Lesson 20: The Infinite Fatherliness of God, part 1
Matthew 7:9-11 - Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
In these words our Lord proceeds further to confirm what He had said of the certainty of an answer to prayer. To remove all doubt, and show us on what sure ground His promise rests, He appeals to what everyone has seen and experienced here on earth. We are all children, and know what we expected of our fathers. We are fathers, or continually see them; and everywhere we look it as the most natural thing there can be, for a father to hear his child. And the Lord asks us to look up from earthly parents, of whom the best are still evil, and to calculate HOW MUCH MORE the heavenly Father will give good gifts to them that ask Him. Jesus would lead us up to see that as much greater as God is than sinful man, so MUCH GREATER our assurance ought to be that He will more surely than any earthly father grant our childlike petitions. As much greater as God is than man, so much surer is it that prayer will be heard by the Father in heaven than by a father on earth.
As simple and intelligible as this parable is, so deep and spiritual is the teaching it contains. The Lord would remind us that the prayer of a child owes its influence entirely to the relation in which he stands to the parent. The prayer can exert that influence only when the child is really living in that relationship, in the home, in the love, in the service of the Father. The power of the promise, “Ask, and it shall be given you,” lies in the loving relationship between us as children and the Father in heaven. When we live and walk in that relationship, the prayer of faith and its answer will be the natural result. Therefore, the lesson we have today in the school of prayer is this: Live as a child of God. Then you will be able to pray as a child, and as a child you will most assuredly be heard.
And what is the true child-life? The answer can be found in any home. The child who forsakes the father’s house, who finds no pleasure in the presence and love and obedience of the father, and still thinks to ask and obtain what he will, will surely be disappointed. No, on the contrary, he to whom the relationship, will, honor, and love of the father are the joy of his life will find that it is the Father’s joy to grant his requests. Scripture says, “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God.” The childlike privilege of asking all is inseparable from the childlike life under the leading of the Spirit. He who gives himself to be led by the Spirit in his life will be led by Him in his prayers too. And he will find that Father-like giving is the Divine response to childlike living.
Prayer: Blessed Lord, You know that this, though it is one of the first and simplest and most glorious lessons in Your school, is to our hearts one of the hardest to learn. We know so little of the love of the Father.