Mat 7:7-12; Asking God For Directions.

Sunday October 6, 2024

Main Idea: Asking God for virtue moves Him to design a way which the believer must seek on which there are many opportunities which the believer must choose to enter.

Mat 7:7-12. 

The Sermon on the Mount has been the highest call of all people in history and it is not going to be easy to live up to. Jesus, nearing the end, tells us that we are going to need constant help from God and we will have to keep asking, seeking, and knocking. 

Jesus promises us that if we ask, seek, and knock we will receive, find, and enter. 

Each verb is a present imperative. He means for us to keep at each one. 

What does it mean to ask, seek, and knock: Keep praying, even for the same things, keep seeking all the ways God is going to fulfill them, and not being afraid to look for and take advantage of opportunities God opens.

Ask for directions toward the goal, seek out the way that you’ve been told, and enter through the right doors.

Ask for directions. 

Petitions can be “I need to know what it means to be poor in spirit,” for example. Asking God to show you how to be and do what pleases Him.

Seeking the way. When God answers your petition for some important spiritual matter, He is going to work things in your life that will lead you to it.

The promise is that you will find it if you keep at it.

Knocking is the desire to enter into the opportunities God has provided that will answer your petition, that you have sought for. 

The entering in is the fulfillment of the prayer and search, and generally, something has to be sacrificed for you to enter.

All have to give up self. (Luk 9:23; Mat 7:13-14)

We understand how these three verbs refer to persistence in Luke’s account in Luk 11:5-13. 

Why the persistence in all three? Long journey. 

Long journey means a lot of asking, seeking, and knocking and patience and grace – and have fun.

The journey is your own. Do not try to copy someone else’s. Do not seek a journey that God has not made for you to find how to be Christ’s mature apprentice (Luk 9:46-56). 

The way is narrow in that there is only one and there are many substitutes (Luk 13:22-25). 

Take home: Read the SOM as a whole - do so alone, imagining you are there and the Lord is teaching directly to you. Write down what impacts you. Then ask, what have you journeyed to and what do you still lack? 

Then ask why? Have I prayed for them? Have I prayed and sought? Have I prayed, sought, and entered in (forsaking what I had to)? 

Are you designing? Do you have an end product of you in mind and are you working towards it? 

What doors have you knocked on and which have you avoided?

What doors have you been afraid to enter? Why? Did you not want to sacrifice or leave behind what Christ told you that you had to?