S. Ask and it shall be given you

Ask and it shall be given you.

Ask and it shall be given you. Matthew 7:7.

ONE thing is certain, the Lord Jesus Christ believed in prayer. It is no new thing to find some persons who question the reality of prayer. There have always been such persons; but the Lord Jesus Christ believed in it. He showed his belief by often teaching us that we ought to pray, by assuring us that prayer will be heard, and by praying much himself. When a person, profoundly sincere and highly intelligent, frequently urges others to do a certain thing, and frequently does it himself, we are sure that he believes in it; so, whenever a man undertakes to say that prayer is not a reality, it ought to be distinctly borne in mind that he flings away the authority of Jesus Christ; that he arrays himself openly and hopelessly against the whole genius of the Christian religion, against the plainest teachings and constant practice of its founder.

We ought always to see where we are and to see what is the meaning of this or that position.

I do not know whether it is worth while, in passing, even for a moment, to recall the sensation of a few years ago on this subject, and remark upon it. I suppose that the idea of what they used to call a prayer test in the newspapers is plainly enough a thing improper and impossible. It is improper, because to ask Christians to confine their prayers to one side of a hospital, and pray not at all for the unhappy sufferers on the other side, is to ask a thing out of the question a refined species of cruelty to be practiced by those who believe in prayer. It is. improper, too, because it proposes that we should try experiments upon God. They did sometimes try that sort of thing upon Jesus Christ, and he invariably refused to submit to it. He wrought wonders and signs beyond number when he thought proper; but when they demanded a sign according to what they thought proper, he never granted it. For us to do this that is proposed would be just that which they did. And besides being improper, it is also impossible. We do not believe that prayer now works miracles. It is not the idea at all that prayer operates with respect to physical fixed forces otherwise than in accordance with physical laws. And so if you suppose prayer to be answered in such a case, it could only be in concurrence with proper physical conditions. Then the unbeliever would say at once that this is not a result of prayer. Such a test is impossible unless prayer works miracles, and no one who understands the matter would suppose that to be the idea. Is it not true, then plain enough now as we look back upon it that the great newspaper sensation of a few years since was a thing improper and a thing impossible? But for us who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, it comes back to this, that our yearning after God and that disposition to cry out to him for mercy and help, which is no invention of theological thinkers, which is the natural product of the human heart and the natural expression of human need and dependence, has the high sanction of the Founder of Christianity. He believed in prayer; he taught us to pray; he said: “Ask, and it shall be given.” And notice how often he has repeated it. One might say that that one word was enough; one might say that all human hearts ought to fasten on that one utterance, and feed themselves on it, and rejoice in its assurances. But he said it three times: “ Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” As if not content with that, he repeats it three times again, in the form of an assurance that so it always is. “ For every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it is opened.” And even after that he goes on to argue it by a most cogent argument and affecting appeal. Why this multiplied repetition and assurance?

Ah! my friends and brethren, he knew very well how imperfectly we believe in prayer; how difficult it is for us to treat prayer as a reality, and he wanted to help us. He condescends to our infirmity, and again and again, in multiplied forms of expression, he would assure us that if we ask, we shall receive. You know how prone we are to make prayer degenerate into an outward thing. A little child needs to be constantly reminded by its mother that it must not just say prayers, but must mean what it is saying. And we, with all our intelligence and culture, are apt to make our public and private prayer a mere outward thing.

How hard it is for us also, when we try to pray, to realize what we are doing! I remember being once deeply impressed with this thought when present at an institution for the deaf and dumb. After some teaching had been done, one of the principal instructors proceeded to give them a little address on religion, we were told, and then he called upon them to pray. The whole room was still. He stood with reverent face and slowly moved his hands and arms in the signs which they understood, and they sat before him with distended, gazing eyes, and the room grew still as with the stillness of death. I said to myself I could hear my heart beat I said “ This is praying.” Not a word spoken, but this was praying, praying without any of the forms to which we are accustomed. The eyes were wide open, not a sound was heard, and yet human souls were entering into communion with the Father of all spirits. I went away with a profounder sense than ever before of the distinction between the mere outward form and means of prayer, and the inner spirit which is prayer. Now, our Saviour knows that it is hard for us to realize what we do when we are trying to pray.

