Luke chapter 11, we'll be reading verses one through 13 this morning. Starting in verse one of Luke chapter 11. It happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. Then he said to them, suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, friend, lend me three loaves for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey and I have nothing to set before him. And from inside he answers and says, do not bother me. The door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given 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. Now suppose one of your fathers is asked by his son for a fish. He will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? We have already dealt with the Lord's Prayer in our previous time together in Luke chapter 11. Today we'll be dealing with the illustration about the Lord's Prayer and is commonly known as the Parable of the Importunate Friend or the Shameless Persistent Friend. And so we'll be dealing with that this morning in verses 5 through 13. Verses 1 through 4, like I said, we've already discussed this, we've already gone through this in several sessions, and so we don't want to do a review on it, but it's commonly known as the Lord's Prayer. And that is legitimate to call it the Lord's Prayer, I believe, because the Lord Jesus Christ authored it. Not only did he authored it, he ordered it for our use. Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples. And so it's commonly known as the Lord's Prayer. It's probably better to call it the model prayer, but it's nothing wrong with calling it the Lord's Prayer. It's the skeleton. It's the skeletal framework, if you will, for all of our prayers. It's the headings that we can use for our prayers. You can't improve upon the Lord's Prayer. You can go anywhere in the Bible. And you will find that it cannot be improved upon. If you read a psalm, a psalm of David, his prayers are in alignment with the Lord's prayer. It's always to honor God, to live according to his will, to seek God's help in our legitimate needs in this life. And so these prayer, the one found in Matthew chapter six, and here, two different teachings, two different periods of time, two different areas of Israel, and two years apart, but they are very, very important for the believer, for us to use this as our guide, as our template, if you will, for daily prayer life. So I want to get into verses 5 through 7 before, well, obviously now. And it is a story given in the form of this extended question. And it's told to us in order to illustrate that our Heavenly Father desires to answer our prayers. And so verses 5 through 7 is the first section of this section. It is the parable, like I said, given in the form of a long question. In other words, Jesus is explaining the profound reality of God's relationship with his children in language that we can understand. Because that's really how the Bible operates. We have these heavenly truths, these heavenly laws, these heavenly relationships, and God tells it to us in order for you and I to comprehend them. And so this is why, one of the reasons he tells these stories to people. He does this so you and I cannot misunderstand his message. He illustrated it through a common life experience, a poor family in need of bread. That is as basic as you can possibly get. It shows us that the gospel is for all peoples in every generation. It doesn't matter if you're poor, or rich, or powerful, and not powerful. Everybody has access to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Bread is the one food that is universal to everyone. There is no one that doesn't like bread. I'm sure we could find some weirdo that doesn't like bread, but generally speaking, everybody likes bread. The young, the old, the poor, the rich, the kings, and the paupers. So therefore, everyone can relate to this parable in verses five through seven. And then of course, his extended illustrations about it. So Jesus asked this question, and let's read this. And he said to them, verse five, which one of you shall have a friend and shall go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves. Basically, Jesus said, let us consider the model prayer that is in verses 1 through 4. Let's consider what I just said in giving you this model. Let's use this scenario. Suppose you go to a friend's home at midnight, knock on his door, and ask him to lend you three loaves of bread. three flat, very small, about this big, flat, round loaves of bread, enough to feed one man. They called them bread cakes. And they were cooked every day. There was no refrigeration. There was really no way to keep these things from molding. And so bread was cooked by families on a day-to-day basis. So he says, let us consider what this means. The fact that the man decided to knock on his friend's door at midnight tells us that he understood that he was about to strain the relationship between he and his friend, his neighbor. He knew this was going to put a strain on their relationship. You knock on somebody's door at midnight when they're sleeping, it better be for a really good cause. And so Jesus then explains why he had to do this. He needed to go to this neighbor's home at midnight. And we find that in verse six. Four, a friend of mine has come from a journey and I have nothing to set before him. You