Ask. “Ask and it will be given to you . . . ” Asking is the simplest of prayers. It’s childlike, straightforward and simple. I think it corresponds to the faith of young believers, yet none of us will ever outgrow it. I remember Christian Chen saying, “We will all always be His little children.”
Seek. “ . . . seek and you will find . . . ” This injunction corresponds to our taking on some measure of responsibility. It could be anything – making a meal for someone, checking on a widow, writing a book, sharing with someone. Whatever it is, you take it upon yourself to do it. Large or small, you feel the burden to carry it out faithfully, diligently. This is middle-age faith, a faith that gets under the load and seeks to do something for God. And God promises to reward this kind of faith.
Knock. “ . . . knock and it will be opened to you.” We can understand the first two stages of faith. But how do we ‘outgrow’ what would appear to be the mature stage of faithful responsibility? I think with only a small amount of reflection, we can find the answer. What happens in the ‘golden’ years? We become more inactive, more dependent, more helpless. So knocking, I think, alludes to this helpless insistence, this powerless persistence. It’s a new kind of responsibility, a new kind of prayer.
And along with this helpless insistence, there is something else. I think it means, even though your life is at an end, you’re interceding for others. Remember, the friend who knocked on his neighbor’s door did it, not for himself, but for his friend who came at midnight.
But finally, I think knocking has to do with a focusing of our lives. And here’s where I’d like to spend some time. Whereas seeking involves a broadening, knocking forces us to stand and stay in one spot and give our attention to one thing.
I detect this in my own life. As a young man I searched in about any place I could for answers to life’s questions (and in places I should not have searched!) I read and read and naively thought the answers would be a whole lot simpler.
But I didn’t know what my calling really was. I got involved in a lot of things, ministries, people. Life basically became one big search. And in many ways the search was fruitful – I’ve found many things. I’ve found a wife, family, friends, truth, and even the Lord Himself. But I’ve also discovered that these things and the world are much bigger than I had imagined. Somewhere along the way, I had to concede that my search for the depths would never be over, and the last couple of years has been a struggle to accept that. I don’t want to accept it because it’s a dilemma between the hard stop of my own mortality and the fact that God and His universe are infinite. Of course I knew that, but what I didn’t know was just how little of it I would have to settle for.
It’s been somewhat of a scramble to decide how to narrow the search and what door I’ll end up knocking on. ‘Suddenly’ I have to decide what is most important out of so many things, all of which I find so interesting.
But as I talk about all this, you may be thinking – “But David, aren’t you reading a lot into this ask, seek, knock verse?” Maybe. Maybe I am superimposing my own experience on these few words, but I don’t think so. Somehow, I believe it does mean this and even more. Why? Because I’ve always found that about the Word. Just when I thought I had captured the whole meaning, I discover or hear something else. This phenomenon apparently corresponds to God Himself. On the one hand, He is so accessible in Jesus, yet, on the other hand, the depths of Him are not accessible at all and call us to live a life-long ‘mining operation.’ (Asking and seeking and finally knocking all continue in parallel.)
But isn’t this true about all of God’s Truth? For example, over the last hundred or so years, scientists have been forced to fragment themselves into a thousand disciplines to try to keep up with their burgeoning knowledge. Though their discoveries have grown exponentially, so has the amount of material to discover. (And so it’s likely the exponential growth of fragmentation will also continue, at least until it implodes.)
Anyway, as life goes on I feel this growing helplessness, this powerlessness, this narrowing, yet it’s comforting that I’m not alone and it’s all part of the Grand Plan. But I believe that it’s my persistence in knocking and thus overcoming the drag of cynicism that will ultimately cause the door to open. Maybe it’ll open slowly, maybe suddenly, but the truth is I can’t open it myself — only God can do that. It must be this irony of ‘powerless persistence’ that God will reward.
So I’ll keep knocking.