The Best Gifts and Open Doors
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Say the Title: Great Gifts and Open Doors
Image of The Beatitudes here
Image of the Mountain of the Beatitudes here
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 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!
Matthew
If Jesus said these words, Does this somehow change your attitude towards prayer ?
Does this increase your expectation of God answering your prayers?
Two things you have to remember today:
Keep praying!
Come to God as a small child coming to a Loving Father!
Expect the best gifts!
Keep praying:
If we are going to assess how we manage our time:
TIme use Chart here
Honest answers:
When we think of the awesome privilege of prayer, it is tragic that people don’t pray.
Illustration of forfeiting something.
Discovering a check for a huge amount that is yours.. $27.. let’s blow it up into something big — what if the check is worth $1M?
We forfeit more than that when we don’t pray to our Father.
My prayer to God this morning is that this message from the words of Jesus our Lord Himself will bring you to not only be reminded to pray more often but rather a new natural tendency to pray.
Prayer should be as natural to us as breathing in oxygen to survive.
Keep Praying:
Jesus is teaching us here to be persistent in prayer, but the reality is that He is commanding us to just start asking if you haven’t done so.
Ask.
Seek.
Knock.
Many miss this, but in repeating and saying these in different verb forms Jesus is emphasizing his invitation.
Pray. Keep Praying. I mean this.
Why?
There is no reason to miss out on experiencing God’s answers to our prayers!
Ask simply ask.
Imagine yourself being a young child, living inside the mansion of the richest and most loving Father of all… if your Father is seen right before you..
24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Seek, if your father is unseen you look for him and you find him working in the garage..
Seek, if father is unseen
Knock, if your dad has locked himself inside his study working..
will yell, don’t bother me.
That is what necessarily a bad father, maybe a normal busy father will do.. go find mom!
Imagine the most perfect loving father who always has time for you.
He will set everything aside, open the door put you on his lap and ask what do you want my child?
Question: “Will God really set aside the rest of the problems of the world just for me? How can we do that? Well His an all powerful, all present God.
That chart that I showed you does not apply to God. He is not limited by space and time.
Another significance of an open door is that you may know what you want is good for you but the door is shut.
Keep knocking.
Don’t despair on the closed door. Be encouraged that it is God Who holds the doorknob.
Because when God finally opens the door for you, no one can shut.
This is true also in ministry, for the work of the Lord. Pray for open doors.
After Jesus was glorified, He appeared to the Apostle John and made this promise to His church, I pray this promise to CrossWind church.
8 “ ‘I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.
2. Expect the Best gifts!
9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?
God will never ever give us something that is bad for us, He is our Father.
Question is, it seems God will always answer my prayer, why hasn’t He?
God will only not only give us what is good for us. He wants the best for us!
His plan for you is perfect!
Finite beings that we are, we may think what we are praying for is good, but God knows what is best. He has the best in store for us.
11 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!
It maybe too that we think we are asking for bread, but God sees we are actually asking for a stone. - we don’t get nourished.
Or we think, we are asking for a fish but God sees we are actually asking for a serpent - it is harmful to us.
His timing is perfect.
His timing is perfect.
God develops and grows us in the period of waiting for that answer.
It is a matter of trust.
Finally:
Answered prayer is a benefit from Jesus’ Completed Work in Calvary.
11 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!
Jesus does not mince words, calling us evil!
Why would he consider us evil?
Isn’t it true that God does not hear the prayers of the wicked?
That the effective fervent prayer of the righteous avails much?
Jesus is talking of the sinful nature, that even His children still have.
God responds to our prayers in spite of us because we are His children.
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,
verse 8: Everyone.
verse 8: Everyone is only for His children
Renowned preacher John Piper said this:
“When you pause to consider that God is infinitely strong and can do all that he pleases, and that he is infinitely righteous so that he only does what is right, and that he is infinitely good so that everything he does is perfectly good, and that he is infinitely wise so that he always knows perfectly what is right and good, and that he is infinitely loving so that in all his strength and righteousness and goodness and wisdom he raises the eternal joy of his loved ones as high as it can be raised — when you pause to consider this, then the lavish invitations of this God to ask him for good things, with the promise that he will give them, is unimaginably wonderful.”
(John Piper)
You should now be encouraged to be inclined to pray:
Keep praying!
Expect the Best Gifts!