say to yourself, do you really need to do that? Well, in this story, yes. This is what the man decided that he needed to do. A friend had been traveling probably a long distance. If you get there at midnight, you've been traveling and you're tired. He showed up at home very late at night needing food and shelter. Didn't ask for food probably, but he needed shelter. He wouldn't have gone there. And so it's the duty of his friend to make sure that he is provided for in his needs. Bread, like I said, in that culture was baked every morning and then eaten the same day. So this man didn't have any. Probably means he didn't have a family. He cooked what he needed and that was the end of it. Maybe he and his wife, I don't know. But his neighbor probably did have kids. We know he has kids. We'll find that in verse 8. And that means mom probably cooked enough bread because these kids eat a lot of food, especially if they have teenagers. And there was probably leftover bread. Going bad, probably, but still there was some bread left over. No Ziploc bags. Ziploc bags are very new, by the way. My sandwiches are wrapped in wax paper when I was a little kid. It was fine, but we didn't have even, so things have really come along rapidly in the last 40 years or so. So anyway, verse 7, like I said, reveals that the neighbor had children, so therefore there was probably some leftover bread. He knew that there was leftover bread. That's why he's knocking on the door. This man wanted to take good care of his friend. He had nothing to offer him. So he knocked on his neighbor's door at midnight and asked him to lend him three bread cakes. Now we're going to find out that the neighbor is not pleased with this at all. He doesn't like that this man is knocking on his door. He's very upset with all of this. Verse seven, and from inside, He shall answer and say, stop troubling me, for the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed. I am not able to get up to give it to you. It was common among the poor people, the poor class of the Middle East in those days and probably still today, in fact I know that, that whole families would sleep in the same room and sometimes in the same large bed. It was an upper level overlooking the in and out stable for their animals in those days. Stables were connected to the home, and the animal could be actually partly in the house and partly outside. And that enabled the man of the house to protect his animals from wolves, from bears, from lions. He could jump up quickly and try to protect the very few animals that he may have had. And so these floors were raised above that area, and this is where they slept. They all slept together. And so they were all tucked in for the night. The door was bolted down. The oriental locks in those days were very, very difficult to to latch and to unlatch. It was a secure door. So it wasn't an easy thing to do, to crawl over his children, to wake everybody up, and to make this big fuss and get this door open. And so we find him. very, very upset with his neighbor because of all of this. The man was outside knocking and talking. So he's already disrupted everything anyway. The man inside said, stop troubling me. Go away. The door is shut and it's going to stay that way. I'm not going to be bothered by you. So clearly this is a very inconvenient time for the man, and he doesn't want to be bothered. Not only that, like I said, it's already too late anyway. Everybody's up, everybody's upset, and it's going to be hard to get back to normal anyway. But anyway, we'll move on. Stop upsetting my peace, my family's peace. This is my time, our time. I don't want to be bothered with you right now at all. Okay. Verse eight, Jesus says, I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him because he is a friend, yet because of his shameless persistence, his importunity, says the King James Version, Yet because of his shameless persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. This gives us a glimpse into the true nature of fallen humanity. Why did the man agree to do this? Well, the selfishness of the man defined him and it ordered his actions. His attitude towards his neighbor, was that of resentment. I don't want to be bothered by you and I'm not going to help you. In other words, he made it clear that he was not going to get up, he was not going to open the door and give the man what he needed simply because it was inconvenient for him. He didn't do it. He should have done it because he's a friend. But he says, no, I'm not going to do it, even though you're my friend, you're my neighbor. I don't want to do it. You are inconveniencing me, and I do not want to help you. I don't want you to cause my family grief any longer. Go away. Then what would motivate the man? to help him? What would motivate the man to get up, get the three loaves of bread, bread cakes, open the door, give it to him, slam the door, lock the door, crawl back over into bed, and try and get some sleep? What would motivate him to do that? Well, Jesus uses this little teeny word. Very, very small word, gay. It's an intensive particle in the Greek. And what it means is, ah, yet there's a reason. Let's see what this reason is. We could embellish this small word saying, wait, there is one thing that will get this man out of bed. It