Answers in Abundance

Note: This sermon is based on Chapter 2 of David Jeremiah's book, "The Prayer Matrix"

Matthew 7:7-8 "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

A man went to heaven and saw St. Peter sitting in a room full of filing cabinets. "What’s in the filing cabinets?" asked the man "They are full of all the unclaimed gifts and blessings that God was prepared to give his children, but that they failed to ask for," Peter answered, “and one drawer has your name on it.”

Some of us will be amazed in eternity to realize the potential ministry impact we could have had, and the blessings we could have known, if we’d only asked for them.

After Jesus instructs us to ask, seek, and knock, he gives us some amazing, unconditional promises. Look at what it says: everyone who asks . . . receives! He who seeks. . .finds! And to him who knocks, it will be . . .opened! Do you see any loopholes? Does he say anywhere that God answers some prayers but not others? Does it say that he only hears some prayers? NO!!! God’s guarantee for us is this: he hears and answers every prayer. Ask and receive, seek and find, knock and watch the door open – these are ironclad promises. I know that there are other passages that lay out further guidelines for prayer – things like praying according to God’s will, praying in Jesus’ name, and praying in the Spirit. But the fact remains that in this passage, Jesus strongly teaches the profound effectiveness of simply asking – without weighing down the process with our restrictions.

In his book With Christ in the School of Prayer, Andrew Murray says it simply and powerfully: “God means prayer to have an answer.” Look at the biblical witness: Prayer opened the Red Sea, brought water from a rock and bread from heaven; prayer made the sun stand still, brought fire from the sky, and overthrew armies; prayer healed the sick, delivered the oppressed, and raised the dead. Things we think are impossible, God does when people pray.

I read the true story of a mother whose young daughter took ill one morning at school. After the mother picked the girl, she called the doctor and described the symptoms. He said that there was a rash of flu-like afflictions. He couldn’t see the girl until the next day, but suggested an over-the-counter medicine that the mother could pick up to help her.

The mother got her daughter to bed, told her she was to the store for the medicine, and hurried from the house.

She rushed to the store, purchased the medication, but when she returned to the parking lot, she discovered that she had locked her keys in the car.

Her first response was to call her daughter and tell her she would be a little longer than she had expected. He daughter told her, “Mommy, get a coat hanger. I’ve seen on TV how they just stick a coat hanger down the window and unlock the car door.”

The mother went back into the store and was able to get a wire hanger, though she had serious doubts about her ability to open the door with it. But being a woman of prayer, she was not put off. She simply lifted her need to God. “I don’t know what to do, Lord. My keys are in the car, the doors are locked, and my daughter is at home sick. I’ve got this hanger, but I have no idea what to do with it. Please send someone to help.

As she finished praying, a car pulled to the curb and dropped off a passenger not five feet from the woman. This must be God’s answer to her prayer. The man didn’t look like the kind of person God would typically send, in his ripped jeans, arms covered in colorful tattoos. But she said, “Sir, can you help me?”

“What’s the problem,” he asked.

“I locked the keys in my car. I got this coat hanger, but I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Lady,” he said, “where’s your car?”

She took him to it, and after bending the hanger, quickly used it to pop the lock. The overwhelmed mother threw her arms around the man and gave him a big hug. “You are such a good man.”

“Lady,” he said, “I’m no good man. I just got out of prison.”

As the man walked away, the mother prayed, “Thank you, Lord. You sent me a professional.”

Why does God answer any of our prayers? Oswald Chambers, in his typically pointed style, writes: “There is only one kind of person who can really pray, and that is the child-like saint, the simple, stupid, supernatural child of God; I do mean stupid.” I don’t want to speak for you, but I guess that means I qualify as someone who can pray! Chambers goes on to say that it is nonsense to try to use mental reasoning to explain why God answers those “stupid” prayers. He answers not because of our earnestness or our suffering, but because of Jesus’ suffering. The mystery of why God answers our prayers is wrapped up in the answer to why he redeems us through the cross – it points to an infinite love that is far beyond any human explanation.

R. A. Torrey has written some of the best books on prayer. He says, “when I realized what real prayer meant, realized that prayer was having an audience with God, actually coming into the presence of god, and asking and getting things from him, it transformed hi s prayer life.

Before that, prayer had been a mere duty, and sometimes a very irksome duty, but from that time on prayer has not been merely a duty but a privilege, one of the most highly esteemed privileges of life.

Before that the thought that I has was, “How much time must I spend in prayer?” The thought that now possesses me is , “How much time may I spend in prayer without neglecting the other privileges and duties of life?”

As we get deeper and deeper into this thing called prayer and begin to experience the presence of God, I hope that you too will begin to find it one of the highest privileges in your life.