Big Incentives For The Prayer
BIG INCENTIVES FOR THE PRAYER
“Ask, and one will give to you; look, and you will find; call, and it will be opened to you.” Mateo 7:7
If you are one of so many Christians who need some incentive for his current prayer life, here they are some of the best: "Ask, and one will give to you; look, and you will find; call, and it will be opened to you.”-Mateo 7:7. All of them are divine imperatives about the prayer that suggest us the initiative, persistence and insistence that the prayer demands. And they reflect a boss of progression and exploration of all the alternatives and resources that the prayer shuts up.
Then, we have another incentive: The effectiveness of the Prayer – “Everything the one that asks, receives; the one that search finds; and that it calls will open to him.” (vers.8) The prayer is not slightly vague and insecure; it is not a ship adrift without course and without sure port. The prayer always has his target, and reaches it, Nobody will be able to reproach him either to God who has been done of “dull ears”, not olvidos, or negligence. Not only he listens to us but he guarantees that he will answer pertinentemente to our prayer.
As if all this was not sufficient, another incentive is added to us: the analogy with our earthly parents – “If you, being villains, can give good gifts to your children...” (vers.11). Notice that the Gentleman establishes clearly the difference between we like parents and our celestial Father. God drifts apart from our nastiness. And nevertheless, still distant, since we are, of being good like God, we can give good things to our children.: “What man is there of you, who if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or one asks him that a fish will give him a snake?”
But, also, there is a superlative contrast: "The more will your Father who is in the skies give good things to those who ask him?” Different from us like human beings and parents, our celestial Father is a God, it is Good and Perfect with capital letter. He cannot mistake like us, it is impossible that it could hurt us; and also, it has inexhaustible resources.
But: care in spite of misinterpreting Christ's incentives for the prayer! It might perish “too good to be true”. And it is not that it it is, but it depends on that we understand and apply correctly. These are incentive for the God's children who have been born again, and they can call God according to the law “a Father“.
Also, Martyn Lloyd-Jones says to us very correctly: 1. That the prayer presupposes knowledge of the God's will. What are these "good" things that God has for us, and can and wants to give to us. 2. That the prayer presupposes faith. A thing is to know something, and to entrust other one that his will will be fulfilled over all the things. 3. That the prayer presupposes an ardent desire for something. A thing is to know and to have faith in that that we know, and another thing is to wish it ardently without giving in.
Finally, remember that if we ask God for a stone to eat or a snake as pet, He is not going to grant it to us. When the prayer is to spend in our egoistic delights, and when for what we ask brings with it a damage foreseen by God or is out of his good will, we cannot hope for another thing of our celestial Father, who should not be a round one: "NO".