2024-09-22 Increasing Faithfulness

Well, we are continuing our really short series here on / / Increasing Faithfulness.

And right away, I want to say that this is really all about our increasing faithfulness. Even last week, as we looked at Our Faithful Father, God does not increase in faithfulness. Our awareness and understanding of God’s faithfulness is what increases. And it is that way with so many things within the kingdom of God. Even salvation, or let’s say, what Christ accomplished on the cross. Jesus never has to go back to the cross, right? He completed his work. When He said, “It is finished” it was most definitely finished. But we all know that our lives as Christians progress. We learn, we grow, we become more aware of what Christ has done through that sacrifice. Even as we said last week. There is a big difference between KNOWING God is our Father, and EXPERIENCING God as our Father. We are the ones on this journey of increasing faithfulness. And so today, we are going to look at our side of that equation. / / What does it look like for us to increase in faithfulness?

And we will take a look at the first half of Matthew 7:7-11. Don’t worry, I won’t make any terrible 7-11 jokes today. Not saying I won’t make other terrible jokes, but not that one.

Last week we looked at vv 9-11 first because we have to establish God as Father before anything else. Jesus was so clear that he came to make a way for us to come to the Father. The New Testament is full of that language, that we are the children of God, that He is our Father, and when you do the hard work of believing in the Trinity, we believe in Father, Son & Holy Spirit. And by Hard Work I don’t mean like it’s actual work, or more appropriately physical work, but in the sense that it takes work to believe.

/ / Faith does not go unchallenged, does it?

Belief doesn’t just happen without the influences in our lives trying to take that belief out, right? By that I mean, the devil, the world and the flesh. All war against us to cause disbelief.

The devil has been doing it since day one. “Did God really say?” Right? That’s what he asked Adam and Eve in the garden. I think we’ve read this recently, but let’s just grab it again, Galatians 5:16-17, / / So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions.

Where does all of that battle really happen? In the mind, right? Where we believe. If I can get you to believe something you’re way more likely to follow that belief. But I have to get you to believe it first. This is why Paul says in Romans 12:2, / / …do NOT copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

Notice how he doesn’t say, “by changing the way you act.” God doesn’t change you by forcing your body to do what you don’t want it to do and force you to be holy. God isn’t following you around and slapping the drink out of your hand, or in my case, the donut. The Holy Spirit isn’t going around taking control of our bodies so we don’t sin… God wants to renew your mind, change the way you think, change your perspective and belief structure… because / / we do what we believe. Action follows belief!

Actually, we need to say, / / Action AND Inaction follow belief!

We do or don’t do based on what we believe. Our beliefs can just as easily stop us from doing something as they do convince us to do something.

We all know this to be true on so many levels, but we don’t often equate it to our Christian life. But the power of belief is incredibly real. And that’s inside or outside the church, that’s with Christian belief, or self-belief. That’s pagan or godly. The self-help gurus all agree: / / Believing is the first step to achieving.

And there’s hard work in defeating negative self-talk. Trust me. My therapist is constantly telling me I need to be kinder to myself. To watch for those points of negative self-talk. And by self-talk, again I mean, pay attention to where that’s coming from. It could be the devil, the world or the flesh. 1 Peter 5:8, / / Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Stand firm against him, and be strong in your faith.

Take that and add it to what Jesus says about this “great enemy” in John 8:44, / / “He has been a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

So, Jesus says two things there. / / First, there is no truth in the devil. / / Second, when he lies, that’s consistent with his character. Well, if there’s no truth in him, and his character produces lies, then everything everything that comes out of his mouth is what? It’s a lie, right?

It might look like the truth,

It might sound like truth,

it might resemble truth,

but it’s been twisted and shaped and formed into something that subverts or denies the truth,

or creates disbelief or distrust in the truth.

