Upside Down Living #19 - Dependence in a Time of Self Reliance
Message Description
Looking at the famous ask, seek, and knock passage in Matthew 7:7-11, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund talks about the questions we ask when God seems distant, 3 experiences we have in prayer, and some reasons God seems to not respond to our prayers.
Message Transcript
Welcome to Orchard Hill. It's great to be together Online, Wexford, Butler County, Strip District, wherever you are, and really whenever you partake in this weekend, it's great, just that we can be together. I just want to highlight again, something you've been hearing about, and that is our Wexford campus will be opening its Worship Center on December 3rd and 4th, it's that Thursday and Friday. And that'll be a great celebration.
So, if Wexford has been your home campus, even if it hasn't been and you want to come, it will be an outstanding time just to celebrate and dedicate the space. And we'll also talk about some of the vision that's ahead for us as a church in the days ahead. We will have a mask required section in the balcony and a mask encouraged on the floor, and all will be socially distanced. So, we ask you to register ahead of time.
Also, our Butler County and Strip District campus have both just slightly tweaked the way that they're approaching the weekends with their first service at each campus being masked required. And the second service being masked encouraged, just so that there are some options for all people to try to worship in this time. And again, we continue to register and be socially distant. And to date, to our knowledge, we have not had a transmission issue at any of our campuses. And so, we appreciate the way that you've registered, socially distanced, and been responsible to make this time work.
So, let's pray together and we'll jump into what we have today. Father, thank you just for each person who is gathered in whatever context we're in this weekend. And I pray that you would use this time just to speak to us about who you are and how we relate to you. And I pray that my words would reflect your word in content, tone, and emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.
I don't know if you remember the first time you prayed for something, like really prayed for something and it didn't get answered the way that you thought it should be. Now, many of us, if we told that story, we would probably go back to childhood. Whether we were raised in a home that was a home of faith or not a home of faith, there was probably some moment where you said, "God, could I have this for Christmas?" Or "Could you make it not rain?" Or "Could you cause this to happen?" "Could you cause this person to like me?" Something like that. And you prayed it and then it didn't happen the way that you wanted it to happen.
And I believe that those moments actually inform the way that we think about God. And there are some moments that we might be able to just chalk it up to trivia like trivial issues, like will it rain or not, but they form a perception of God. But I remember probably one of the first times I prayed for something with any kind of consistency or clarity. I was in grade school and there was a woman who attended the church that my family attended at the time who had cancer.
And the people in the church were gathering and praying and praying very specifically that she would be healed. And there was this belief in some of the people in the church that if we declared it and kind of gave a clear faith that God would do it, that God would heal her. And I remember she was actually the wife of the superintendent of the school system I went to.
The day that she died, I remember one of the teachers told me, and I don't know how they knew that I was connected to it somehow. And I remember sitting on the bus on the way home and just sitting there thinking, "Maybe God isn't good. Maybe there isn't even God." Because the idea had been, if we believe enough and we pray and God is good, and this is clearly a good thing, then God will do it.
And so, we prayed, and prayed, and I prayed, and I remember praying for a long time, and then all of a sudden, it was just over. And just in my young mind, it started a process of saying maybe God isn't really good and even questioning God's existence. And where that led me was ultimately to come to a point of saying, "No, I still believe God exists." But it led to a very functional kind of deism in my life. And deism is the belief that God sets the world in motion and then steps back.
And so, although I didn't have words for it and I didn't walk around saying, "I'm a functional deist." What happened was for me, it became this idea that, well, there is a God. God is good, and all the things we learned that God is, but functionally God has his hands off of this world. And so, what happened for me is I began to kind of think, "If anything in this world is going to be, it's up to me, and God is not a reliable source of help."
Now what's kind of weird about that if I look back at it, is there were other times that in my growing up years that I could see God do some really great things. And yet there were other times where I prayed for things and the disappointments were even more real than this woman passing away who was kind of a third or fourth tier contact of mine.
