Mar. 22, 2026

Welcome back, everyone, to our study of The Sermon on the Mount called “Rethinking Our Faith.”  Last week, Ken kicked off chapter 7 for us, which led to an important conversation about our hearts toward others, and something we should avoid: judging others.  It was an important talk where Ken was able to lean into something that many of us struggle with.  It can be so easy to overlook the planks in our own eyes while focusing on the little specs in someone else’s eye.  Ken has been having some fun with us lately, talking to us about fun stuff, like our money, judging others, even daring to say that “p-word” (politics) in church with you!  If you weren’t here last week, please go back and check it because it’s so important for us as we learn to live and love well.  I keep saying this, but I love how Jesus moves from one point of tension in our lives to another, and judging others is so easy to slide into.  Now, today, we will see Jesus finally seem to get away from all these tension points and give us something incredibly exciting and inspiring to do and look forward to when we do it.  But, in many ways, this may lead to another major point of tension in our lives.  Let’s read it, then we will talk.

Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” NIV

Isn’t that awesome? Jesus says we ask, seek, and knock, and if we do, we will receive what we ask for, find what we seek, and have the doors we knock on open!  That is amazing, but I have to tell you, as I read this, I just keep thinking about how many of us love God and want to see and experience Him in our lives, but we aren’t asking, we aren’t seeking, and we aren’t knocking.  I mean, if what Jesus is saying here is true, and we believe in what Jesus is saying here, why don’t we do it?  And no matter how we spin our answer to this, it just comes back to something we don’t always like to talk about…our choices.  You know, we make tons of choices every day.  Some choices are obvious and important, like what job to take, where to live, and how to raise our children. But most of our lives are shaped and directed by the small daily choices we hardly notice.  It starts from the moment you open your eyes in the morning.  Do I pick up my phone, or do I talk to God?  Do I spend my rare quiet moments scrolling or seeking God and attending to my heart?  All day long, we make choices, and what is scary is that I’m not sure we are aware of them or the way they are impacting our lives.  Life is such a whirlwind that these choices go overlooked until something hits us hard enough to get our attention.  Then we think, why didn’t I make different choices?  That is when we think, why haven’t I been prioritizing God?  We get bad news from our doctor, and then we think, “Why do I keep eating the wrong food or drinking the wrong things?”  Life speeds by, and poof, one day we are grandparents, and we think, “Why do I waste so much time?”  Our finances fall apart, and then we think, “Why did I spend money like that?”  So often, we don’t see the importance of our choices until we hurt; then we think about how they impact our lives.

Now, I’m going to warn you at the front end of this talk that we are going to lean into daily choices today, and I have been accused of making things way too simple and keeping things more black-and-white than people want them to be.  I’ve learned that most people want to hear a maybe, not yes or no; they want gray, not black and white.  I wasn’t ready for that because, to me, the idea that our daily choices impact our lives should be encouraging, even exciting, yet so often it’s not.  I’ve learned that the hard way, and it snuck up on me, because if your daily choices do impact your life and where it is and where it is going, that means you have a say in your life, and things can change in your spiritual, emotional, physical, relational, and financial health. This should be good news, but it isn’t for everyone.  For a lot of people, bringing up the idea of accountability, or responsibility for our lives, is deflating, even offensive.  I can’t say I saw that coming. People come to church and say they want help.  They talk about their pain, frustrations, and struggles.  They are frustrated with what they don’t do, or what they keep doing, yet don't want to consider the practical choices that might lead to freedom from those things.  I’ve sat with people struggling with alcohol or pornography who are very comfortable talking about generation sin and spiritual warfare, but they aren’t open to a practical talk about putting distance between themselves and porn or alcohol.  I’ve talked with people who are so angry with God for the way life is going, but don’t want to talk about the fact that they don't spend time with God.  I’ve talked to people who feel lonely and disconnected from their spiritual family who don’t want to talk about where they choose to spend most of their Sundays. Our small daily choices matter, and often when I point that out, it is deflating…even offensive, when to me it should be a very hopeful moment in our lives. 

