The Holy Spirit Given

Today's verse ends one of Jesus' great teachings on prayer: "How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" If we are honest, many of us would rather hand God a list.

I would. I want prayer to work like an order form, and this verse quietly says no. Luke records the same saying that Matthew does, and the difference that changes everything comes at the end. Where Matthew has "good things," Luke has "the Holy Spirit." The argument is the same, about fathers who would never hand a hungry child something harmful. In Luke, though, the good gift at the end turns out to be a Person, the Holy Spirit Himself, and that is more than any outcome.

Look at what Luke has built around it, because the whole section is about asking. It opens with a disciple asking, "Lord, teach us to pray." Then comes the friend who knocks at midnight. He gets his bread "because of his importunity," a word that means bold, shameless persistence. Then Jesus says to ask, to seek and to knock. Then He speaks of ordinary fathers who would never hand a hungry son a stone. And at the end of all that, what is really on offer is God Himself, living in you.

That is where our praying gets exposed, mine as much as anybody's. We ask for the outcome and mean every word, and we would be quietly disappointed to be given the Spirit instead. That tells us something about what we think we are short of.

So pray it this way today: Father, I have been asking for outcomes and calling it prayer. Give me the Holy Spirit. I am asking in the plain words Your Son put in my mouth, and I admit I would have preferred the other list. Do not give me what I asked for if it would leave me without You. And when the request I have repeated for months comes to my lips again today, change its shape while I am still saying it. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 224 is I Believe God (Acts 27:25).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna