Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

² For do you think, Brethren, that God does not know what is needful for you? He knows and prevents our desires, who knows our want. And so when He taught His disciples to pray, and warned them not to use many words in prayer, He says, “Use not many words; for your Father knows what things you have need of before ye ask Him.” Now the Lord says something different from this. What is this? Because He misliked that we should use many words in prayer, He said to us, “When ye pray, use not many words; for your Father knows what things you have need of before ye ask Him.”

If our “Father knows what things we have need of before we ask Him,” why do we use even few words? What is the use of prayer at all, if “our Father knows” already “what things we have need of”? He says to one, Do not make your prayer to Me at great length; for I know what is needful for you. If so, Lord, why should I so much as pray at all? You would not that I should use long prayers, yea rather Thou dost even bid me to use near none at all. And then what means that precept in another place?

For He who says, “Use not many words in prayer,” says in another place, “Ask, and it shall be given you.” And that you might not think that this first precept to ask was given cursorily, He added, “Seek, and you shall find.” And that you might not think that this too was cursorily given, see what He added further, see with what He finished. “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you:” see what He added. He would have you ask that you may receive, and seek that you may find, and knock that you may enter in.

Seeing then that our Father knows already what is needful for us, how and why do we ask? Why seek? Why knock? Why weary ourselves in asking, and seeking, and knocking, to instruct Him who knows already? And in another place the words of the Lord are, “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” If men “ought always to pray,” how does He say, “Use not many words”? How can I always pray, if I so quickly make an end? Here Thou biddest me to finish quickly; there “always to pray and not to faint:” what does this mean?

Now that you may understand this, “ask, seek, knock.” For for this cause is it closed, not to shut you out, but to exercise you. Therefore, brethren, ought we to exhort to prayer, both ourselves and you. For other hope have we none amid the manifold evils of this present world, than to knock in prayer, to believe and to maintain the belief firm in the heart, that your Father only does not give you what He knows is not expedient for you. For you know what you desire; He knows what is good for you.

Imagine yourself under a physician, and in weak health, as is the very truth; for all this life of ours is a weakness; and a long life is nothing else but a prolonged weakness. Imagine yourself then to be sick under the physician's hand. You have a desire to ask your physician leave to drink a draught of fresh wine. You are not prohibited from asking, for it may chance to do you no harm, or even good to receive it. Do not then hesitate to ask; ask, hesitate not; but if you receive not, do not take it to heart. Now if you would act thus in the hands of a man, the physician of the body, how much more in the hands of God, who is the Physician, the Creator, and Restorer, both of your body and soul?