So, let's get into our study today.  Jesus tells us to do three things: Ask. Seek. Knock.  And what is really cool is that Jesus doesn’t just tell us to do that; he says that when we ask, we will receive; when we seek, we will find; and when we knock, doors will be opened to us.  With each command, there is an awesome promise.  This is so beautiful and inspiring, but it raises an important question.  If this is all true, why is it so rare to see people asking, seeking, and knocking?  If this is so true, why do people who love God struggle to make the daily choice to spend time with their Heavenly Father?  In our culture today, this isn’t getting better; it’s getting worse.  

The latest research shows that Christians in America today are praying less (44% say they pray daily), reading their Bibles less (32% say they read their Bibles daily), and attending church less (around 30% say they attend church around once a week).  Via Pew Research Center. 

So, here’s the math: around 6 1/2 of every 10 people who say they love God are not making daily choices to engage Him. Around 65 of every 100 Christians are not asking, seeking, and knocking, but I would say 100% of them want to experience the life God will give them if they do.

So, what stops us from asking, seeking, and knocking?  Without even thinking, most of us would say…well, DUH, Sam, LIFE!  It’s crazy and intense, and I simply don’t have time for God with everything else going on in my life.  Well, I used to hear that and think, maybe that is true. After all, Jesus told us to make these daily choices before smartphones and the internet; there was no electricity to power lights in the dark, no cars to get places faster… youth travel sports didn’t exist yet, so maybe that is it.  We just don’t have the time; life is too hectic. I used to hear people talk about their busy lives, and their stress, and I would hurt with them, but then came the Covid Pandemic… and it exposed a lot, didn’t it?  For so many of us, we say we would have a relationship with God if only we had the time.  Then Covid hit, and all we had was time, so did we become the healthiest people ever, the most connected people to God in the history of humanity?  No, that didn’t happen, did it? For the most part, the exact opposite happened, and six years later, we are still dealing with the fallout from many choices made during that time.  So that means it isn’t life or full schedules that keep us from God.  It isn’t about the time.  It is about how we choose to spend it.  In the end, it’s about what matters most to us.  Our daily choices matter.

Since then, I have realized something.  We will always find a way and make time for what we want to do, and we will always be too busy and have no time or energy for what we don’t want to do.  Have you ever noticed that? We can be absolutely buried in life, yet still somehow end up doing the things we want to do most.  This means our mindset, attitude, and priorities matter… the problem is, we live in a world that is about constantly indulging us.  Our world says there is no highest priority; everything is equally important, so our emotions and feelings, truth, God, time on social media, spending your money on things you need to survive or things that are fun and entertaining, it’s all the same.  We live in a world where our desires matter most, and submitting to God is highly offensive and feels impossible.  We love God.  We want to live for God, but we also want to do what we want, and our culture will fill us with what we want…and I think we need to talk about that.  Have you ever slowed down and thought through the Fruit of the Spirit? 

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law". NIV

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience.  Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness, and what is the last one?  Self-control.  Doesn’t that one seem odd compared to the others? It reminds me of that old Sesame Street song: "One of these things is not like the other." These nine things are what come out of us as we allow God to live in us. And the first eight make a lot of sense, but then there is Self-Control.

Self-Control means to have mastery over our desires, impulses, and passions. 

When God lives in us, this is what comes out of us; notice, it isn’t 9 fruits… it is the fruit.  We don’t hand-select love and patience while leaving out self-control; with God living in us, self-control will be there. When God is living in us, we have mastery over our desires, impulses, and passions. Listen, this world will always pull us toward feeding our desires, impulses, and passions, trying to convince us that those things will satisfy us, make life easier, or, at the very least, numb us a bit.  But they never do.  As we enter into a relationship with God and live in God’s love and grace, God becomes the focal point of our lives over time.  And remember what Jesus is doing in this teaching.  He is establishing the Kingdom of God inside us.  When we allow God into our hearts, we live differently; we live each day to please Him.

Did you ever notice how easy it is to see someone who is healthy and disciplined and dismiss them, or explain their lives away? We see them doing well, and think, “Yeah, they can be passionate about their faith, their life is easy.  Yeah, she can be fit because she doesn’t like junk food, and I do.  Well, yeah, they can be loving because they have more time than I do.  Well, yeah, his financial situation is better than mine; he just doesn’t have the curse I have of liking nice things.”  It’s also easy to find others who think the same way we do and laugh with them at those crazy people who get up every day and do the right things, even when they may not feel like it.  Our daily choices matter, but hey, let’s keep talking…

Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” NIV

You might think, didn’t he just teach us how to pray in Matthew 6?  Yes, he did.  This is more than just another how-to on prayer; this is Jesus pressing in and encouraging us to engage God, and to keep engaging God…and with each command, if you notice, there is also a promise…let’s walk through it.

