Ask and it shall be given

Theme: Ask and it shall be given

Text: Gen. 18:20-32; Col. 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13

Read Lk. 11:9-10 "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 he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened."

Jesus often taught using parables and as is always the case, today’s parable teaches another very important lesson. In most parables depicting God, Christ normally uses the main character as a God-type. But in today’s parable, we notice that the unsympathetic friend bears no resemblance to the compassionate God whom Christ taught us to call Father. By contrasting this man with God is to encourage us to trust in the goodness of God. If such a friend can respond to human need, how can we doubt the willingness of God to respond to our needs? How can we doubt the words of Jesus, which says to ‘ask and it shall be given’? Today science and technology seem to have made many indifferent to the goodness of God as we see in many nations especially the developed ones. The Churches in these nations are practically empty and many have been converted into places of amusement because most of these people believe they are capable of providing for themselves and therefore see no need for God. If they have no need for God why should they care whether He is compassionate or not? Yet there is no one who is truly self-sufficient and independent of God. Even those who feel they do not need God because they do not have a care in the world will very often turn to God when they face danger. Careful planning and management can reduce our helplessness or vulnerability to circumstances, but inevitably life catches us unprepared. Sooner or later we find ourselves surprised by an unexpected demand. We awake to a knocking on our door and hear a familiar voice in the dark announcing an unexpected guest who is weary and hungry from his journey and we have nothing in the house to offer him. The only option left to us is to turn to God who has told us to ask and it shall be given.
We have all been caught in such an embarrassing situation before or we may even find ourselves in such a situation today. Someone has come to visit just before payday without informing us or has come at a time when the house is in a mess and all the food had been eaten with nothing left to offer. But what Jesus is talking about here is more than just an embarrassing situation; He is talking about the crucial situations we face in life, which He understands very well, even better than ourselves. Christ is warning us that sooner or later life is going to surprise us with some unexpected demands. He does not tell us what form they will take but experience suggest a number of possibilities; delinquency – criminal behaviour by a child, addiction to drugs or alcohol, divorce, a business failure, a crippling accident, a terminal illness such as cancer, HIV or Aids or even death. It does not have to happen to us personally, but it can happen in ways that affects us. What happened at the Accra Sports stadium and what happened during the last flooding should serve to remind us that such a time can come for any of us when we least expect it and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. When we experience such life threatening situations we can always come to God and ask for His help. God waits for us to ask