isn't that he's a friend. It isn't that he's selfless. So what could it be that would get this man out of bed? Because of his shameless persistence, he will get up. That is the shameless persistence of the man outside who is constantly knocking on the door and constantly asking the man to help him. Because of his shameless persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs. The man's shameless persistence was found in his constant knocking and constant crying out for the three loaves of bread. Very, very simple story. Anybody can understand this. The selfishness of the sleeping man was only altered because he realized the only way to get some peace and quiet was to get rid of this shamelessly persistent neighbor away from his house. That's the only thing he could do because he wasn't going to stop knocking and he wasn't going to stop asking until he got what he needed. Now Jesus is going to give us this application to this parable. He wants us to understand why he's telling us this parable. Again, Lord teach us to pray, verses 1-4 gives us the model prayer. Now he gives us this parable of the importunate friend or the shamelessly persistent friend knocking and speaking outside of his doorway and now he's going to apply this parable by telling us that that God promises to answer our prayers. That's all this is about. Lord teaches to pray, and he wants us to know that God promises to answer our prayers. Verse 9, And I say to you, keep on asking, be like that man, keep on asking, and it shall be given to you. Keep on seeking and you shall find. Keep on knocking and it shall be open to you. This application cannot be more encouraging to believers, to those who attempt to pray, to those who read their Bibles and want to commune with God. It gives us an insight. That's really not the right word, but it tells us explicitly that God wants to hear from us and desires to answer our prayers and longs to hear our petitions. His disciple asked him just recently, please teach us how to pray the way John taught his disciples. Probably that man was a disciple of John. John is now dead. The Baptist was killed by Herod, of course, had his head cut off in Herod's dungeon. And they longed to hear their master pray, their pastor pray. And when they were listening to Jesus pray, it reminded them of John the Baptist. Lord, teach us to pray the way we used to listen to John pray. And so Jesus gave them this perfect model prayer. This is how you pray. It's wonderful. So then he gives us this parable. Why? To illustrate the attitude that our father has in listening to our prayers. He's nothing like the man inside the house. Not at all. The neighbor believed his friend was being unreasonable. And so he just simply complained about it and refused to help him. But God's not like that. And that's what's wonderful about God. Our intimate God that we worship and that we serve and that we commune with is he tells us under no uncertain terms that he loves to hear from us. And he's very interested in us and he desires to help us. So that's the contrast. By contrast, Jesus has assured us that there is never an inconvenient time for God to hear our prayers. He doesn't go to sleep. There is no midnight when the door is closed when you and I engage in communion with God. We are to imitate the friend at the door he's telling us. Be like that man. Don't be like the man inside. Be like the man outside. Be shamelessly persistent in your prayer life towards me. I say to you, Jesus says, that's emphatic language of authority. I have the authority to command you to do this. I have the authority to tell you this. I'm the son of God. I am saying to you, as the Lord Jesus Christ, and then he has these three present imperatives. Is that important? It's really important, or I wouldn't say it to you. These three present imperatives are continuous, persistent action. Listen to this. Keep asking. keep seeking and keep knocking each and every day for as long as is needful. That is Jesus' command to us on how we are to pray. He's encouraging us that there is never an inconvenient time with God and we should be We need to learn to have faith that God truly cares about us because one of the great roadblocks to prayer, I think, is that we forget and we don't believe that these things are true. And when we don't believe, that God answers prayer, we leave off praying. We get discouraged. Or we attempt to pray and we find out we're just talking to ourselves because we don't really believe in what we're saying and that God actually hears us. And so prayer and the discipline of prayer is getting ourselves to remember that God truly does care. It's an attitude of the heart. It's an attitude of the mind that a disciple of Christ must have. It's a way of life. And that's a discipline. It's not something that just happens. Nothing happens easy. Things that are hard, things that you want in life, you have to work for them. It doesn't matter what it is. the kids that are in baseball right now. They have to practice and hone their skills if they want to get good at being baseball players. Christianity is the same way. We have to develop disciplines in our life which will enable us to believe what we believe, because I believe a lot of things in the Bible, but I have to constantly remind myself to believe