You have asked God for this before. Not once. Not twice. You have taken it to Him so many times you have started to feel a little foolish bringing it up again. Maybe it is a marriage you have been praying would heal. Maybe it is a child, a diagnosis, a job, a breakthrough that keeps not showing up. And somewhere along the way, a thought creeps in that sounds spiritual but is not, that if you were really walking by faith, you would have stopped asking by now.
I want to deal with that thought directly, because it has kept a lot of good people quiet in front of God when they should have kept knocking. Delayed is not denied. That is not a slogan. It is the whole point of one of the most familiar passages in the Sermon on the Mount, and most of us have only heard half of what it is actually saying.
Matthew 7:7-8 says plainly, "Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you." Most people read that as a single transaction. You ask once, in faith, and that settles it. Ask again and you must not have believed the first time.
But in the original language, those three verbs are in a tense that carries the idea of continuous action. It is closer to keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. Jesus was not describing a single prayer. He was describing a lifestyle, a posture of staying utterly dependent on the Father instead of quietly drifting back to handling things in your own strength.
There is nothing unspiritual about bringing the same need to God more than once. Sometimes going back to Him is not about getting a different answer. It is about reminding yourself, again, that you need Him.
Giving up on a prayer too early does not usually look like a decision. It looks like exhaustion. You stop mentioning it. You stop expecting it. And underneath that quiet, there is almost always one of these:
Here is the part worth sitting with. Giving up too soon usually reveals a lack of trust in God's timing, not a lack of effort in your praying. In Luke chapter 11 Jesus told a parable about a friend who got up at midnight to help his neighbor, not because the neighbor was worthy, but because the neighbor would not stop asking. In Luke 18 he told another about a widow who wore down an unjust judge simply by refusing to quit showing up. Neither story hinges on the strength of anyone’s faith. Instead, they rely on persistence.
I think part of why we quit is that we start to believe this promise belongs to someone else. Maybe someone more spiritual than us. Possibly someone who has been serving God longer, or who has not made the mistakes we have made. But the ground is level at Calvary. There are no big I's and little you's at Calvary. Everyone who has ever come to Christ has come to Him the exact same way, through mercy, not merit. The person who gave their life to Jesus this morning has just as much standing to ask, seek, and knock as anyone who has walked with Him for many years.
Matthew 7:11, makes the case from something ordinary. "If you, being imperfect, still know how to give good gifts to your own children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him." You do not receive from God because you finally became good enough. You receive because of what the Cross has already accomplished, and that was settled long before you had anything to offer.
So keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking, even when it is the same door you knocked on yesterday, last week, last month, last year. Persistence is not weakness, and it is not proof that your faith is small. It is the activity of faith that stays anchored in a Father who is faithful to His word whether the answer comes today or later than you hoped. Delayed is not denied.
If this stirred something in you, Dr. Vorce writes more about living dependent on God's presence, not just believing in it, in his book Presence Driven. Get your free copy at jonathanvorce.com.
Remember..."The Word Will Work, If You Work the Word."
Get an email when a new post goes live.
No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Comments