And here's why I bring this up, because the passage that we're looking at today is about asking, seeking, and knocking, it's about praying, it's about depending on God in a time of self-reliance, but it's really about the character of God. It's really about who God is and what God is doing. Now, personal responsibility, when I say my belief system became, if it's to be it's up to me, personal responsibility is a good thing in the Bible. It's something that is biblical to say, "I need to take responsibility for my life." But for me, it led to, again, this idea of God being un-involved and uninterested. And it got to a point where I didn't even really want to ask God for anything, because I was afraid he wouldn't answer. And it would lead to the whole cycle once again of, kind of unbelief or doubt, or skepticism.
And really the questions that are behind this are the questions, is God accessible? In other words, can I reach God? Is God good? Does God care about what's going on? And does God have the power, or is God enough to interact with what's going on in this world? Those are real questions. And if you've prayed and ever been disappointed by what you felt like was the answer, then at the core, you've dealt with those questions on some level.
Now, sometimes we also bring into our perception of God, our earthly parents. And what I mean by that is if our earthly parents were selfish, proud, unaware, or short-tempered, what happens is we have a hard time conceiving of deity, of God being completely different than that. And what even happens more is some of us will have a wound from our dad or our mom. And what we'll do is we'll project it into other authorities in our lives, other people who are around us, or with us, a boss, principal, schoolteacher, or somebody. And when they don't come through the way that we think they should come through, and they don't heal that wound that we have, then we are disappointed with them. And we can go through life often being disappointed with people in authority over and over and over again. When what we're really doing is saying, "I want this person to heal what my parent didn't heal."
And the way that relates to our conception of God is if we had a hurtful experience growing up, is we often then end up having a hard time conceiving of God, who is different. Now we've called this series Upside Down Living because Jesus takes what's easy and natural for us, and he turns it upside down, over and over again. And here, what he does, once again is he says, "I don't want you to feel like you're alone in this world, and you have to figure everything out, and it's up to you, and there is no resource that's available to you." What he does here is he teaches this idea of prayer, but he ties it to the character of God.
Here's how he does it. Verse seven of Matthew seven, "Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be open to you." Now that is in the present imperative, in the original language. And what that means is, it's a phrase that means keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking, over and over again until you get what you want.
But often what we do when we read this or hear this, is we think this is just three different ways to say the same thing, that there's nothing unique about this phraseology. It's just a poetic kind of way to say, you need to keep seeking God, no matter what's going on. And that's true, but I think there's something else going on here. And that is the idea of asking, seeking, and knocking, I think point to three different experiences that we can have when we come to God.
And here's what I mean, to ask means that somebody is accessible and obvious to us. So, if a child is near his or her parent, and they're like, "Oh, you know what? Hey mom, dad, could I have, could you do?" And what they'll do is they'll just simply say, "Help me, give me, please." And they're really clear that there's mom, there's dad, they have the resources, they're good, they're accessible. So, I'm going to ask, and they're going to give me what I need. That's one experience.
The second experience is that of seeking, which is where the person does not seem obvious, but you still have the idea that they're accessible. In other words, they aren't right there where you go, "Oh, there they are." But you know if you go walking around the house or around the property, you can find mom or dad and you can say, "Here's what I need."
And then the idea of knocking implies the idea that somebody has gone behind a closed door. In other words, they're not obvious and they're not even feeling or seeming accessible right now. In other words, they seem as if they're out of our purview. And I believe that what Jesus is doing here is he's saying, "You are going to have varied experiences and varied times of your life, sometimes God will seem accessible and obvious, keep on asking. Sometimes God will seem inaccessible and not obvious, keep on knocking. And sometimes God will seem not obvious, but you'll have a sense he's there, keep on seeking because God is ultimately accessible." In other words, we know that we can connect to God, he's good, and he gives good gifts.
This is what he says in the verses that follow. I'll read those in just a second. And God has enough. That's the implication of this. Here it is, where he says, "For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."