He also knows how prone we are to be discouraged in our attempts to pray; when we try experiments upon prayer, and get out of heart, and quit. As a man who is endeavoring to eifect some invention, and has given all his labor and used all his materials, hoping that he will get the result, when he fails, gives over the experiment, so, how often do we make a mere half-hearted experiment of praying for a certain blessing upon ourselves and others, and when it does not come, we are tempted to give it up as a failure! The Saviour knows how impatient we are that the blessing shall come quickly, and therefore cautions us not to faint when we do not receive it on the instant. We may not receive it in the form we looked for. It may come in a form so different that we shall scarcely recognize it as what we asked for; and so he gives us his assurance and seeks to build up confidence in our hearts that praying is a reality, that prayer is a power. And now notice the affecting appeal our Lord proceeds to make an appeal which those of us who are parents will feel in all its fullness, but which all of us can feel more or less because all of us know something of the affection of our own parents. “ What man is there of you a mere man who, if his son ask for bread, will he give him a stone?” Will he give him something that looks like bread, but which is worthless? “ Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?” something that looks like a fish but which is poisonous and deadly? Will he mock his child’s petition by giving him something like what he asked for, but that would be useless and harmful? And if ye who are evil, with all the imperfections of your sinful humanity, if ye know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good things to them that ask him. It is not an argument merely, as I used to think it was it is not an argument merely as to willingness to give. It is an argument as to wisdom in giving. If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. The parent might make a mistake himself and give a stone for bread, or a serpent for a fish; as a rule, parents do not do, this; and if even ye, in your ignorance, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him! It does at times happen that when our children ask for bread we do give them a stone; sometimes, alas! when they ask for a fish we give them a serpent. We do this because we make sad mistakes. How many parents think they are giving their children something good when they are giving them that which is useless or hurtful, as if they should give them a poisonous serpent that would sting them to death, though they do not know it! Often, too, we are ignorant, slothful or even selfish, and when the child asks, we won’t take the pains to judge carefully, and when the child entreats again and again, we weakly yield. But if even we who are ignorant, heedless, selfish, know how to give good gifts, how much more will our Heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask him, for he never makes mistakes and never neglects! How beautiful that old saying, “He is too wise to err, and too good to be unkind!” He never makes mistakes in listening to our requests. He is never too busy to attend to our wishes. And the very thought of his being unkind is intolerable.

So, then, our Father is not only willing to give, he is wise in giving. That is the point, and just there lies one of the greatest privileges the Scriptures open up to us, in the assurance that God will give wisely, and this involves withholding where he shall see that withholding is better. That is the sweetest privilege of prayer. For if God should give to you and me an unlimited promise of earthly good for the asking, the more we know ourselves and the more we understand human nature and human life, the more afraid we should be that we might ask for things which would be harmful. Have you not often asked God for something which you have lived to find out would have been a curse to you? Have you not often entreated God to spare you something which it turned out to be a blessing to you that he did not spare? Have you not learned more and more how little you could rely upon your judgment as to what was really best? So I say in that case the wisest and best people would be the slowest to ask, and people would pray less in proportion as they are better fitted to receive. But, as God is wise in giving, we may ask without fear. If we ask for something that we think is good and he sees it is evil, we may be sure that he will not grant it. If we ask for what is really good, he will do for us either what we ask or something which he sees to be better than what we asked. And so I repeat that this is a part of the privilege of prayer.

One Sunday afternoon, now many years ago, I remember to have been sitting in a darkened room with the body of a little child; and in the room was a little boy ten or twelve years of age, one of those strange, thoughtful children that startle us so by asking questions that sink down deep into the mysteries of human life.

After a long silence the boy spoke, and said, “ Uncle, I should like to ask you something.” “ Well.” “ Does not the Bible say that whatever we ask God, he will do for us?” “Yes.” “Well, I did ask him to spare my little cousin’s life I did ask him and he did not do it.

I asked him and I don’t know what to think about it.”

Ah! I thought, as we sat in the darkened room, how far down the child is going already into the sorrowful depths of the human heart! The answer I made was something like this: “ You know that if your father should send you off to boarding-school, and were to tell you in parting that whatever you wanted you must write to him” and you should have it; and if you were to write to your father, on the strength of that promise, for something that was not right for him to give, or was not really best for you, your father would be very sure not to give it to you, and if he did not give it to you, would you think he had broken his promise?” The child heaved a sigh and said, “ Yes; I think I see how it is.’ 1 And my friends, the more you reflect upon it, the more comfort there is in that thought, that, in answering our prayer for temporal good, our Heavenly Father will give wisely, and so will even refuse our prayer when He sees that something else is better. This remarkable encouragement to prayer occurs towards the close of the Sermon on the Mount. Some of the commentators think there is no connection between it and the discourse that precedes; but it seems to me that the connection is plain. “Ask, and ye shall receive,” explains what he had been saying a little before. He said: “Judge not, that you be not judged;” and what good man ever heard that read, or read it himself, without smitings of heart? It is one of the commonest things, this business of harsh judgment of others, and it is very difficult for us to avoid it. We are so ready, the most thoughtful and purest of us, so ready to be hard upon others and easy upon ourselves, when we ought to reverse that proceeding. “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Then, as you read along, behold you find something that seems to present a new and opposite difficulty. “ Give not that which is holy to the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” The purport of this is somewhat obscure; but one thing is clearly involved. We must know the character of those with whom we have intercourse, and deal with them accordingly; and yet we must not judge harshly. We must refrain from judgment, and at the same time must keep our own eyes open and know men. Now, when you put those things together, you say, Ah! who is sufficient for these things? Who can go through life, knowing the folly of men, understanding their wiles and their weaknesses, and yet not judging his fellow-men in an unkindly spirit? But he who enjoins these two difficult and seemingly antagonistic precepts immediately afterwards says: “ Ask, and it shall be given you.” Hard it is for us to do such things as these; but “ask, and it shall be given you.”

