For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

We have a problem this morning with our pulpit Bible.

I am afraid it is a defective edition of scripture.

Let me explain, I speak with people often about prayer and many of us are – or have been - skeptical: “how can prayer work? What kind of God would take orders from us?”

And many of us are – or have been - angry: “I asked God to heal my parents, my spouse, my sibling, my child and they died anyway.”

And many of us are – or have been - just jaded, disillusioned, weary and cynical: “I prayed that I would keep my job and I didn’t, I prayed that I would save my marriage and it’s dead, I prayed and I prayed and I prayed”

It is, the sense that we get from the Irish band, The Script, when they sang

I’m still alive but I'm barely breathing

Just prayin' to a god that I don't believe in

And then we have to listen to this defective edition of the scripture.

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. That’s not what scripture really says, is it?

Let me read what we all know the scripture really says:
For everyone who asks receives whatever they want, and everyone who searches finds exactly what they are looking for, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened and everything will be just want they always dreamt it would be. That’s what we know the Bible says, or at least that’s the way we sound when we talk about prayer.

You see, the Bible is not defective, it is our reading that is defective, we insert our version of reality rather than listening for God’s version.

Look, I believe in prayer and I know how hard it is to believe in prayer at times.

I know those skeptical questions, I know that anger, I know that jaded, disillusioned, weary and cynical view of prayer and faith and life.

And there have been times when I think I may have even stopped believing in God as I was Just prayin' to a god that I don't believe in But I was understanding God and prayer defectively.

I thought prayer was about changing God.

It’s not.

Prayer is about changing me, changing you, changing us.

And I came to realize that the essential thing in my life was not that I believed in God, that’s important, faith is so important. But before I had any faith, and during the times when my faith wore thin, and in my loneliest, most painful moments of disbelief, there was this one foundational truth: God believed in me.

God believes in us.

The letter to the Hebrews reminds us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”, well prayer is faith in words that are shared between you and God, a relational exchange of words and emotions.

Think about the Lord’s Prayer. It is remarkably pragmatic, isn’t it? No flowery language, no mystical chants, simply an acknowledgement of our relationship with God “Father . . . Holy”; a desire to be able to see the presence of God “Your Kingdom Come”; a recognition that we need the common and concrete things of life “Give us . . . daily bread”; a confession that we need the spiritual things of life “forgive us . . . as we forgive others”; and a plea that we be guided safely through the traps and disasters of life “do not bring us to the trials” that would harm us.

And when our faith fills that language, when we live with the assurance and conviction of the things we hope for and can’t see, then we experience what it means to pray with confidence, knowing that everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

It is a bold claim that Jesus makes.

But it is a simple statement of fact.

Does it mean that we get everything that we want to ask for?

Does it mean that we find everything that we want to search for?

Does it mean that we can open every door that we want to go through?

No, of course it doesn’t.

We know better than that.

We know the scripture isn’t defective.

But what Christ did mean is that every question we need answered will be, and every treasure that we need to search for we will find, and every door that we need to walk through will be opened to us.

We just keep asking for the wrong things, we keep searching for the wrong things, we keep pounding on doors that we were never meant to walk through, we keep chasing our wants and ignoring our needs, we keep choosing – as Kris Kristofferson once wrote – “every wrong direction on our lonely way back home”.

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

It is a simple statement of fact.

And it is not a fact that depends upon our acceptance for its truth.

It is, quite the opposite, it is a statement of fact that provides the test of our souls, our entire existence depends upon how much we believe that everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Prayer is meant to be offered in confidence and it will be answered, sometimes yes, sometimes no and often, not yet, for it is on God’s schedule that life is lived, not ours.

We have examples of that in every season of life, but especially today.

We baptize a child and we wash him not only in water but in our prayers today, committing him to God’s care, committing ourselves – as parents, as family members, as a Church – committing ourselves to being God’s tools in that process.

And we heard about the work of hospice, at the other end of life’s spectrum and we have committed ourselves to their work, so that the final months and days of life can be lived in God’s care, surrounded by love, bathed in holiness, with the value of a person and their dignity protected.

It’s all prayer. The water of Baptism and the quiet nurturing of hospice, it’s all prayer, it’s all the connecting thread of our hearts to each other and to the heart of God.

Prayer and faith are inseparable, they feed and strengthen each other to give us a deep and unshakable sense of confidence; they give us the joyous realization that we don’t have to solve every problem alone, we don’t have to explain every mystery today, for we know that God will lead us to solutions and answers that we would never have dreamt possible.

Our job is to ask, to search and to knock – these are the building blocks of prayer – and then to allow God to give us unexpected answers and unforeseen discoveries and unanticipated journeys as and when we need them.

Our job is to teach that kind of confident prayer to Justin and all of the children, and each other.

Our job is to live with that quiet and comforting assurance that God will bring all of the pieces of our puzzles together when we continue to ask and seek and knock.

For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.