“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” — Luke 11:9
Jesus had just finished teaching the Lord’s Prayer when He told a story about a man who knocks on his neighbor’s door at midnight, urgently asking for bread. The neighbor is hesitant—but the man’s persistence, his shameless audacity, eventually gets results.
Then Jesus pivots to a striking invitation: “Ask… seek… knock…” These are not gentle suggestions; they are bold imperatives. In Luke 11:9, Jesus uses the present tense, active voice, and imperative mood. In other words, these are not one-time actions but ongoing commands. The grammar itself teaches us: Keep on asking. Keep on seeking. Keep on knocking. Prayer, Jesus insists, must be relentless, alive, and hopeful. God doesn’t need to be persuaded, but we need to be transformed in the process of praying.
Why? Because prayer is not about prying blessings from a reluctant God. Jesus makes this clear by comparing flawed human parents to our heavenly Father:
“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts… how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (v. 13)
If even broken parents desire to bless their children, how much more will God—who is perfectly good—give us what we most deeply need, including the gift of His own Spirit?
This passage doesn’t just invite persistence in prayer—it urges it. Not because God is hard of hearing, but because God uses prayer to shape us. The asking forms us. The seeking awakens us. The knocking opens us up to the presence and purposes of God.
When I was 22, I traveled to Jerusalem to study at Jerusalem University College, a historic school perched on Mount Zion, near the Jaffa Gate of the Old City. The grounds were breathtaking—situated near the traditional sites of King David’s Tomb, the Upper Room of the Last Supper, and the place where Peter denied Christ. It remains one of my favorite places for prayer.
While there, I bunked with a group of basketball players from Liberty University. We played intense, competitive games every morning before class—games that sometimes got a little too heated. Eventually, some of the players explained to me that they could no longer associate with me because they believed in something called third-degree separation—a strict theological view that says Christians must not only avoid the world, but also avoid worldly Christians, and even those who associate with worldly Christians. Since I was friends with such people, I was now outside their circle.
But their dean, who roomed with us and played on my team, remained a friend. One day, I asked him why he didn’t follow the rule. Tears filled his eyes as he told me about his son—a standout baseball player at Liberty—who had died of leukemia. During his son’s illness, he had prayed day and night. He had asked, sought, and knocked with all his heart. Though his son was not healed in this life, he and his world were changed forever. He told me he simply couldn’t stop praying for people—not since that season of pain and prayer. Ever since, when God placed someone on his heart, he could never let them go. That’s why he rejected third-degree separation. He had been too transformed by prayer to ever give up on people again.
This Sunday, we have the opportunity not only to learn more about prayer—but also to learn more about the heart of God. And when we do, we won’t come away unchanged. I can’t wait to hear what God will say to us through Pastor Mark Nsimbi this Sunday.
Let’s not miss it.
Your friend for the rest of my life,
Pastor Tim White