Jesus starts with ASK. Asking is admitting we need God’s help; we cannot live on our own. And that is harder for us than we like to admit because we like to feel in control, and we often don’t want to ask for help and think to ourselves. I’ll push through and figure it out.  I won’t bother anyone. But the kingdom of God works differently.  Prayer begins when we say: “God, I need you.”  I think we know that, but I just keep thinking about this.  Why is it so hard to ask God for things?  

First, it can be about our struggle to accept how much God loves us.  Some of us aren’t asking because we aren’t willing to admit how much we need or because we think our problems are too small. We think (wrongly): God has bigger things to worry about.  But many of us think (wrongly) that we don’t matter enough for God to bother with our needs.  We sinned too much; we failed too often.  This is not true. Many of us struggle to see how loved we are by God, and we don’t ask because we think we don’t matter.  But Jesus never said that only the perfect or the important should ask, or only to ask for the big things. He simply said ask.   

Second, we don’t ask out of fear that God won’t come through. Maybe we’ve made mistakes. Maybe we feel ashamed. Maybe we think God is disappointed. But maybe it isn’t about God being disappointed; maybe we don’t ask because we are afraid God won’t come through for us, and we will be disappointed.  And there are things we want so desperately that we can’t stand even the thought of them not happening.  So we don’t ask, then if God doesn’t come through, it won’t hurt so bad. But Jesus addressed that too, right after he tells us to ask, seek, and knock, he says this…

Matthew 7:9-10 “You parents—if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! ¹¹ So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.” NLT

Jesus is explaining to us that God loves us and won’t reject us.  God is our loving Father, who does not reject his child for asking.  The problem is not that God is unwilling to give. So often, the problem is that we either aren’t asking or we stop asking. I love this verse in 1 John here…

1 John 5:14–15 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.  And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him. NIV

Then Jesus says: seek. Seeking is different than asking, because it requires effort and energy.  When you seek something out, it means you rearrange your life to find it.  Think about how people seek things they care about.  You want an example, think about what happens when you can’t find your cell phone.  Everything stops, doesn’t it?  You make time to find it.  You search everywhere. Couches get lifted. Rooms get turned upside down.  You call out to your spouse and kids to help.  Everything stops because you need your phone!  And if you think about it, the more you need something, the harder you seek, and the more important it is to you, the more energy and effort you put into seeking it.  Do you remember our conversation on worry two weeks ago?  We saw the word "seek" in that talk, too.  Jesus calls us to seek God even more urgently than a lost cell phone.

Matthew 6:33 “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” NIV

We are to seek God as the most important thing.  With the most urgency.  Not casually. Not occasionally. But intentionally. Yet many things block us from seeking God; let’s talk about a few of those blockers. 

Busyness.  Our lives are so full. We have families, work, responsibilities, and the constant distractions we face in our lives.  Life just has a way of crowding God out of our lives. There are so many who love God, who would never reject or rebel against God, or intentionally live selfish, sinful lives…BUT God is being crowded out of their lives.  They’re just too busy to seek Him, and while they stop for their cell phone because they need it every day, we don’t seek God with the same urgency because we just don’t see how much we need Him every day. Busyness is a huge problem, and it is celebrated in our world today.  We talk about it, brag about it, even pretend we are busier than we are just to feel and even look important and impressive, while this world drains us spiritually.  And in many ways, busyness becomes a very convenient way for us to continue living for ourselves rather than for God.  I know that sounds very insensitive to say, especially to those of us feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, but I will just say this and move on. In the end, we are never too busy or lack the time or energy to do the things that matter most to us.  Before you dismiss that, think about it. 