And I did my due diligence here, ok, I looked up that word “no” in the scripture, “there is NO truth in him.” it means / / the absolute negative. There is no room for variation here. Jesus isn’t saying there is only a little truth in the devil. He’s not saying that he tells everyone else lies, but when he tells you that you suck, it’s the truth. Or when he tells you that God doesn’t love you, or God treats you different than anyone else, or your prayers aren’t good enough, or wont’ be answered, or you messed up too much for forgiveness….everyone else it’s a lie, but for some reason, when he talks to you, it’s the truth.

Anyone else like that? No, just me? ok…

We are just too good at this. Honestly. If you believe a lie about yourself I’ll fight all day long for you to not believe it. I’ll quote all the scripture and all the truth at you and do everything I can to make sure you see just how ridiculous it is that you believe such an obvious lie… but then for whatever reason when it comes to myself, when I hear the same thing…why is it that I struggle with it? Why is it that I doubt? Why do I wonder if suddenly it actually IS true?

Ok, this is why it’s so critically important to understand WHO our Father is. That He is good, and perfect and that He loves you, that He has given you the Holy Spirit when you believed in Jesus Christ, and it is through the power of His Spirit that he has and is pouring out His love into your heart.

So, two things are crucially important here when it comes to the Father. John writes in 1 John 4:9, / / God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love - not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

God loves you so much he sent his Son to die for you to make a way for you to come to him. Remember, Jesus is the way, the truth, the life, and it is by him that we come to the Father.

Second, what we read last week. Luke 11:13 (ESV), / / If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Remember, statement, not question!

And it is by that Spirit we are transformed in this life. 2 Corinthians 3:17, 18 says, / / For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom… And the Lord - who is the Spirit - makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image.

So what is / / God the Father doing here?

/ / He gives his son to save us from death and the grave, the effect of sin.

/ / He gives his Spirit to bring us life and love and wholeness through transforming us into the likeness of Christ.

Ok, so turn that around, what then is our role in this?

/ / To follow Jesus, the one who is the way, the truth and the life.

/ / By following the leading of the Holy Spirit, who leads to life, who leads us away from our sinful past and our sinful nature.

And this happens as we learn more and more, and receive more and more the love of our heavenly Father, who has given these gifts to us, the Son and the Spirit.

This is the journey of the Christian. To believe in the Son and follow his way, whom the Father sent, to accept the gift of the Spirit and follow his leading, whom the Father sent, so we can receive the overflowing love of the Father in truth and relationship.

But if we don’t trust the Father, if we don’t believe God is good, then all of that is very difficult to accept, isn’t it?

Belief dictates acceptance. If I don’t believe, I won’t receive. I can’t accept your love if I don’t believe you love me. Doesn’t matter how much you actually love me. It’s very difficult for me to receive that love when I don’t believe that I’m worthy of love. When I don’t believe that you’re good.

I dealt with that for years and years. I had such a self-defeating belief system about love that I was 100% convinced that no one would ever love me. Not for who I was. Especially romantically. I thought I was destined to be single for my whole life. There was no way someone would love me. That was my belief. Right or wrong: you couldn’t convince me otherwise.

When friends would say silly things like, “You’re going to make a great husband one day.” I would laugh… right.

Until I spent enough time in the presence of God WANTING to believe. I did some hard work. I did. I knew there was a problem. Why? Because the word of God is true. Let me ask you a question. / / If you don’t believe something that the Word of God says is true, is the problem with the Bible, or is the problem with you?

We have too many people who argue with the bible because they think they know better. And that is simply the work of the devil trying to get between you and the truth, who is the Son, who the Spirit is trying to lead you to, who the Father sent to you. You don’t know better than the bible. But, if you don’t know the bible, first of all, you don’t know the truth. And second, if you don’t work at believing the scriptures, you’ll end up with the devil walking all over you with his lies. And remember, nothing he says is true. As much as you want to believe it about yourself, it’s not true.

