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Ask...Seek...Knock

 “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. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 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 ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:7-12)

The prosperity gospel teaches that no matter what you ask for or seek, or with what selfish motives you ask and seek, God is obligated to give you. But Jesus didn’t stop there. He points out that if our children ask for good and necessary things, we’re not going to give them something that will harm them. How much more so is the Father going to give us good and necessary things, rather than the thing that will harm us.

The problem is, like children, we want the bright, shiny, new thing, and we want it now. It doesn’t matter if it’s poison, we’ll put it in our mouths. And we complain that we’re adults. We know what’s good for us, we insist. And if we don’t get what we want we throw temper tantrums. Sometimes, they’re more dignified than screaming as we throw ourselves down in the grocery store aisle, but not always.

After telling us to ask, seek, and knock, and to believe that God gives good things to those who ask him, Jesus uses another of those connecter terms, “So…” But his conclusion isn’t “So, ask…seek…knock…believe…” He already said those. No, it’s “So, in everything, do to others what you would have them to do you.” One…two…three… hippopotamus. How does he get from “ask… seek… knock…” to the Golden Rule?

One possibility is that if we can ask, seek, and knock knowing that God will give good gifts to us, we no longer have to see other people as competition or enemies. We also don’t have to “brown-nose” them, treating them as special in order to get what we want from them.

But what Jesus said after that is vital. We are to treat them as we want to be treated  because doing so sums up the Law and the Prophets. Later, in Matthew 22: 37-40, “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Treating others (including God) the way you want to be treated seems to be loving God and our neighbor in the way Jesus taught. And having read and studied Scripture all my life, I never made that connection. 

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