The first believers I knew talked a lot about faith. As far as I could tell from what they said, faith was a variable commodity. Some had more and others less. The difference mattered since the results one might expect from God depended upon the amount of faith one was able to muster. Perhaps that’s why we spent so much of our time declaring our faith. When it came to prayer, it seemed that quantity was associated with volume. The more faith we wanted to prove that we had, the louder we prayed. I am not sure who we were trying to reassure more. Was it for God’s benefit or ours? It did not seem to make a difference either way. I felt no more certain no matter what the volume, while God did not seem to give my loud prayers any more attention than my soft.

In those days, it also seemed to me that the measure of one’s faith was determined by the size of the request. I thought faith was a muscle and praying was like weight training. The more you exercised it, the greater it grew. The larger the request, the greater the faith. I decided that my requests were too timid. I was asking for pennies when I should have been seeking gold. I decided that if I was going to become a person of faith, I needed to believe God for greater things.

I decided my requests were too timid. I was asking for pennies when I should have been seeking gold.

About that time, my mother’s health failed. She grew so weak
that my father had to carry her to the car and drive her to the hospital. The
doctors performed exploratory surgery, and she grew worse. I stood at her
bedside and prayed that God would heal her. She died instead. I prayed that God
would raise her from the dead, the way that Christ called Lazarus from the
grave. The casket remained closed. In the months after my mother’s death, my
father’s alcoholism worsened. I prayed that God would deliver him from bondage.
His alcoholism eventually killed him.

But this is a one-sided picture. It leaves out all the prayers
that God did answer, requests both great and trivial. They seem to fade in my
memory. Somehow, it is the refusals that stick. Perhaps I don’t want to think
about the others because they remind me how often I have been anxious about
trivial matters. Each time I have asked for bread, the Father has never given
me a stone. Or maybe it is because listening to the full scope of my requests
is an uncomfortable reminder of how shrill my voice often sounds when I cry out
to God. I may come into God’s presence kneeling like a petitioner, but I speak
to Him as if He were a servant. My requests sound more like demands. I sometimes
wonder why I even have to ask at all. Why doesn’t God just give me what I want?

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus invites His disciples to make requests of their Heavenly Father. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you” Jesus says. “For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8). Jesus signals the Father’s welcome by piling on imperatives of invitation: “Ask…seek…knock,” Jesus urges. But there is also embedded in this language a subtle indication that the answers to our requests may not come as easily as we might like. Before we can receive we must ask. Before we find we will need to seek. Before we may enter we must knock.

“Ask…seek…knock,” Jesus urges us. But there is also embedded in this language a subtle indication that the answers to our requests may not come as easily as we might like.

There is a hint of persistence in all of this. For some things, we must ask and keep on asking.