Message #6 (of 20) from the PrayerPower radio series
"The Deeper Life of Prayer"

by Kaye Johns

As Jesus taught His disciples how to pray in Matthew 6 and 7 in His Sermon on the Mount, He was giving us beginning steps for building a strong and effective prayer life. After teaching the necessity for spending uninterrupted time with the Lord [Matthew 6:6] and providing a pattern for daily prayer [Matthew 6:9-13], Jesus encouraged us to ask, seek and knock in prayer, saying: "Everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." [Matthew 7:8] Did He mean it?

We’re taught not to lift verses out of context, and this prayer promise comes near the end of the Sermon on the Mount. It follows Jesus’ description of the life we are to live as His disciples, just before He summarizes what He has taught and ends His sermon.

Could it be from the context of the passage that one thing Jesus wanted us to understand is that everyone who asks, seeks and knocks--for what he needs to live the life Jesus wants him to live--will receive? And could it be that if we are praying for "daily bread" and are not receiving answers to those prayers, that it’s because we are not living the life He has just described? Jesus wants us to understand that everyone who asks receives, but always within the context of the Sermon on the Mount.

Pray with me now -- Father, help us to see that we cannot separate the life we are living from the effectiveness of our prayers. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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