You see, a door is what you knock on. And my children are with me in bed, and I cannot rise and give thee. And I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, that is, his persistence, he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.
Now, that's the parable. Now, look in verse 9. And I say unto you, Ask and it shall be given you, Seek and ye shall find, Knock and it shall be opened unto you.
Now, there's no doubt in my mind that this is the illustration for knocking right here. For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Now, you have to understand something about Bible times. In Bible times, it was absolutely totally unthinkable that a friend would come to you and you would not give him lodging and you would not give him food.
Hospitality is of the highest premium in the Middle East. And so here's a man, he has a friend on a journey, he comes and says, James, may I stay at your house tonight? He says, why, we're so happy to have you, John, to come and stay.
You're so welcome, come right in. And the wife will fix us something to eat. And he goes in the wife and he says, Wife, John has come and he's going to be staying with us tonight. Fix us something to eat.
She says, we haven't got anything. He says, don't say anything, I'll get it. So he says, John, just sit down and we're going to get you something. It's all right, just sit there.
Here's your bed right here. And he goes next door to his friend, Matthew. Matthew, it's about midnight now. He says, nobody answers. Nobody answers.
Who is it? James, what do you want? I need some bread. Hey man, don't bother me. You know what time it is? Matthew, listen.
I've got to have some... Man, listen, don't bother me, I'm in bed. Now let me tell you how the houses of that day were built. Many of them had stables underneath. The animals came in at night and stayed in the house and the body heat of those animals helped to heat the whole house and fragrance the house also. They were underneath and the children would sleep upstairs.
They didn't have big houses like we have. Everybody in one room. You wake up one person, you wake up everybody. And the locks of that day were very complicated.
Oriental locks, you didn't just put in a key. I mean, to get up, you've got to go downstairs through the animals. You've got to wake up everybody. You've got to get out of bed and all of this. He says, look, don't bother me.
The children are asleep. Now you wake the baby, you're going to pay. Listen, I've got to have some bread. Get up. Oh, he says, just be quiet, I'm coming. I'm coming.
What do you want? There it is, help yourself and get out of here. Now he didn't do it because he was his friend. He just did it because this man would not take no for an answer. That's what Jesus said. That is persistence in prayer.
How many of us pray that way? Jesus said, ask, seek, knock. Keep on asking is literally what it says.
It's in the present tense. Keep on seeking. Keep on knocking. So many times we have these little take it or leave it prayers. Again, remember the Lord Jesus told in Luke 18 about a widow. She went to an unjust judge. She asked the judge that he might adjudicate the thing rightly and the judge didn't fear God or man.
He's an atheist and a selfish lout and he wouldn't vindicate this widow. But she keeps coming and saying, I need to see the judge. She keeps asking. She keeps talking.
She keeps coming. And Jesus said after a while this judge will give her what she needs just to get her off his back. Now Jesus' illustration is if an unrighteous judge will do that, how much more will a righteous God hear our prayers? If we persist, Jesus is not saying that God is like an unrighteous judge. He's saying God is not like an unrighteous judge. And so if an unrighteous judge finally will do something to get somebody off his back, how much more shall your heavenly Father look to those who persist? Yes, God wants us to persist because God is doing something innocent through us. And all through the Bible you find the Lord Jesus Christ teaching persistence in prayer.
Whether you understand it or not, the Bible teaches it. You remember that woman, that Syrophoenician woman who came from the place we call Lebanon today? She was down there and she had a little daughter that was demon-possessed. She came to Jesus and she said, Jesus, please, please, Jesus, do something for my daughter. And the Lord Jesus said, why, it's not fitting, it's not proper that I would take the bread that is for children and give it to dogs. I didn't come to you. I came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
What an insult. Seemingly, he used the word for dog that meant household pet, a little puppy. I can't take the children's bread and give it to dogs. She said, oh, that's right, Lord. And she said, oh, Lord, listen, the dogs get the crumbs that fall under the table. And she used another word for dog which means mangy, yellow, back-alley, cur. She applied that to herself. Jesus' heart broke and he said, woman, great is your faith.
You'll have what you've asked. You see, she kept on knocking. Even the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father once, twice, thrice. Jesus, the Son of God, prevailed in prayer. The apostle Paul, the greatest Christian who ever lived, had a thorn in the flesh. And the apostle Paul prayed to God and he said, three times I asked God to take it away.
That doesn't mean I said once, twice, thrice, take it away. That means Paul had three extended sessions of prayer over a long period of time, I imagine. And then he got his answer. Don't tell me Paul's prayer was not answered.
It was answered and I'll say more about that later on. And Jesus' prayer was answered. As they persisted in prayer, Elijah prayed for rain. He was there on Mount Carmel. He sent his servant and said, go tell me if you see something. He said, I don't see anything.
Go again, go again, go again. He went the seventh time and he said, I see something, a cloud about the size of a man's hand. I believe that's just an illustration of old Elijah who had pressed his hand against heaven so hard. Elijah said, get up.
I hear the sound of the abundance of rain. He had learned to pray through. Jesus had asked. Jesus said, seek. Jesus says, knock, knock, knock and it shall be opened unto you.
That brings a question. How are we going to know when to stop asking, seeking and knocking? When do we stop?
That's a big question. Well, let me give you three steps here, three things, listen. When do you stop in this persistence in prayer?
First of all, you can stop when you get what you ask for. You ask God for it and he gives it to you. Sometimes God's prayers are direct. Sometimes they're different. Sometimes they're delayed and sometimes they're denied. So how do you know?
How do you know? Well, if God gives you what you ask for, then you have it. And I wish I had time in this message to tell you times that I've asked God for something so direct, so simple, so plain and God has given it to me so directly that there's no way in my mind to explain it apart from an absolute answer to prayer, miraculous answer to prayer. I ask and he gives and I say, thank you, God.
That's direct. All right, so if you get the answer, that's fine. But sometimes you pray and you don't have it in your hand but you have it in your heart and you can stop. I mean, God will say to you, you have it.
You have it. You have the assurance that what you've asked God for now, God has granted and God has given and you can begin to praise him for the answer. Sometimes God says no and you stop asking.
Now, if God says no, thank him. Thank him because God only gives good things, the rest of this parable says. How much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him? So you keep on asking until God says yes, you have it in your hand or yes, you have it in your heart or until God says no.
All right, now here's the final thing and I just have a few moments for this. You see, here's a promise to claim, here's a process to follow, and here's a provision to enjoy. Now, notice what our Lord says here about why he answers this prayer and how he answers. Go back to Matthew chapter 7, if you will, and see how our Lord illustrates this.
Here's the rationale. The Lord says, Or what man is there of you, whom, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him? How much more shall your heavenly Father give good gifts unto your heavenly Father? How much more shall your heavenly Father give good gifts unto your heavenly Father?