So, last week we established. Not only does Jesus have a Father, but that Father is YOUR Father, and He is perfect. He is good. He gives good gifts, and loves you in the same way, and just as much as He loves His Son.

That is the foundation this is built on. NOW we can get to the first part of Matthew 7:7-11. We looked at vv 9-11 last week, let’s go through vv 7-8 today, but we’ll read the whole passage as a reminder and then focus in on those first two verses.

/ / “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 the one who knocks it will be opened. 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!”

And again, statement, not question.

It’s amazing how Jesus talks here, and I think sometimes we think He wouldn’t talk in that way. He’s Jesus. We read scripture with reverence and awe. As we should. But also, and I said this in the last couple weeks, Jesus was a brilliant communicator. He was a good teacher. He left people really thinking. Sometimes completely dumbfounded. And sometimes, he was too clever, and left them utterly confused. But he makes these three statements and then almost these ridiculous rhetorical questions. Look at it.

These three statements he makes. And we’ll rearrange them a bit here.

/ / Ask, and it will be given to you…For everyone who asks receives.

/ / Seek, and you will find… [For] the one who seeks finds.

/ / Knock, and it will be opened to you… [For] the one who knocks it will be opened.

“Because obviously you would never give someone a rock when they ask for a piece of bread. I mean come on. Your kid comes to you and asks for some fish…what are you gonna do, hand them a snake? Come on, no one’s going to do that.” And everyone is laughing…”hahaha… so true Jesus… I mean, maybe Bartholomew over there..he’s a bit of a jerk to his kids…but ya, the rest of us, totally right Jesus.”

So listen. If you get that about yourselves. How much more is your perfect heavenly Father going to give you good things when you ask him!

So, this rhetorical, sarcastic sounding statement from Jesus would have hit home.

But now, what’s he telling them to do in light of that? We are slower to the truth maybe because we don’t have thousands of years of believing God is Father to us as a special group of people, but if we can get that, as we saw last week, and this week, God is our Father and He is perfect and He loves us, gave his Son for us, gives us his Spirit, is pouring his love into our hearts…. if we can get that… then we can begin to hear what Jesus is saying in these three statements.

/ / 1. Asking & Receiving

“Ask, and it will be given to you… For everyone who asks receives.”

Now, let’s address this first. I think most people, most bible commentaries are going to direct this little teaching here, vv 7-11, on prayer. Think about it. You go to 7-11 for everything you need…. oohh… I know, I said no 7-11 jokes today.

But, it’s true. It lends itself very well to the idea and the topic of prayer. If Prayer is communicating with God, and if asking God for things we need in our lives is part of prayer than the statement, “Ask and you shall receive” is clearly directing us in at least some way to prayer.

One of my favorite passages of Scripture on the topic of prayer: Philippians 4:6-7 says, / / Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Ask and you shall receive. Don’t worry about anything, instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need.

So the first part of this point that Jesus is making, and remember the sarcasm a bit, ok, I want you to hold on to that just a little bit. But Jesus is saying, / / If you do not ask, how on earth could you possibly receive?

James writes about this in his letter. It’s an interesting take as well. He equates the struggles we have in our relationships to first our disordered longings, our desire for things we don’t need or shouldn’t have AND the inability to truly ask God for what we do need in our life. Listen to what he says. James 4:1-3, / / What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong - you want only what will give you pleasure.

Interesting, right? To bring so many of our issues back to, “You’re not talking to God about this…” Wow!

And to bring the small and the large up in it. He’s talking quarrels and wars! It doesn’t matter what level you are at, in your home with just your spouse, or one child like we have, or a family of 10, or the president of a nation, you have not because you aren’t going to God!

So that’s the first point - / / To receive you must ask.

The second point within this first little statement Jesus makes is that to receive, you must believe. Now, he doesn’t say that directly, but it is certainly implied, especially if you know the rest of scripture.

Hebrews 11:6, another of my favorites, another verse you should commit to memory, / / And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

Do you believe God rewards?