Again, if you go a little further back in the discourse, you will find he urges upon us not to be anxious about temporal good, not to be anxious about food and raiment, not to be anxious about to-morrow; and those who most earnestly try to follow that know best how hard it is to obey the command. Ah, as the responsibilities of life thicken around us, and there come to be others concerned in our action, it grows all the harder to restrain ourselves from anxiety about human affairs. In fact, we are obliged to look sharply to the future and plan for it, even for the far distant future. And yet here is Jesus Christ telling us not to be anxious about temporal good, not to be anxious about the future, but to put our trust in God’s providence and to seek God’s righteousness, and then there shall come a blessing upon our planning and exertion, and we need not be anxious. It is so hard, you say, for a man to go on amid grave responsibilities, and yet to restrain himself from this anxiety, so hard; but he who urged this upon us did not cease speaking before he said: “ Ask, and it shall be given you.”

Yet again, going further back in the discourse, you find that we must seek ever, and not be content without, a higher spiritual morality than that of the Scribes and Pharisees. Now, the Scribes and Pharisees, so far as outward proprieties of life are concerned, were eminently good men; and yet he tells us we must be better than they were. We must not only be outwardly good, but within we must be pure from sin. We must not only have the outward appearance of chastity, but he tells us that there may be in a lustful look the essential element, and therefore the guilt, of unchastity. We are not only to restrain ourselves from external wrongdoing, but govern our thoughts and desires, and control our whole inner being, and make the world within us conform to the spirit of the teachings of Christ. And you say: “ O, how difficult, how difficult!” Yes, difficult; but he who enjoined this upon us did not cease to speak on that same occasion till he had said, “Ask, and it shall be given you.”

So, then, my hearers, let us learn to put the precepts of Christ along with Christ’s invitation to seek help from on high. He who gave these stringent commands gave us encouragement to come and ask for help, the help of his grace, the help of his Holy Spirit. “ How much more,” as our Lord expressed it on another occasion, “ will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him.” My friends, why do you not pray? Are you ashamed to pray? There are people not ashamed to be practicing vice, not ashamed to be heard speaking blasphemy, but ashamed to have it known that they pray. There are people that are too proud to bow their knees before the Lord God. There are people that think somehow it is beneath their dignity to pray. Are you ashamed to pray? The poet Coleridge wrote something in his youth which made light of prayer; but, in his later years, he called a friend to him one day and referred to what he had written and published, and said, “It was all folly,” and then he said in earnest tones, “ The very noblest possible exercise of the human mind is prayer.” Is it not so? When men in all the loftiness of intellect look deepest into the spaces of the universe and widest into its wonders; when men, in the might of administrative talent, make it their ruling thought to control whole nations and the age they live in; when men govern great assemblies and sway them as the wind sways the harvest grain, even then it is all a little thing compared to the nobleness of the exercise of the human mind in prayer, wherein a human being, high or low, rich or poor, elevates his thought into communion with the thought of God, lifts up his spirit into fellowship with the Father of Spirits.

There was a man that trod the earth once who was superior to all men in holiness and wisdom, who lived all his life on earth without sin. He so wise and good, loved to pray, and are you ashamed to pray? My hearers, why do you not all pray? God knows whether you do or not, and you know. Are you afraid to pray? Well a man might be, when he thinks of all his sinfulness, when he remembers all the wicked things that he has done that men know of, and all the wicked things he has thought that men know not of, but God must know; when he sees he has not half confidence in the God he thinks of praying to. But there is a name we may plead; there is an intercessor we may lean on; there is a Holy Spirit to help our infirmities in praying.

O! sinful and troubled soul of man, you need not be afraid to pray! If you come in the name of Jesus Christ, you may come boldly to the throne of grace. If you come leaning on the Spirit’s help, you may come assured that your request will be granted. My hearers, why do you not pray? Have you no need to pray? Is there no good thing that God can give, and that you need? No earthly good for yourself or others, about which you had better be asking the Giver of every good and perfect gift? No spiritual good? Have you no sins to be forgiven? Have you no weakness to be helped, no temptations to struggle against? Have you no troubles? O child of man, child of sin and sorrow, living in the strange world we are called to inhabit, have you no need to pray to your Father and your God? Why do you not pray? My friends, let us make it a practical lesson for us all.

Christian people, begin to pray more. Fathers of families, if you have neglected to pray with your families, begin now at once. If you have been negligent in public or private prayer, renew your petitions with earnestness. O, troubled one, shrinking away from the Saviour, remember that he said, “ Ask and it shall be given you.” And, if there is somebody here this evening that has not prayed for months, that has not prayed for years; if there is some man that has not prayed since the time long ago when he prayed by his mother’s knee, and who all these years has been slighting God’s word and rejecting God’s invitation; O soul, O fellow-sinner, will you not to-night take Jesus’ word home to your heart, and begin to find in your experience what some like you have found, that you have but to ask and it shall be given?