Now, again, this is the kind of thing that led to kind of the idea of, if we pray that this woman will be healed from her cancer, then God will. Because doesn't it say, if you ask, if you seek, if you knock, then you will receive. And what often happens is people will say, "Well, that is the indication that I have to pray with faith. And the reason that my prayers aren't answered is I haven't declared enough. I haven't prayed with enough faith." When what Jesus is doing here is saying, "I want you to keep praying, I want you to keep asking, seeking, knocking, because you will receive." But listen to what comes next because here's how he... I'm not going to say modifies it, but how he contextualizes his statement, for he says this, "Which of you, if your son asks for bread will give him a stone?" In other words, your son is sitting there and says, "Hey dad, I'm hungry." Will say, "Ah, here's a stone."
And so, it's his way of saying, understand that God is good. "Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?" Can you imagine the scene? "Hey, could I have a bite of that fish?" "Sure." And then you put a big snake cut up there and say, "Gotcha." He's saying that would be a crazy thing for a parent to do because parents love their kids. They want their best for their kids typically. And then he says this, "If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven give good gifts to those who have ask him!"
So, in everything you do to others, what you would have them do to you, this sums up the whole law and the prophets. Now Jesus says, "Here is what I want you to get. And that is my character is good. The father's character is good." In other words, there's nothing good that God will withhold from his children who ask and there's no bad thing that God will give when we ask.
I heard a story about a bird and a lumberjack. And the bird was about to build a nest in a forest that was about to be clear cut. And the lumberjack saw the bird start to build this nest, so he went over and he kind of rattled the tree and ran the chainsaw to try to startle the bird. And the bird flew over a few trees and started to build a nest again, and the lumberjack came over again and he did the same thing. And this played itself out about 10 different times.
And the way I heard the person tell the story was they said, if you look at it from the perspective of the bird, the lumberjack seems to be an annoying nuisance to the desire to build a nest. But if you see it from the perspective of the lumberjack, what the lumberjack is doing is preventing the bird from making a choice that will ultimately cause it to lay eggs and have the eggs be destroyed when the place is clear cut. In other words, our perspective sometimes is God is withholding a good thing from us, when what he might be doing is actually providing the best thing for us in the middle of it.
Now I realize going back to my original account, that if you're in the middle of something and you say, "Well, God, how could this possibly be your good hand? How could you let this happen?" That there's no way to get that perspective, but notice what Jesus is doing here, he's saying, "What you need - to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, is the idea that I am accessible, that I am good, and that I have enough. That I am God who is good, that God is good. And that'll make the difference."
Now, sometimes God doesn't appear to answer our prayers because we can't see what God is doing. But sometimes there are things that we do according to the Bible that keeps God from working in our lives. In other word, sometimes the reason it seems like God doesn't respond to our request, doesn't respond to our seeking, doesn't respond to our knocking, isn't just because he's saying, "I'm good and I have a better, broader plan." Sometimes there are things that we do that contribute to it.
Let me show you several of these in the Bible. I have five of them and you could certainly find more, but these are five reasons that sometimes it appears to us that God does not answer our prayer. And I'm just going to say our requests seem to be denied because first, we don't ask. And this is in James chapter four, verse two, it says this, "You desire, but you do not have. So you kill, you covet and you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and you fight." And then it says this, "You do not have, because you do not ask God." In other words, what James says is that one of the reasons that some of us don't have some of the things that we think would be good, that would honor God in our lives, is because we simply don't ask.
And this goes back now to my story because the way that I lived for years was, I'm not going to ask God, so I'm not disappointed. Because I'm afraid that internally, I'll have a struggle of faith if I ask and God doesn't do what I think God should do. And instead of being able to say, "I'm going to keep asking, but I'm going to trust that he's good." What I did instead is I just retreated a little bit. And so that's one of the reasons that sometimes we will not understand what God is doing.
Here's a second thing. And that is sometimes it appears the God denies our requests because we don't align ourselves with God. This is in James 4:3. Here's what it says. "When you ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." In other words, sometimes we'll ask God, but what we're doing is we're asking God for something that we're saying, "This is for me ultimately, and I want it so that I feel good about who I am, what I'm doing." Rather than saying, "I'm asking God for something that's in alignment with what he wants."
Sometimes what we do is we walk through our lives, thinking about how God can make our lives better instead of saying, "If I align with God, then maybe God will bring things that are really good." In other words, "He's not going to give me a snake if I ask for a fish, or a stone if I ask for bread." Sometimes one of God's great gifts is unanswered prayer.