Do you believe that if you ask, you will receive?

James comments on that thought too. Now, he’s talking specifically about Wisdom in this verse, but I think it is fair to say it applies across the board here. James 1:5-8, / / If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. But when you ask him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. Such people should not expect to receive anything form the Lord. Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

How often does this happen. You really wants to ask someone a question, but you shy away thinking the person doesn’t have time, or thinking the question is stupid, or that you’re somehow putting the person out by asking. So what do you do? You don’t ask. Why? Because you don’t trust enough that this person won’t view you differently because of their question.

Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t trust the person themselves. But it means that you’re afraid of how the question, the statement, or whatever, will cause you to be viewed that you would rather go on with the question in life than look some sort of way for asking it. And that doesn’t have to be for fear of the person themselves, it can be out of personal insecurity, or fear within ourselves that we don’t ask. That’s what James is pointing to when he says, / / He will not rebuke you for asking…

Why would God rebuke us for asking for wisdom? He wouldn’t ….but do we fear that he would? Maybe.

How many times has someone said they want to ask you something, or even just look like they have a question, and you say, “Hey, what’s up?” And they respond, “No, it’s ok. I don’t want to bother you…” or “You seem busy” or “It’s ok, I’m good.” This is why I try to say as much as possible, as your pastor, I am available. I know sometimes I’m busy. And I know sometimes my face doesn’t look like I’m available, but look past the blank expression on my face and see my heart. I love you and I am here for you in any way that I can be. And it is important that you know that because if we are not leaning on each other within the body of Christ we are missing a HUGE part of our inheritance as Christians. Jesus said the world is meant to know us by how we love each other. But if we’re not loving each other because we don’t have the opportunity to actually be there for each other, then the world has nothing to see to convince it that Christ is the way to salvation and life.

Also, a word on James’ seemingly unfair statement about people being like a wave tossed around in the sea and shouldn’t expect anything from God.

This is not a judgment or condemnation, this is a call back to focus. I had a moment this past week, I had been working through something that I needed to present to someone else and I was suddenly overwhelmed with insecurity and lack of confidence. I was convinced the other person was thinking something they probably are not. I was afraid of rejection. I was afraid of things going horribly wrong. And it took me sitting down and just saying, “What is going on here? Why am I feeling this?” And I was able to sort out some key questions and thoughts that allowed me to refocus and regain that confidence. But in that state of feeling very flustered, I couldn’t prayer properly, I couldn’t think straight, I was confused, I was like a wave tossed by the sea, unsure of everything… Until I looked up and saw Jesus walking on the water in the midst of my own personal little storm…

So, / / Ask and it will be given to you; For everyone who asks receives…

Settle within yourself the truth of who God is, so that you can ask with confidence. Read and study the word of God, pay attention to the way of Jesus, ask the Spirit of God to lead you in truth and guide you in life so you are asking in line with His heart for your life.

One more note on this. Notice how Jesus says, when he brings in the sarcasm, / / “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” that word, / / good, is agathos, it literally means good, or of good benefit, that which is good, useful, pleasant…

Your heavenly Father knows what is GOOD for you. We think we do. But so often we don’t.

We can so easily think more money will solve our problems.

We can so easily believe that if that one person got removed from our office, all would be well.

We can easily ask God to just remove the obstacle in our lives so we don’t have to deal with them.

But sometimes the money would corrupt

Sometimes that person in the office is the very thing in your life that is refining YOUR character.

Sometimes that obstacle is building your faith, challenging your endurance, making you wrestle with faith and trust so that you come out on the other side a proven warrior ready to help others through their difficult times.

What’s best by our standards is not always best by God’s standard for our lives. That’s another thing James is saying when he says we ask with wrong motives because we ask for our own pleasure, or for what would be pleasing to us. Better said, what would make our lives easier.

But God gives good, appropriate, for our benefit gifts…

/ / 2. Seeking & Finding

“…seek, and you will find… [For] the one who seeks finds.”