them, because I'm always susceptible to unbelief and discouragement. We are to be shamelessly persistent, not knowing when the answer will come or what the answer will be. Because really, we might be expecting an answer and not get the answer that we want. And that is something we have to consider also. So to ask your mom and dad something, you expect them to go one way. And for children, we all know this, a lot of times mom and dad are going to say no for reasons that you might not understand. And the child is supposed to hopefully have enough grace as a child to trust mom and dad to do the right thing for them. Well, it's the same way with Christianity. We have to trust our father that he knows what's best for you and me. And it's a wonderful thing to know and to believe that God knows what's best for me more than I know what's best for me. Because if I got my way, my life would be a mess. So that this promise from Jesus is really astounding. Look at the last second part. And it shall be open to you. Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, and it shall be open to you. These are promises from God. Jesus has promised that our prayers, if they're prayed in faith, because there are conditions to prayer. If they're prayed according to his will, with a desire to submit ourselves to his will in our lives, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done as in heaven, so on earth. We ask God to enable us to want his will to be part of our lives and that we can submit to it. That's part of the model prayer. And so we ask these things seeking his will. And he tells us he will answer these prayers. This truth is something that is very difficult for people to apprehend, to be believed. But it has to be apprehended. Let's put it that way. It's hard to believe this. It's hard to grab hold of this and pray with boldness. We're encouraged to come boldly to the throne of grace, but this has to be apprehended by the believer. That is to believe through faith that God sees us as his children. That's how we want to apprehend this truth. We have to remind ourselves who we are as God's covenant people, that we were saved by grace, that Jesus died for my sins and he imputed his righteousness to me after he imputed my sin to him and became sin for us who knew no sin. And that we became joint heirs together with him. that we were adopted into his family, and that we are God's children, and we are commanded, told, to call him Father, which has never been done in the history of the world. The first time that men were taught that we can call God Father is on the Sermon on the Mount, in John chapter 6, when he taught us how to pray. He said, when you pray, pray in this manner, our father, first time ever spoken. No one had ever called God father before that moment, except Jesus, of course. Why would he do that? Because we've been adopted as legitimate children into the family of God. And he wants us to see him as our true heavenly father and we as his children of the kingdom. And that means he desires to commune with us because dads want to talk to their kids. He takes pleasure in answering our prayers. Jesus used the term daddy at the Garden of Gethsemane when he was Sweating great drops of blood. He was in great agony of soul that he was about to become sin for his people and die a horrible death on the Roman cross and his son was getting his father was going to turn his back on him. Father, Daddy, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, thy will be done. Intimate communion with our Creator through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's the theological analysis of what we have. That I have access to my Creator through the person and work of Christ, and He is my advocate. And He stands before the Father representing me in His righteousness, and I'm covered with the blood of Christ. That's all true. But Jesus isn't giving us those details. He's telling us to come to him as a child goes to his father. He's telling us to be persistent in communing with him. And he desires to hear our prayers. We must also be aware that all of our prayers will be heard. All of our prayers will be heard. Think of that. It may not be the answer we're looking for, but he will hear our prayers. As children, we have to learn contentment in the answers that he gives us. That's the whole life of the Apostle Paul, that he had learned to be content. He had gone through all of these trials and tribulations in his life, and he had learned contentment. He didn't read it out of, he didn't learn it out of a book. He learned it in his life experiences, in the providential working of God in his life. And he went through a lot. And everybody here goes through a lot. And we learn to be content in the arms of daddy. That's all this is about. It's a picture of a child and a father. Okay, he's going to amplify this this promise of answered prayer in verse 10. It's basically a mirror image of verse nine, and he just says it in a different way to emphasize what he's saying. Verse 10, for everyone who is asking receives, and he who is seeking finds, and to him who is knocking it shall be opened. Again, the whole passage is emphatic in the Greek. He just reiterates it in stronger language. He doesn't want us to miss its profound importance for your life and for mine. It