Now you may think that I'm about to quote Garth Brooks, but I'm not. In fact, some of you are saying who's Garth Brooks and that's understandable. I want to read a Puritan prayer that points to this, some of you are thinking, is Garth Brooks a Puritan? No, he's not. But here's what the Puritan prayer said. It says, "I thank you that many of my prayers have been refused. I have asked amiss and I do not have, I have prayed from lust and been rejected. I have longed for Egypt and you've given me a wilderness. Go on with your patient work of answering no to my wrongful prayer and fitting me to accept it." That is somebody who's able to say, "You know what, God, I understand that sometimes my requests will be wrong. And when they are, no, is actually a better answer than what I think a yes would be."
Now, again, I realize that's hard, if you're praying for a reconciliation in a marriage, if you're praying for the health of a loved one, if you're praying for somebody to come to faith, or if you're praying that you have resources to make it through the month ahead of you. I realize all of those things feel like how could this not be God. But sometimes what we need to do is say, "God, I'm going to trust that you're good even in what you don't provide today."
Here's the third thing, and that is sometimes it seems as if God doesn't answer our prayers because we don't confess. This is in Psalm 66, verse 18. And Psalm 66 verse 18 makes this very straightforward statement. "If I had Cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened." Sometimes we ask God to do something, and the reason that he doesn't appear to answer our prayers is because we're holding onto something that's very counter to who God is. And what Psalm says is when you cherish, in other words, when you love, when you nurture, when you hold onto something and then you come to God, God doesn't always respond the way that you want him to. Now, that doesn't mean that he's not good. And that in his lack of response or in giving something, that he isn't actually working for your good, but what it means is we need to understand that sometimes there's this other reason that God doesn't respond.
Here's another reason. This is right in this teaching of Jesus in Matthew 5. And that is sometimes we don't reconcile with people. Here's what we see in Matthew chapter five, verse 23 and 24. It says this. "Therefore, if you're offering your gift at the alter and remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift in front of the altar, first go be reconciled to them and then come offer your gift." And this is God's way of saying, instead of praying and trying to get God to do something when you have a relational mess, somewhere in your life, go address the relational mess. And once you've addressed the relational mess, then you can come back and get to a point where you can come to God.
And then one last thing, and this is Proverbs chapter 21, verse 13. And that is sometimes it seems like God doesn't answer our prayers because we don't support the needy around us. Proverbs 21, verse 13 says it this way, "Whoever shuts their ears to the cry of the poor will also cry out and not be answered." In other words, God says, when you walk by somebody who's hurting and in walking by them, you basically say, "I don't need to." But then when you turn and cry out to God that God will look at you in the same way.
One of the things we do here at Orchard Hill is we take a portion of any money that's given and we use it to resource some of the under privileged and disadvantaged in our own community and in the world. We do it here locally, especially in our partnership with Light of Life, where we provide a meal one day of every week, Orchard Hill provides a meal via Light of Life for people in our city who are homeless. And what's really cool about how they go about doing their ministry is they don't just say we feed people, but they offer a track for people to get out of poverty, to get out of generational poverty, and to get on a different level in terms of where or how they're living.
And so that's something you do just by giving here. But I think this is really talking about the personal encounters that you and I have with people who are hurting. And certainly it could apply to economic ones, but it applies to probably just people who are hurting in general, shut your ears to their cry, and it says, God will shut his ears to yours. And so, what we have here is we have five different reasons that sometimes we seem like to us, we're asking, seeking, and knocking, and we may not seem to get the response that we want.
And here's kind of what's happening in my mind. If you're in a band and the band director tries to decide what everybody does in order to have the best possible performance, you may not get exactly what you're asked for, but the band director is saying, "I am good. And I'm trying to give everyone opportunity and to give us the best performance." But if you come into a band performance and you just say, "Hey, you know what, I'm coming on my terms, my way, I'm not aligning my goal with the whole... I'm never going to ask for anything. I'm going to refuse to acknowledge when I play something wrong or whatever." At some point the band director is going to be like, "No, I'm not giving you what you asked for." Did you see the difference here?
