“Everyone who asks receives…” Luke 11:10 (ESV)

What do you think that statement from Jesus means? Let’s examine it from a postmodern, deconstructionist point of view. You know, as that particular U.S. President tried to teach us not too many years ago: “It depends on what the meaning of is, is.” Yechhh.

No, no, no. Words mean things and the words in Luke 11, verse 10 mean something too, something very specific – so, let me just tell you what they mean:

God answers prayer. Let me say it differently so it makes more sense. If you pray, God will answer. How’s that? Some Christians pray a lot. Some not so much. Guess who gets more of their desires granted?

And He will answer your prayers…if you pray. Oh, I know, He won’t answer every single prayer of yours in the affirmative. (I’m sure glad he didn’t answer my prayer for that high school cutie Stacy to fall in love with me.) But He will answer a lot of your prayers, yet you will first have to, you guessed it…pray.

This is basic Christian teaching, but how easily we forget it. How easily I fall into unbelief and prayerlessness. So, through the years I have collected some aphorisms on prayer, and I put various of these at the top of my prayer lists to remind me before I pray that God is really listening…that He will really answer my prayers.

• How about this one, in Latin, so it really seems true: Ora Labora – to pray is to work. Ben Patterson wrote of this: “Praying is harder work than doing, but the dynamic lies that way to advance the Kingdom.”
• And one of my favorites from a long forgotten devotional: Of King Joash in 2 Kings 13: “Let it be said to his shame that he did not believe enough, so he did not obey enough. It is what happens in the secret chamber that determines the amount of victory we have in the actual battle of life.”

So…pray. And keep praying. For your Heavenly Father loves you so, and He particularly loves to bless His children when they live lives of dependence on Him. And we depend on Him…by praying.

“And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Luke 11:9-10 (ESV)