ASK, SEEK, KNOCK | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 4, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 23.

ASK, SEEK, KNOCK.

IT IS not to move the heart of Infinite Love to help us that we need to plead with God. It is our own hearts and lives which need to be awakened by praising God for His goodness, by recounting His mercies, by confessing and putting away our sins, by letting Christ Jesus into our lives.

God does not need this to soften His heart, or move Him to pity. He is ever mindful of our needs. As a father pities his son, so God pities poor, weak, erring men. A loving mother is tenderly solicitous of her nursing child, God is even more solicitous of us.

Hear Him speaking through His Son: “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?” Surely no father would so deceive, or tantalize, or endanger his child. An unregenerate father of earth who would do this would be called a degenerate, a moral monstrosity. Is God less kind? Jesus continues: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” Luke 11:11–13. What a tremendous argument it is! All the creation of God was wrought by His Spirit. In that lies the fulness of blessing and perfection, and God is willing, much more willing to bestow than we can conceive.

Then why not, dear soul, take with simple faith this counsel of your Lord: “And I say unto you,

Ask, and it shall be given you; Seek, and ye shall find; Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth, And he that seeketh findeth, And to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”

Then ask, seek, knock, continually, persistently, in childlike singleness of faith. God will hear; nay, He already hears. If He seems slow in answering, the fault is ours, not His. He waits that we may reach the place where His blessing may be appreciated, or that He may bestow upon us a greater blessing than we asked.