And here's what I think needs to happen for you, for me, if we're going to not become just functionally deistic or functionally somebody who says, "I believe in God, but I don't have a trust relationship with this God." And that is, we'll need to come to a point where we acknowledge the goodness of God that's expressed right here in this passage. And when I say acknowledge, I don't just mean give lip service, but where it becomes a controlling rubric, because it's then that we can say, "Because I know that God is accessible, because I know he's good, because I know that he has enough. Therefore, I can come to him, whatever my current experience is and continue to just say, "God, I'm going to trust you with this even when it doesn't make sense to me."
Here's how you can, how I can, really come to understand this. Did you notice that little phrase in the text that we read, that said, "If even you basically, who are evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more does your heavenly father know?" Now, when I read that and I first saw evil, I did the thing where I'm like, "That seems a little harsh." And so, I read it and I thought, "Well, there has to be some other good meaning here." And I went to the Greek, I looked at the Greek, and I tried to figure out what that meant. And here's what the word evil communicates here, evil, that's it. There is no hidden deeper meaning.
This is Jesus' way of saying something very profound. And that is God himself, even though you are evil, and you know how to do this, God who's infinitely good has done this on your behalf. But here's why this word matters here, I don't think it's just simply a comparison like, God's good, you're not, and God does better, even though you don't. It is that, but I think he's also driving at something and that is, do you know how you know that God is good? Because we, I, you, we, don't deserve anything from God. I can't commend myself to God by saying, "Look at all the things I've done. Look at how well I've done things."
Because the teaching of the Bible is all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. That's Romans 3:23, but Jesus has come on our behalf to pay for us. And when I see that goodness, when I celebrate that goodness, then I'm able to say, "God, I can trust you, because I had no reason for you to save or to work in my life. And you've chosen to anyway." And when I see that, then I can say, "Okay, God, I can trust you with these other things in my life." And I can say, "Whatever it is that I'm going through, I'm not alone, that God is at work."
You see, we tend to really believe in our day and age that most of what we get is because of what we do. But what Jesus teaches here is that God is a good father who will withhold no good thing from his children who ask and will give no bad thing. And you and I can relate to God like that if we will come to Jesus as our savior and in dependence, come to God in prayer and say, "God, here is where I am."
And even when you have the experience of God seeming inaccessible or distant, you can come and say, "God, here's where I am today, and I'm going to trust you. I'm going to do my best, not to distract kind of the idea of prayer here with asking, aligning, confessing, reconciling, supporting others. But I'm also going to say, but God, I know you're good. So here we are." And that will bring you back to the heart of God, into a place of prayer.
Now, I believe that this is probably one of the reasons a lot of people have walked away from faith altogether. People who had an experience like I had as a kid, maybe not that exact set of scenarios, but a hope, a prayer, kind of believed in God, had their first marriage and then they were disappointed. Had their first career, it didn't work out. And they prayed and pleaded with God to do something. And then it just felt like nothing happened. What we need to do even then is come back and say, "There's a good God who is working his purpose somehow in this even if I can't see it."
My perspective is that of a bird in the tree when the lumberjack's shaking the tree, not of the lumberjack saying, I actually want to help you, but that takes real faith and real dependence. So today you and I can take steps of faith and step toward God saying, "God, I realize I've walked away. I've been kind of doing my thing for years because I felt like you let me down, but I think you really are good. And so today, based on what Jesus has done, I'm going to return to say, God, you are good."
Jesus is good. And in that, take a step of faith, maybe to say, "God, I trust Jesus as my savior." Maybe to say, "I've done that, and I know that, but I've been a functional deist. And God, I don't want to be a functional deist anymore. I want to live in a world in which you are accessible to me. You are good to me. And you have enough for me." Because that's the father that Jesus describes as being your heavenly father if you have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
God, I thank you that whatever it is that we walk through, that you don't intend for us to walk through it alone. But you encourage us to keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking, and that you will answer. It may not always be what we want, but you will answer. God, remind me, remind each of us, that you are good all the time, and that your goodness can be trusted. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.