Again, the implication here is pretty straight forward. You can’t find if you’re not looking. Oh Gosh, how many times have I said that to my daughter….. how many times has Kelley said that to me?!?!?!?!

Did you even look for this???

Yes, of course I did…If I knew it was there I would have gone right too it!

Oh the seeking powers of a wife and mother!

Jesus probably could have added that before he said this one, “Ok, men, this one is specifically for you… well, children too… listen up… You won’t find what you’re looking for unless you actually look for it. You might actually have to lift up the couch cushions, or look under the bed, or ***gasp*** move some things around in your room!!!”

Now, this is just a true statement across the board. You don’t find what you’re looking for unless you’re willing to seek it out. But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…

“Ya, because you didn’t look under the couch!!!”

But again, Jesus isn’t just giving some really practical wisdom here, right? He is challenging our core beliefs about who God the Father is and how he has promised he would treat us, how He would be there for us.

This is a promise long held within the Jewish faith.

Proverbs 8:17, / / I love all who love me. Those who search will surely find me.

Psalm 63 is a beautiful writing of David that expresses this, and if you look at the passage in your bible, underneath the chapter heading it will probably say, / / A psalm of David, regarding a time when David was in the wilderness of Judah.

So, this would have been before David is king, in that season of time when he is running and hiding from Saul, the current king, who is trying to kill him. So, let’s read the first 8 verses of Psalm 63.

/ / O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you.

My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water.

I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory.

Your unfailing love is better than life itself;

how I praise you! I will praise you as long as I live, lifting up my hands to you in prayer.

You satisfy me more than the richest feast. I will praise you with songs of joy.

I lie awake thinking of you, meditating on you through the night.

Because you are my helper, I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings.

I cling to you; your strong right hand holds me securely.

It helps if I could have put it all on the screen together and show you some separation, but did you you hear the call and response here?

This is the promise of God. That if you seek, you will find.

Deuteronomy 4:29, / / But from there you will search again for the Lord your God. And if you search for him with all your heart and soul, you will find him.

2 Chronicles 7:14, / / Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.

Jeremiah 29:13, / / “If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.”

The ESV says it this way, / / “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”

So you see this call and response, right? That’s what David was describing in Psalm 63,

God you are my God, I earnestly search for you….I have seen you, your unfailing love I have felt…

How I praise you, lifting up my hands to you in prayer… You satisfy me…

I lie awake thinking of you, meditating on you… Your strong right hand holds me securely…

I’m thirsting for you, I’m praising you, I’m praying, I’m thinking, meditating on you, on your word and what happens? I find you… I see you… You fulfill the needs in my heart… you hold me securely… I feel your strength.

So, I said this is about OUR increasing faithfulness. What does it truly mean to seek God? Because that can feel a little illusive, can’t it? He’s God after all. And I mention this often, but there are very natural things we do as Christians that produce wonderful supernatural results in our lives.

Ok, you know how I said earlier that I had this struggle this past week. You want to know when it hit its peak? Right in the middle of fasting on Wednesday. Oh man, did I want to give up. Not only did I want to eat, I wanted to eat all the things. The sugar, the carbs, the bread, the chips, the donuts, the whatever I could find. I wanted to… I did not. I pushed through. Did I feel some surge of supernatural strength to get me through. NO. I DID NOT… And at 7:22 when the sun set I ate. I ate what I’m allowed to eat, but I ate. I was ready.

But when did the breakthrough come? The breakthrough wasn’t in the time of fasting. The breakthrough wasn’t in the steak I ate immediately after fasting. The breakthrough came Thursday morning as I spent time reflecting on the Lord, asking hime to speak to me, with my journal in my hand, as I just took a moment to meditate on Him and His goodness. That is when the breakthrough came in my heart and my mind.

Wonderful supernatural response from a very frustrating but obedient physical natural act of worship.

