Daily Manna · Day 321 · November 17
Ask, Seek, Knock
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
Picture a hand resting on a door that has not opened. The person on the step is deciding whether to knock again or walk back down the path.
Jesus stacks up three verbs here, and each one costs more than the last. Asking is something anyone can do standing still. Seeking takes time and attention, and it means going somewhere. Knocking is what you do at a door that is shut. He puts the same promise on all three, so the promise is not tied to your first try.
The rest of the New Testament fills this out. Luke sets the same words beside a story about a man who bangs on his neighbour's door at midnight to borrow bread, and gets it. Jesus says the neighbour gets up "because of his importunity," even though friendship alone would not have moved him. That old word means shameless persistence. Later Luke tells of a widow who wears down an unjust judge, and he gives the reason for the story: "that men ought always to pray, and not to faint." Matthew guards the whole thing from the other side straight away: "Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?" So persistence is no way of wearing God down until He finally acts like a good father, because He already is one. And James adds a correction that keeps it honest: "ye have not, because ye ask not." Then he says, "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss." Put it all together and you have asking, seeking and knocking; shameless persistence; not giving up; a Father who is nothing like that judge; and a warning to check what you are really asking for.
So which is it with the prayer you gave up on? Maybe you were told no. A no is an answer you can live with and build on. Or maybe you simply got tired of the sound of your own voice. That is no answer at all, and God has never once counted it as one. The two feel the same at the moment you stop, yet only one of them was a decision anybody really made. If it was the second, the door is still there, and the One behind it is your Father. You can knock again today.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 321 is At His Right Hand (Psalm 110:1).