Ask, Seek, Knock

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. MATTHEW 7:7

The last three of Moody’s nine elements of prayer are faith, petition and submission, and the book ends with a chapter of answered prayers. Together they make a single movement: we believe God hears, we ask Him plainly for what we need, and we leave the answer in His hands. It is the simplest part of Prevailing Prayer, and perhaps the most needed.

Faith, the golden key

Moody begins his chapter on faith by repeating that Jesus taught His disciples to pray, not to preach. He wanted them to have power with God first, knowing that then they would have power with men. And the key to that power is faith: “faith is the golden key that unlocks the treasures of heaven.”

Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. MARK 11:24

But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. JAMES 1:6

He adds a warning: we must be in earnest. The prayers God answers are rarely polite. They are the cry of a man hanging over a pit. Moody tells the story of a traveller trapped on the lip of a volcanic crater, who prayed as he had never prayed before and was pulled out by the guide he had ignored. Faith is not a calm opinion about God. It is the grip of someone who knows he has nowhere else to go.

Actually asking

The next element is petition, and Moody begins it with a complaint many of us will recognise. “How often we go to prayer-meetings without really asking for anything!” Prayers, he says, go all round the world without anything definite being requested. Some are exhortations with the eyes shut; some are complaints. He tells of an eloquent man leading a meeting in a long prayer with not one petition in it, until a poor woman called out: “Ask Him summat, man.”

Moody’s point is that God invites us to ask, and to ask again. Some people think God does not like to be troubled by constant requests. “The only way to trouble God is not to come at all.”

And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. LUKE 18:1

He distinguishes three kinds of Christians: those who ask, those who seek, and those who knock. The highest is the one who keeps knocking until the door opens. He tells of a boy who asked his teacher why so many knock and are not admitted. The teacher reminded him of boys who knock at a door on a dark evening and run away before anyone can answer. Jesus has never promised to answer runaway knocks. Too often, Moody says, we knock at mercy’s door and then run away, as if we were afraid of the answer.

Knowing what to ask

Not every request will be granted, and Moody is clear about why. Some prayers go unanswered because of something in our lives that God wants brought to light. Others because we ask for the wrong reasons.

Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. JAMES 4:3

The promise that we shall ask what we will and have it, he points out, begins with a very large if: if ye abide in me, and my words abide in you (John 15:7). The latter half is often quoted, he says, and the first half forgotten. If Christ is truly in the heart and His word abides there, we will not ask for what is against His will. So we need to search the Scriptures to find warrant for our prayers.

Submission

That leads to the ninth element. “I would a thousand times rather that God’s will should be done than my own.” Moody says that he knows God’s mind about spiritual things: God wills our sanctification, so we may ask for it with confidence. But in earthly matters, what we ask may not be His purpose, and we must be content to leave it with Him.

He takes great comfort from the prayers of good men that God did not answer. Moses prayed to go over Jordan and was refused; yet fifteen hundred years later he stood on the mount of transfiguration with Christ in the promised land. Elijah prayed to die under a juniper tree, and God refused him because He meant to take him up in a chariot of fire. Paul prayed three times for his thorn to be removed, and was given more grace instead.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 2 CORINTHIANS 12:9

A parent does not give a child everything he asks for. Moody tells of a small boy who cried as if his heart would break because his father would not give him a razor to whittle with. “I am afraid that there are a great many of us who are praying for razors.”

Answered prayers

Prevailing Prayer closes with stories of answers, and they are some of the most moving pages Moody wrote. George Müller showed a man the name of someone he had prayed for daily for twenty-four years without an answer yet, but with a settled assurance that it would come. A mother in Connecticut prayed day after day for a son who went to war unconverted and died in hospital; years later a stranger who had served with him told her that he had died in peace, trusting Christ. A Scottish boy separated from his drunken father in America and converted in Chicago prayed to find his mother, and found that a letter from her had been waiting for him for seven years at the place he had run away from.

Ah Lord GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee. JEREMIAH 32:17

“Nothing is too hard for God; that is a good thing to take for a motto.” And for those whose prayers seem unanswered, Moody has a word of hope. “I think we shall find a great many of our prayers that we thought unanswered answered when we get to heaven.”

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. JEREMIAH 33:3

A caution

Moody’s stories of answered prayer are true to his experience and wonderfully encouraging, but they are stories of answers, and stories of long silences are harder to tell. A reader who has prayed for years for a child or a healing may find such chapters painful. It is worth remembering that Moody himself put submission before the answered prayers, and that the book’s last word is not that God always gives what we ask, but that He can be trusted with what we ask. Faith is not certainty about the outcome. It is certainty about the One who decides it.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Look at your last few prayers. Did you actually ask God for anything definite? Write down one specific request and bring it daily for a month.

2. Are you a runaway knocker? Choose one matter you have given up praying about, and begin knocking again.

3. Test your requests against John 15:7. Is there anything you are asking for that you know is not His will?

4. Is there an unanswered prayer that has made you bitter? Offer it back to God with the words, Thy will be done.

5. Read the chapters Faith, Petition, Submission and Answered Prayers in Prevailing Prayer, in the Ochorus library.

A PRAYER

Father, You have told me to ask, to seek and to knock. Forgive my vague prayers and my runaway knocks.

I bring You now what I most need, plainly, believing that You hear me.

Where my request is not Your will, give me the grace to say, Thy will be done, and to believe that Your no is love.

Nothing is too hard for You. Keep me knocking until the door opens, in this life or the next. Amen.