I can’t explain that. I‘m not sure anyone one really can, except to say this seems to be how the kingdom of heaven works. It is real. It is true. I’m seeing it more and more as I continue to be faithful in this.

I have testimonies. People coming to me saying, “You know pastor, when I started faithfully reading my bible everyday I started to see change in my life. I can’t explain it, but it happened…”

So Jesus is stepping it up… Not only do you ask, but you seek. You don’t just open your mouth, but you get off your but and get to the hard work of seeking out God through being obedient to what he’s laid out for us to do. Then what’s next?

/ / 3. Knock on the door…

“knock, and it will be opened to you… [For] to the one who knocks it will be opened.”

I think there’s something happening here. Jesus is doing two things:

First, do you see the progression going on here.

Asking is verbal, you make the request but there’s not much more to it.

Seeking is getting up and moving, actively searching for something.

Knocking is finding what you’re looking for and taking that next step of really going after it, but this also has an element of endurance, patience and waiting. We have control over the knocking, but we don’t have control over the opening.

So, there’s this progression that’s happening in Jesus’ teaching.

But also, the second thing He’s doing here is that this is the third way to say kind of the same thing, isn’t it? Ask, seek, knock….receive, find, door open…

They all point to an action that produces a result.

And this again shows the teaching style and brilliance of Jesus. This is a literary practice, it is a teaching skill, it is a memorization tool. The Rule of Threes. It’s important, so we repeat and repeat so we will really get it.

And each one of these statements invokes a different image to describe essentially the same thing.

We know what it means to ask, we’ve been doing it all our lives, since we were kids.

We know what it’s like to have to try and find something… seeking isn’t always easy.

And we know what it’s like to stand at a door and knock, and then have to wait. And knock again, to get their attention, and then wait. The door isn’t ours to open, it’s just our job to knock and be faithful to stand in the place of waiting.

So, this last one here, as we are talking about increasing faithfulness, really asks the question / / “Where’s our faithfulness? What if it takes God longer to open the door than we want?”

What if it takes God longer to answer the prayer than we think He should take?

That can be frustrating, can’t it?

And I would imagine we have all been there, and are maybe even currently there. We have prayers, petitions, requests, before God that we have yet to see answered. We have been seeking and seeking and seeking, working our butt off looking everywhere we can and we have yet to find, and maybe we’ve been knocking on every door we see, and it just seems that they aren’t being opened.

What’s going on??? I want to end this morning by encouraging you to pick yourself up and dust yourself off. No matter what you’re going through, if it’s been a difficult season, if it’s been hard. / / The key to longevity in anything is faithfulness. I know, that sounds so cliché, but it’s true.

That’s what last week and this week are really about. When we read Matthew 7:7-11, what Jesus is saying is, “Don’t you realize that my Father is faithful, and is inviting faithfulness.”

God is faithful. But as I often say, and encourage you, God will not take absolute control of your life. God is not going force you into something. If you read scripture from the front to the back the invitation over and over and over again is “Follow me.”

What does he say to Abraham? Go, leave your home and your family and start walking and I will show you where to go.

What does Jesus say? If you want to be my disciple, you have to give up your own way and follow me.

These are invitations to be faithful. And because of God’s faithfulness through the generations, we have all the reason in the world to be faithful. It is because of His faithfulness that we can faithfully follow Him. God doesn’t ask us to blindly trust someone who has NOT proven themselves. Read the pages of the bible, God has given us practically an unlimited number of reasons to trust him.

/ / Jesus is inviting faithfulness and endurance BASED on the faithful and perfect nature of God the Father.

That’s why these rhetorical, sarcastic statements are so perfect, “You wouldn’t give a snake to your son or daughter when they are asking for fish, or a rock to your child asking for bread. And you know how bad you are. How much more is the perfect Father, who you have believed in all these years, who you know is your God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, your Father, how much more would he give you good things when you ask!”