is the wonderful truth that God loves his children as only he can, because no one can love us the way he loves us. And no one has the desire to answer our prayers like he does. He is infallible. He's perfect. And he's telling us this is the way it is for him. This is how he sees it. And he wants us to believe it. Okay, the second application. Because in many ways, it's an outrageous concept that he's going to bring up in verses 11 and 12. He says, now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish, and instead of a fish, he will hand him a snake. Or if he shall ask for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? He is giving us this outrageous concept because it's so ridiculous. No father would treat his son like this. It's an emphatic no. Dad would never do that to his son. An earthly father would not treat his son like this. If he's a decent man, maybe he's crazy. There are evil men that would do something like that, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the average man that loves his son. The region in which they lived, Upper Galilee, was desert. It was arid. There were lots of snakes there, and there were a lot of scorpions in that area. Because of this desert climate, there were plentiful. And so if your son asked you for a fish, the Upper Galilee was a fishing area, Bethsaida and Capernaum, of course. James and John and Peter and Andrew were fishermen. Your son comes to you and says, Dad, I'm hungry. I need a fish. And you grab a snake out from under a rock and you hand it to your son. That makes you evil. You would never do something like that. Large scorpions would roll up into a ball. And they turned white when they did that. And they looked like an egg. And a lot of animals bury their eggs in the sand, and God protects these eggs from harm. It's how the animal kingdom works. But you had to be careful in those areas, because if you picked up this egg, this white egg, it was actually a scorpion. He would uncurl himself, and he would get you. And they were very, very poisonous, of course. So a good father would never purposely deceive his son like that, Jesus is saying, and give him the scorpion. That would be a very cruel thing to do. It would be wicked to do something like that to your child. A good father desires that his children trust him. A good father wants his children to have complete confidence that they are protected by him and that he loves them and that they are safe and sound in their father's eyes. What kind of a father doesn't want that for his children? No father wants his children to go to bed at night and have them being worried that they're all alone in this world. No, when you tuck your child in at night, they are safe and sound at home because mom and dad are taking good care of them. That's the illustration he's giving us and he's giving it to us in the negative. So now he gives us this grand conclusion. Look at verse 13. If then you being evil, think of this language that he uses. If then you being evil, know to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who are asking him? This is an analogy of contrasts. That sounds deep. It's really not. He says a sinful man will help his friend simply because He has a sinful agenda. I want to get back to sleep. I want you to get away from my door. I don't want you to bother my family anymore. Here's your bread. Go home and leave us alone. A sinful man will do that for a sinful agenda. I need to get this over with so I can get back to sleep. That's how simple men or evil men think. By contrast, Because God does not have a selfish agenda. He doesn't have a selfish desire. Nothing like that. He only desires to hear our heartfelt petitions, our persistent crying out to him. That's his desire. So you can't compare God with evil men. What do I mean by that? A comparison has to be basically similar things. In the sports world, for example, there's been this ongoing debate since the 70s that if Joe Louis was in his prime and Muhammad Ali was in his prime, who would win that prize fight? Well, that's a comparison. Who's the greatest quarterback that ever lived? Joe Montana or that guy that lives in New England? Well, it's Joe Montana, of course. But the point is that's a comparison, you see. This is a contrast. Because you cannot compare God with evil men, with creatures. He's not like us in any way. And we could go through all the list of his attributes, but we don't need to do that right now. The point is that Biblical language is very, very important for us. And it's an offense to a lot of people, to most people. To all unbelievers, biblical language is an offense. Look what he says at the beginning of verse 13. If then you being evil know to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who are asking him? If then, you being evil. Decent, educated, proper people don't start sentences like that. But Jesus does. And he's the sinless son of God. He tells the truth about what we are, about who we are. Let's look how evil men are, because you can find out how evil men are all the way back to Genesis chapter 6. Do you remember what happened right before the flood? And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. So all the way back 6,000, 7,000 years ago now, the sinful imaginations of the mind had reached its peak. Nothing new has come