Comfort.  This may sound weird at first, but comfort is another thing that blocks us from seeking God, and I will tell you why.  Seeking requires hunger. When we get comfortable, we can go days without truly seeking God because nothing feels urgent, we don’t see the need for God when life is going well, it’s not like the cell phone that we need every day, right?  In many ways, comfort can become a major spiritual barrier.  I think one of the hardest things about ministry is feeling urgency about something that people aren’t worried about today.  How do you tell someone who is comfortable with the life they are living that they desperately need God in their life?  It’s brutal, but people are not typically motivated to pursue God without pain.  It’s awful to see people hurt, and even worse to see them get upset with God, whom they have ignored when life was comfortable, the moment life isn’t comfortable.  It is hard to see people struggle and deal with pain, but it is often the only thing that drives us to God.  Sometimes we need a wake-up call…and what is scary is how much it takes to wake us up.

Jesus says ask, seek, then knock.  Knocking is about persistence.  Have you ever asked for something, and the answer didn’t come right away?  It’s not easy, is it?  Sometimes the answer doesn’t come immediately. But Jesus doesn’t say, "Walk away." He says knock. It means continuing to pray and trust when the answer doesn’t seem to come. Even when God feels quiet.  When we pray, and nothing happens at first, we can assume that God isn’t listening. Jesus is saying prayer is like someone standing at a door and continuing to knock.  Pray and keep on praying for what matters to you, even if you don’t see immediate results.  The waiting can be so hard. Often, if we don’t give up, we realize over time that God is not rejecting or ignoring us, but He is shaping us through the waiting, which is way easier to preach than to accept and apply to our lives!

At the end of the day, the key to us living out what Jesus is teaching here will come down to our daily choices.  Every day, we make choices about what gets our time, attention, and energy.  And those choices shape our lives and our relationship with God.  We don’t even see it most of the time, and we aren’t choosing to rebel against God or deliberately choosing to live in open sin; that isn’t it.  The problem is we just aren’t choosing God as the ultimate priority of our lives.  God has to become a deliberate daily decision. A priority above all other priorities, something worth more energy than you give to finding your cell phone when you don’t know where it is.  Listen, no one accidentally develops a deep walk with God and a life-giving prayer life. It happens because we make the daily choice to get up and say, “Today is your day, God, I am going to ask, seek, and knock.” Now, here is the most amazing part of Jesus’ teaching: the promise. He doesn’t say, "Ask, and you might receive." Seek, and you might find. Knock, and the door might open.” No! 

Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask and it WILL be given to you; seek and you WILL find; knock and the door WILL be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” NIV

For some of us, we hear this and think, "ok, I like that; it’s time to ask to win the lottery."  Well, the promise is certain, and I love that.  But it doesn’t necessarily mean that God gives us everything we want.  Remember, God is our loving father who knows better than we do what we need… so sometimes it’s probably not in our best interest to get everything we want; parents understand this.  We don’t give our children everything they want. I can’t say I’m feeling that way as a grandparent. I find myself giving my granddaughter whatever she wants, lol, lollipops, treats, whatever she wants. Mom and Dad can fix it later!  When we make the choice to ask, seek, and knock, the promise is real…but what we are given, what we find, what is opened to us, is that abundant life we all desire.  The promise is something better than anything we could ask for.  When we pursue God, we will find Him and experience Him.

Imagine what our lives would look like if we truly lived this out. If every morning we chose to live that day for God?  What if prayer became our first response rather than our last resort, only pulled out in times of trouble?  I absolutely love this section of Scripture we studied today.  What I see here isn’t another how-to on prayer, but an invitation to everything we want and truly need in life.  Jesus says, Ask. Seek. Knock. 

So many of us wonder why our faith lives aren’t looking like we thought they would, but we aren’t asking, we aren’t seeking, and we aren’t knocking.  We love God, but we aren’t making the daily choices to live for Him, while wondering why we aren’t experiencing God in our lives the way we want.  We must understand that it won’t all just fall into our laps.  It’s about accepting the invitation from Jesus to ask, seek, and knock…or not.

Listen, the question is not whether God cares enough to respond; He loves us beyond anything we can fathom.  The question is not whether God will come through for us; Jesus says He always will.  The question is not whether we can experience our best possible lives; that is all there is for us in Christ.  The real question is all about our daily choices.  In a world that screams at us to do anything but live for God.  Will we choose God each day?  Will we choose to ask? Will we make the effort to seek? Will we keep on knocking?

In the end, it’s up to you; that should not be discouraging or offensive, that should be encouraging and inspiring.