And for some reason we give up too soon. We stop asking, we stop seeking, we stop knocking.

Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all time, on the way to practice one day his dad said to him, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” In his 20 year career he made 5,088 shots on net, and 894 of them went into the net. Now, if you were to say that his success rate was 17.5% you might be able to argue he wasn’t really the best. But he’s the number one goal scorer in the NHL and he retired 25 years ago. No one has broke his record yet.

If Basketball is more your speed then this might make more sense… Michael Jordan said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-wining shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

For fear of not making the shot, we often don’t make it.

For fear of God not answering prayer, we don’t pray the prayer.

For insecurity, or unsureness of finding God, we don’t seek.

For not understanding how on earth prayer, or reading the bible, or fasting, or faithfully going to church could ever make a real difference in our lives, we don’t see why we should be faithful in those things.

And I get it. Maybe you’ve asked a few times and feel like God hasn’t answered.

Maybe you’ve sought God at times, but you gave up. You were reading the bible, but it wasn’t the easiest of reads, so you put the book down. Or maybe you started fasting a few weeks ago on Wednesdays, but you’ve since stopped because, well, who really wants to fast. Maybe you were dedicated for a season to pray every morning, or every night, but you’ve been tired lately, so you just head to bed when you turn off the TV. What about church? Have you ever made the commitment, “I’m going to go to church faithfully…” or as parents, we know Church is absolutely crucial for our children, but that’s sort of fallen through the cracks when life gets busy.

Have you knocked on what you thought were the promises of God and the door just seemed to remain closed.

Have you knocked on opportunity, but it didn’t pan out.

Did you think God was saying one thing, but it fell through, and you’ve been carrying disappointment because it didn’t happen the way you thought? Whether that a job, or a relationship, or whatever it might be. You followed, you knocked, thought it was going to be the right fit and then it fell through.

This is what we would call growing in our theology of mystery. I can not and won’t ever be able to explain to you why some things happen and others don’t. Why we see some people healed and others not healed and sometimes we see people die that we just can’t explain how on earth it happened that way. Why some prayers seem to get answered, but others do not. I don’t know why. And unfortunately it’s not mine to figure out. It is a mystery.

I’ve said this before: Our responsibility in following after God is to do our best to walk in the direction He leads us, following, to the best of our ability the way and life of Jesus, and that includes this asking, seeking, knocking… prayer, following his direction, his way of life, the spiritual disciplines that seem all too natural… and when you are faithful in your life, if you suddenly find yourself 10 steps ahead in your journey as if by some miracle, then praise God for it. And if by all the strength you can muster you take those 10 steps, one heavy foot in front of the other, praise God for His grace in the journey.

I think of my situation this past week. When I was so deeply tempted to give in while I was fasting. I can honestly tell you I would not have had the breakthrough I had on Thursday morning if I had given in. Not because God wouldn’t have been gracious to me. But because I myself would have been in a sugar coma and my head and my heart would have been concerned with other things than being on my face before God seeking Him, and searching the deep place of my heart.

All I am saying is that I am learning in this process, and I know that it was in that moment of obedience that I was brought to a place of petition, of asking, seeking, knocking before God and He responded.

So, in those moments where it has felt like things didn’t pan out, can you hold the mystery and be courageous in your faith?

Can you trust enough to ask again?

Can you trust enough to seek again?

Can you trust enough in the faithfulness of God the Father to get up and knock on the next door door?

To be faithful to the process, knowing that he is a faithful God. Because asking, seeking and knocking aren’t about our earthly desires, but they are about the invitation to faithfully pursue a faithful God.

So, my encouragement to you this morning is:

/ / Ask faithfully… because he is a faithful Father who hears and answers prayer.

/ / Seek faithfully… because he is a faithful Father who wants to and promises to be found.

/ / Knock faithfully… keep knocking, don’t stop! Because He is faithful and trustworthy to open the door and welcome you in!