into the mind and heart of man since then. And it was continually evil. And he was very displeased. And so he destroyed the earth through a flood, except for eight people. And then he repented, meaning he decided that he would never do that again. And so he gave us a bow in the cloud, a rainbow. And he reminds us every time we see a rainbow that he's not going to kill us by a world flood for our sins. He's never going to do that again. That's grace. That's mercy. And then instead he sent his son to die for our sins. Instead of killing us, he sent his only begotten son to die for us. So Jesus was arguing from the lesser to the greater. He does that a lot. The Apostle Paul loves to do that too. What I mean by that is the question is not to be answered. It's only to be contemplated and believed. If then you being evil know to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who are asking him? There's no answer to that question. We're to contemplate it. We're to muse on it. We're to think on it. We're to talk about it. We're to meditate upon it. He said, think about it. If an evil man, that is a sinful man, a man that is created by God, all men, if this type of man loves his children, knows to give his children good gifts, that is legitimate necessities and desires for kids, that's good. But then he says, by how much more? That's the best way we can translate it from the original language, because the great contrast cannot be put into strong enough language for us to understand how big this contrast is. By how much more shall our Father, who was perfect and sinless, eternal, give the Holy Spirit to those who are asking according to the model that I have taught? Why didn't he say, how much more shall our father who provides us with our daily bread? He doesn't, he talks about the spirit. How much more shall your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who are asking him? A.T. Robertson called the giving of the Holy Spirit the greatest gift. It's the sumum bonum. It's the greatest gift that has ever been given to mankind. That God would freely give his children the gift of the Holy Spirit. Not like a Pentecostal movement when you're running around like crazy. biblical in any sense of the imagination. The grand objective of God to Christ's disciples is to give us the Holy Spirit of God. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the life of our pilgrimage on this earth is absolutely necessary or is impossible for us to live the Christian life. There's no greater gift that you can find on this earth. We just had Christmas. All the kids got all those Christmas presents. It was so exciting to watch them rip those boxes open and the paper flying off. And then at the end of the night, the dejection on their faces, even weeping at the disappointment that somehow The feeling that they were anticipating never really came to fruition, and it disappointed them. I remember seeing that many times over the years. I remember feeling it as a child. Well, there's no such disappointment with the child of God, with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Lange called it the essence of all good gifts. which the Father in heaven can bestow upon his praying children." If we've been given the Holy Spirit by God, and all Christians have, then it means that we have also received saving faith, that we have received salvation for our sins. We are partakers of the righteousness of Christ. We have hope, we have joy, we have peace, we have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. All of these things are connected and without the Holy Spirit guiding us, enabling us to read our Bibles with understanding and to hear preaching and to see the world around us through the eyes of God and to understand reality is all because of the work of the Holy Spirit. I'm gonna read a few verses for you. Romans 8, 9. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If so, be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. Romans 8, 11. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. 1 Corinthians 2, 12. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit, which is of God, that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. One more. 1 Corinthians 3.16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? There is no better way to know that we are children of God, but by the indwelling of the Spirit of God. The Spirit itself, Paul told the church at Rome, the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ. We are part of his family. We are brothers. He calls us friends in John chapter 15. An earthly father proves himself daily by giving good gifts to his children. By how much more does our heavenly father prove himself? Well, by giving us the gift of the Holy Spirit. That's what he's telling. That's the argument. That's the contrast. It's an amazing thing. I don't think he could have been more plain. And I say to you, ask, and it shall be given. Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto you. We who have the Spirit have Christ, and we have access to God through the work of Christ. And he longs to hear our prayers. And that makes us the most happy people on the planet. No matter what our situation is, No one could be more happy than a Christian that is filled with the Spirit of God. Shameless persistence in prayer is our Father's delight. