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“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Last Sunday I urged us all to find the “secret place” of which Jesus speaks when he teaches us to pray. Having a secret place for prayer is simply doing whatever it takes to remind us to “show up” to be with and talk to God who already shows up everywhere we are going to be. I suggested that beginning or renewing our habits of prayer might be as simple as putting time for it in our calendars. We want to continue now in our Lord’s school of prayer by talking today about praying expectantly. Ask, search, knock. These are the verbs for those who pray as Jesus teaches. So let’s talk about expectant prayer for a few minutes today.

The first thing to say about expectant prayer is that it is built upon the premise that God cares for us individually.

Kathleen Norris writes, “Prayer was impossible for me for years. For a time I was so alienated from my religious heritage that I had the vainglorious notion that somehow, if I prayed, I would cause more harm than good. But when a priest I knew asked me to pray for him — he’d been diagnosed with a serious illness — my ‘yes’ was immediate, sincere, and complete. I wasn’t sure that I could pray well and was shocked that the priest would trust me to do so. But I recognized that this was my pride speaking, the old perfectionism that has dogged me since I was a child. Well, or badly, that was beside the point. Of course I could pray, and I did.”[1]

Norris is right. The point is not whether we pray badly or well. The point is we can all pray because God cares for all of us individually. As Richard Foster notes, nothing is more important to God than what is happening to us: the anxiety we feel over the surgery we must face tomorrow, the exasperation we feel today over our child’s misbehavior, and the desperation we feel over the plight of our aging parents, or the panic of losing of a job. These are matters of great magnitude to God because they are matters of great magnitude to us. It is a false humility to stand back and not share our deepest needs. Just as we delight for our own children or grandchildren to share with us the littlest details of their day at school, so God longs to hear from us the smallest matters of our lives.[2]

We probably find this hard to imagine. In our mechanized, impersonal, and overcrowded world within an incomprehensibly vast universe, how is it that God cares for the unique, needy person that each of us is? Such care is hard to imagine because it is not how we humans often think. The story is told that at the height of his military and political power, Napoleon was once told by the Austrian statesman Metternich[3] that a military campaign would cost a million soldiers. The French leader replied, “What are a million men to me?” But God is not like that; God doesn’t deal with people in masses. Did not Jesus say that two sparrows are sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from God and even the hairs of our heads — or lack of them — are all counted. So we should not be afraid for we are of more value than many sparrows.[4] God cares for individuals. As St. Augustine reminds us, “God loves us every one as though there were but one of us to love.”[5]

Still unconvinced? Consider this. I am very active in a small organization called the Presbyterian Association on Science, Technology, and the Christian Faith (PASTCF). The irony is that I’m not much of a scientist. In fact, I’m not a scientist at all. My only scientific training comes from a few math classes, a high school physics class, and a college geology class. But there is something I learned in physics that stuck with me. I learned that in the nature of gravity, the whole earth rises to meet a ball when it is thrown into the air just as truly as the ball falls to meet the earth. Gravity pulls objects towards each other with equal force regardless of their size.

In this wonderful book on prayer, Harry Emerson Fosdick describes this same physical truth and says about it: “Only a lack of sensitiveness in our instruments prevents us from measuring the earth’s ascent as it responds to the pull of the child’s toy. Can we imagine that? Is it not unimaginable, though plainly true? And if in a gravitate system a whole planet moves to meet a tossed ball, we ought not to dismiss, for reasons of weak imagination, the truth that in a love-system of persons, the Eternal God responds to each child’s approach.”[6]

What is true in the physical universe is equally true in the spiritual universe, in the kingdom of heaven. You are God’s child and God is pulled towards you by the gravity of divine love just as you are pulled towards God. Therefore, pray expectantly: ask, search, knock.

But what if God doesn’t answer our prayers? Isn’t that the biggest question about expectant prayer? We’ve all experienced times when we have asked, searched, and knocked. We have pleaded in tears before God asking for what we were certain was within the divine will and the heavens remained silent. Jesus says that asking, searching, and knocking will bring God’s response. But our experience sometimes says otherwise. What about this?

I am the first to admit that this is a real and serious problem about which we must avoid all glibness. There is deep perplexity about these things. As C. S. Lewis notes, “Every war, every famine or plague, almost every death-bed, is the monument to a petition that was not granted.”[7] We stand here under the mystery of God. I do not know why the heartfelt petitions for healing or for the homeless or helpless often go unanswered. I wish it were not so. As St. Paul said, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly.” (1 Corinthians 13.12) We know that but we still struggle with prayers not answered.

I struggle with this as I know you do and I cannot, certainly not in part of just one sermon, answer all our concerns. But we can note a few insights. First, as P. T. Forsyth (1848-1921), the British theologian and New Testament scholar, observed perceptively, “We shall come one day to a heaven where we shall gratefully know that God’s great refusals were some times the true answers to our truest prayer.”[8] We ask, search, and knock but truthfully we often ask, search, and knock for things that are not in our best interests, or may in fact harm others, or are self-contradictory: “Give me patience, Lord. Now!” In fact, God’s grace and mercy may prevent our prayers from being answered.[9] C. S. Lewis wrote, “If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where should I be now?”[10]

A second insight must be added, however. That is, while we do not always know how to pray and while we do not see things from God’s eternal perspective, it doesn’t mean that all that happens to us or our world is equally God’s will to which we must simply acquiesce as before blind, cruel fate. God does not will hurt and illness and fear and we rightly pray to be delivered from such things. “Deliver us from evil,” our Lord taught us to pray. Suffering and tragedy and hurt and pain and death are not God’s will. But in the midst of them God still has a will for us. As Jesus said, “In the world you have tribulation. But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16.33 RSV)

This helps us begin to understand what we should really expect in prayer. Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), the great English Baptist preacher of the nineteenth century, said, “Whether we like it or not, asking is the rule of the Kingdom.”[11] Asking — expectant prayer — is how the kingdom of heaven works. Asking is what God expects of us and we must ask God expectantly. Like it or not.[12]

We might think, who would not like it? Who would not like for normal Christian behavior to be constantly asking God for things? Who would not like that?

