Promise of Prayer

 The Bible repeatedly commands us to take our needs to God in prayer, but prayer is not just a command.  

Prayer is a gift. It is our opportunity to take our burdens to the Lord and leave them.

There's no use taking your burden to the Lord and once you are finished praying picking it up and taking it with you.

No, we are to take our burdens to the Lord and leave them in his hands.

Knowing this raises the question, to what sort of person are we praying to? For instance, is the God of the Bible like the Greek god Zeus, who answered prayers, however his answers always came with a trap.

Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, fell in love with Tithonus, who was a mortal young man. She goes to Zeus asks him to make Tithonus live forever, but she forgot to ask that Tithonus might remain forever young; and so Tithonus grew older and older and older, and could never die, and the gift became a curse.

God always answers our prayer in love and wisdom. In other words, God is not going to give us something he knows is bad for us. We see this in our text:

Matthew 7:7-11 ⁷ O Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: ⁸For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. ⁹ Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? ¹¹  If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?  

Jesus's argument is simple; every good father knows how to give good gifts.  

What we find in these verses are 2 examples of bad gifts. Each example is an example of a bad gift masquerading as a good gift.

For instance, in verse 9, Jesus asks if your child asks for a loaf of bread would you give him a stone?  

Back then in the area that Jesus lived there were small stones that looked like small loaves of bread.  

The other example is if your child ask for a fish would you give him a serpent? Now the word serpent it's almost certainly referring to an ill which was considered unclean therefore inedible.  

The point that Jesus is making is, good fathers do not try to trick their children.  

As believers we are always trying to blame God for the decisions that we have made.

  The story of Adam and Eve comes to mind.  

God asked Adam why did you eat the fruit? And his response was, it wasn't my fault it was the wife that you gave me.  

In other words, don't blame me you gave me a bad gift. The problem was not the wife that God gave Adam. God gave Eve to Adam to bless him.  

Instead, the problem was that Adam and Eve did not trust God had their best interest in mind.  

Or we could see it like this: Adam and Eve felt as if God was tricking them. Their failure was a failure to trust that God was good.  

What do we have in our text today is not just some statements that Jesus made about prayer, we have a promise.  

The promise is this: if we go to God in prayer, he will grant our request based on his wisdom and love.  

God will always answer our prayers, but he will do so in his way, which is wise and loving.

  What does that mean?

•  God will never give you anything that will hurt you.
•  God’s gifts will always lead us back to him.  

God will never give you anything that will hurt you.  

That is, when we ask for a fish, he's not going to give us a rock.  

Some of you are probably thinking well I beg to differ. He gave me these kids and they broke my heart.  

Your children do not belong to you they belong to God.  

Children can make decisions on their own and those decisions either honor God or break his heart. We cannot blame God for the decisions of our children.  

I remember when I was a youth pastor there was a young man who really wanted to church camp but didn’t have the money.  

I prayed about it, and I felt impressed that God was leading me to pay so that he could go to church camp.

I remember at the time it was $185 for this kid to go, back then that was a lot of money to me. I paid for that kid to go, and he was a pain in the neck the entire week.

I thought to myself, God what were you thinking asking me to pay my hard-earned money for this knucklehead to go to camp?  

It wasn't God who was a pain in the neck the entire week it was this knucklehead teenage boy.  

God placed this young man in a position to hear from him, but he chose to ignore God the entire week. I can't blame God for that!  

You may have done all the right things for your kids.

• Made sure they went to church.
• Made sure they were fed.
• Made sure they had clothes on their backs.
• You kept a roof above their heads.  

You may have done everything that you knew to do but they still rebelled, that's not God's fault. They made those decisions not God.  

God's gifts will always lead us back to him.  

Everything that God gives us is meant to point us back to him. Bible says the heavens declare God's majesty. When we look at the beauty of nature, we see God's reflection.

James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.  

Every good thing in our lives is a gift from God and meant to point us back to him.  

Transition

Not only do we have the promise of prayer and the gift of prayer and this text, Jesus also gives us a key to success in prayer.

Matthew 7:7-11  ⁷Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: ⁸ For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. ⁹Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? ¹¹ If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?  

In the Greek language there are two kinds of imperatives: There is the aorist imperative, which issues one definite command. “Shut the front door” this is something that you do and once you've done it it's over.  

And there is the present imperative, which is a command that a person should always do something.  

So what Jesus is saying here is:

• keep asking,
• keep knocking,
• keep seeking.

The command here is that we should be persistent in prayer!  

The test any desire is will I consistently and persistently bring it to God in prayer.

Sometimes we pray for things and then life gets in the way, and we forget, and we stop praying for it. You know what that means? Chances are you didn’t really want what you were praying for in the first place.  

There are things that we pray for if God were to give it to us the moment we pray for it it, it would ruin us.

But God is good and only gives good gifts that are according to his love and his wisdom.  

This means that I should rest assured knowing that if I don't have it in my life, I don't need it.  

Our takeaway  

As believers we can pray freely knowing that God is always going to answer our prayers according to his love and wisdom.  

We don't have to worry about a trap. God is not going to trick us. He listens to our prayers, and he answers our prayers according to his nature which is perfectly wise and perfectly loving.  

What is it that you are praying for? Whatever it is you have the assurance that God is always listening.