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, and I'm gonna quit very soon here, I promise. Our father is never too tired. He's never too busy. And he's never unconcerned about you or me. Take your petitions to him. Are you anxious? Are you worried? Are you bothered? Are you scared? Then tell him. Then go to him and tell him. He always takes joy in hearing from his children. It also teaches us that our prayers will be heard and they will be answered. The one thing that is essential. is that we develop this habit of daily communion with God. Because this is a difficult task. Prayer is not easy. It's hard. And there's a lot of reasons for that. A lot of our reasons for not praying well is our personalities. Our personalities of unbelief, self-centeredness, sin, busy. All these things play into the fact that our prayer lives are nothing like they should be, and so we want to work at that. And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint. Pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Paul to Timothy, I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. It's all over the Bible, you see. It's part of the Christian life. And it's probably the most difficult things to accomplish in the Christian life. So I want to close, and I will close very quickly here, with a contrast between an unbelieving man, a man that does not believe in the Bible, and an unbelieving Christian. Because Christians fight unbelief all the time. We all fight unbelief. Prayer is one of the biggest problems that we have in the Christian life because it's difficult to believe all these things that we are asking God to do. If we could only come to believe what Jesus is telling us, we would be a completely changed Christian. Jesus says that if you could believe, you could move mountains. I think we struggle greatly with this saying. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. This is to be apprehended by faith. We are to develop the ability to believe this statement from Jesus. And we have to ask ourselves, do we believe this? Because it's easy just to shrug it off and keep going in the life that we have. It's possible that we just can't grasp this wonderful truth that is before us. And so we pray in unbelief. We pray, we get through our prayers. We pray in vain repetitions. We just get through it and we move on. So prayer is very difficult for many reasons. We all like to talk about, some of us do, I guess, the great man of prayer, George Mueller, the man that built all those wonderful places for orphaned children to live. It's great to talk about him. It's great to talk about his great faith. It's great to talk about his prayer life and how God answers his prayer miraculously, we believe. But how many of us have attempted to be like him? That's a high standard, you see. It's easy to have him as a hero, but it's not so easy to have him as an example. What I'm saying is faith needs to be developed in the life of the believer. We must learn to believe what we pray for. Maybe we can begin our prayers with, Lord, give me faith to believe what I'm asking. Maybe we can admit that we struggle with even believing the things that we say we believe in. What about unbelievers? Believers struggle with unbelief. Unbelievers have a different kind of unbelief. There are passive unbelievers and there are very active unbelievers. Passive unbeliever is somebody that never thinks about religion. Maybe goes to church on Easter and Christmas, never opens up a Bible, never talks about religion or politics, just moves along going through life and never wants to be bothered with any of that. That's a passive unbeliever. Still an unbeliever. Active unbelievers are like the Apostle Paul. He gets warrants for people's arrest and he puts them in prison and he murders them. where he gets on the internet and he finds all the inconsistencies that he can find in the Bible and writes them down and shows the hypocrisy of Christians. That's an act of unbeliever. Mocking Christianity, maybe. How can you believe that Genesis is literal? You're telling me God created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh? You're telling me that Jonah was Swallowed by a great fish and Daniel escaped the jaws of the lions. I'm not going to believe those fairy tales. I'm a scientist. I'm powerful. I'm rich. I'm educated. That's active unbelief. of course God is capable of all of those things. What kind of God would God be if he's not capable of creating you and me? After all, he did create you. That should be enough right there to be a believer, but it's not, I know. And so we have to end this in a positive note. And the positive note is Go to God in prayer. Believe all the things that he tells us because it's all true. Go to him as a child goes to his father and believe that he loves you as a father loves his child because we are his children and he's given us the gift of the Holy Spirit. That's an amazing thing in and of itself, but we'll stop right there. Our Father, we thank you for your goodness to us. We thank you that we can meet together once a week to worship you according to your word, according to your will, in spirit and in truth. May you bless us as we leave this place this day. We're thankful that we can meet together. In Christ's name we pray, amen.