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...much as we ask, but immeasurably more. This being the case, He would encourage us to keep on asking until we get exactly what we want. His argument briefly, is this: If even a fair-weather friend will grant a grudging favor to a neighbor who keeps on asking it, much more will our Heavenly Father supply His children's needs when we appeal to Him for help! But if the foregoing interpretative statement is true, why doesn't God immediately give us everything we ask of Him? Why, if He delights in blessing us, do most of us have to plead so long before an answer comes? Doubtless, many of us find such questions in our minds from time to time. Not all of us, though - at least, not as often as in bygone days. We have learned from long experience that prayer itself must discipline our hearts until we yearn for only what is right and best, and that God will give us what we ask when we have tarried in the school of prayer until mastering the art of asking as we should. We have learned to keep on praying, not to persuade God to change His mind, but to exercise our consciences in His presence until our minds are brought into agreement with His. As we commune with Him from day to day and year to year, we gradually find ourselves thinking His thoughts and sharing His desires until, at last, when we tell Him our wants, we are asking only for what He wants us to have. How grateful we should be that He refrains from humoring our childish longings until we have cultivated a preference for better things! That He does not respond to our faulty praying until His gracious reticence has constrained us to pray more prudently! Only then do we see that His apparent reluctance to honor our petitions in the past was actually His fatherly forbearance toward petulant children still too immature to ask aright. While we were waiting for Him to answer our prayers, He was waiting for us to come to Him with nobler desires. And so it will be, henceforth, until our wills merge into His. As we pass, through continuing prayer, to ever-nobler aspirations, we shall discover that His momentary nays are truly intended to school us for the enjoyment of His eventual yeas; if He withholds the stone we mistake for bread, it is to refine our taste until we want a better fare. If He ignores our hankering for pretty scorpions, it is that He may teach us to ask for eggs. If He denies us a serpent, it is that He may feed us with fish instead. In these concepts we understand the meaning of the Savior's exhortation, when He says: Keep on asking, and the gift will be given you; keep on seeking, and you will find; keep on knocking, and the door will open to you. For everyone who keeps on asking, receives; and the one who keeps on seeking, finds; and to the one who keeps on knocking, the door will open (verses 9-10, CBW). We learn to pray effectually by keeping on praying! |
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