Everyone who asks receives… —Luke 11:10

Ask if you have not received. There is nothing more difficult than asking. We will have yearnings and desires for certain things, and even suffer as a result of their going unfulfilled, but not until we are at the limit of desperation will we ask. It is the sense of not being spiritually real that causes us to ask. Have you ever asked out of the depths of your total insufficiency and poverty? “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God…” (James 1:5), but be sure that you do lack wisdom before you ask. You cannot bring yourself to the point of spiritual reality anytime you choose. The best thing to do, once you realize you are not spiritually real, is to ask God for the Holy Spirit, basing your request on the promise of Jesus Christ (see Luke 11:13). The Holy Spirit is the one who makes everything that Jesus did for you real in your life.

“Everyone who asks receives….” This does not mean that you will not get if you do not ask, but it means that until you come to the point of asking, you will not receive from God (seeMatthew 5:45). To be able to receive means that you have to come into the relationship of a child of God, and then you comprehend and appreciate mentally, morally, and with spiritual understanding, that these things come from God.

“If any of you lacks wisdom….” If you realize that you are lacking, it is because you have come in contact with spiritual reality— do not put the blinders of reason on again. The word ask actually means “beg.” Some people are poor enough to be interested in their poverty, and some of us are poor enough spiritually to show our interest. Yet we will never receive if we ask with a certain result in mind, because we are asking out of our lust, not out of our poverty. A pauper does not ask out of any reason other than the completely hopeless and painful condition of his poverty. He is not ashamed to beg— blessed are the paupers in spirit (see Matthew 5:3).

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Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord,
We could really use some clarification about asking. How to, when to, how specific, etc. Because we have plenty of experience with asking somehow incorrectly. Perhaps the request came from our own lusts or as Chambers says, “the blinders of reason.” It “seemed logically” like the right thing to ask for… Perhaps by getting too specific, we stop holding the issue in the “open palm” and remove ourselves from letting you be God and surprise us with your perfect answer? But, here, in Luke 11 the man asks specifically and with audacity and gets what he came for.

5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; 6 a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.’ 7 And suppose the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ 8 I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity[e] he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.

We are then admonished to ask, seek, & knock, and encouraged that our Heavenly Father will answer our requests better than we do as earthly parents …but at this point specific answers to specific requests, like bread, is replaced with “the Holy Spirit.”

13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Are you saying, just ask for the Holy Spirit and He will take care of our specific requests? Or should we make the specific requests and let you sort them out? Like when you added, “Nevertheless, your will be done?” Maybe if we, “Seek ye first…” it will all work out? As you can see, we need your help here.

Dont feel bad, it’s normal for humans to not get it. You are using worldly thinking while I am offering heavenly answers (which are bigger than the world and include the world and all that is in it, including the physical answers.) Notice what I said to the woman at the well?

John 4:10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

So take the same advice that I gave her. Ask for the Living Water. It will contain the H2O that you need.

Come to me, and keep on coming and you will be satisfied. Do you seek the answer first and then me? Or me first and then the answer. If you truly seek me first, the answer will be clear. So seek me first. Ask, Seek, Knock, and know that the answer is in me.

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