OUR ASKING AND GOD’S ANSWERING

“You parents -- if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him.”  (Matthew 7:9-11 NLT)

Although prayer has been defined as communion with God, aspiration after the highest things, Stopford Brooke, an Irish clergyman who lived from1832 to 1916, was right when he insisted that prayer, in its plainest meaning, is a petition addressed to God.  When Jesus laid the duty of petition upon His disciples, He went on to assert the reasonableness of our asking and God's answering.  Jesus argues along the line of reason that, if an earthly parent does the best in his power for his children, the Almighty, All-Wise, and All-Loving Father, of which human love is only the shadow, will do better still for His great family; and therefore our Master teaches that we ought everywhere to pray, without fear, with hope, and without doubt.

-- Adapted from Horace L. Hastings (1852-1922) in “The Great Christian Doctrines”

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