I wouldn’t, for one. At least much of the time I wouldn’t like to constantly ask God for things. I think most of you wouldn’t like it most of the time either. Because … if we are constantly asking, then we must be constantly expecting and that means we have to be in constant relationship with God, constantly seeking God, constantly changing as God works on us, constantly growing and learning, constantly giving up bad habits and learning good ones, constantly discovering new ways of thinking about things. To ask of God is to relate to God and that means we’ve got to change. But truthfully, to our discredit, we often don’t live this way. Think of it this way: if no one ever comes over to our place, we can, if we like, sit around in our shorts and skivvy shirt, burp and pass gas all we want, and stay unshaven (to speak mostly from a male perspective!). But if company is coming, we’ve got to clean things up a bit. Asking prayer, expectant prayer, is the spiritual equivalent of company coming. Ask in prayer and God will come, says Jesus, so we’ve got to clean things up a bit.

This is what we can most expect in prayer. God will come to us. If prayer is real, and it most assuredly is, then God will be with us in conversation. God isn’t up there. God is right here: before us, behind us, above us, beneath us, and on our left and right. To pray is to be in conversation with this God and it is a conversation that will change us and free us and empower us. Ask, search, knock. God is ready to be in relationship with us.[13]

One day a mother took her children to a restaurant. Her six-year-old son asked if he could say grace. As is typical with kids, he got things a little mixed up. But the little boy prayed, “God is Great and God is good. Let us thank him for the food, and I would even thank you more if mom gets us ice cream for dessert. And Liberty and justice for all! Amen!”

Along with the laughter from the customers nearby the mother heard a woman remark, “That’s what’s wrong today. Kids today don’t even know how to pray. Asking God for ice-cream! Why, I never!”

The little boy overheard this and, of course, burst into tears. He asked his mother, “Did I do it wrong? Is God mad at me?” But as his mother held him and assured him that he had done a good job and God was certainly not mad at him, an elderly gentleman approached the table.

He winked at the boy and said. “I happen to know that God thought that was a terrific prayer.”

“Cross my heart.” Then in a theatrical whisper he added (indicating the woman whose remark had started the whole thing). “Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes.”

Naturally, mom bought her kids all the ice cream they could want at the end of the meal. Her six-year-old stared at his for a moment and then did something no one will ever forget. He picked up his sundae and without a word walked over and placed it in front of the woman. With a big smile he told her, “Here, this is for you. Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes and my soul is already good.”

Pray expectantly. Pray for your needs because God cares about your needs. But also pray for ice cream. Sometimes God will give you more ice cream than you can imagine. Sometimes not. But always your prayer will connect with God and bring about in you a better and good soul.

[1] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998) 58.

[2] Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco: Harper, 1992) 181.

[3] Clemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich (1773-1859) was an Austrian statesman who at the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815 reestablished a system of power whereby Russian and Prussia were balanced by the combined power of Austria, France, and England. The period of 1815-1848 is often called the “Age of Metternich.” “Metternich,” The New American Encyclopedia Desk Encyclopedia, 1984 ed.

[4] “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.” Matthew 10.29-31 (NRSV)

[5] Quotations from Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Meaning of Prayer (New York: Association Press, 1962) 44.

[6] Fosdick, 39.

[7] C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964) 58.

[8] Foster, 182.

[9] Foster, 182.

[10] Lewis, 28.

[11] Quoted in Foster, 179.

[12] Murray makes the same point in even more pointed language. “Let in our inner chamber, in the inner chamber of our heart too, the Word be inscribed in letters of light: Every one that asketh, receiveth.… It is one of the terrible marks of the diseased state of Christian life in these days, that there are so many who rest content without the distinct experience of answer to prayer.… Prayer is appointed to obtain the answer. It is in prayer and its answer that the interchange of love between the Father and His child takes place. How deep the estrangement of our heart from God must be, that we find it so difficult to grasp such promises.” Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer: Thoughts on Our Training for the Ministry of Intercession (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1953) 33-35.

[13] Fosdick quotes English scholar Sir Wilfred Grenfell. “The privilege of prayer to me is one of the most cherished possessions, because faith and experience alike convince me that God himself sees and answers, and his answers I never venture to criticize. It is only my part to ask. It is entirely his to give or withhold, as he knows is best. If it were otherwise, I would not dare to pray at all. In the quiet of home, in the heat of life and strife, in the face of death, the privilege of speech with God is inestimable. I value it more because it calls for nothing that the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot give — that is, the simplest expression to his simplest desire. When I can neither see, nor hear, nor speak, still I can pray so that God can hear. When I finally pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I expect to pass through it in conversation with him.” Fosdick, 37-38.