Ask Seek Knock

If you have your Bibles, you can open to Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

We are in a series of messages called the Sermon on the Mount, which is the span of Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

It is written by Matthew, who is an eyewitness of Jesus.

It was one of Jesus, he was one of Jesus' disciples, and he was somebody who would have heard Jesus teach these things repeatedly.

Think about the fact when Jesus was living and was doing his work in ministry and he was teaching.

There was no YouTube, there was no Instagram, there was no social media where you put out one single piece of content and everybody watches it or hears it.

You had to say the thing over and over and over again, repeatedly, village to village, city to city.

And so Matthew was watching this happen.

He was listening.

He was receiving it.

And so he takes and he pulls it together in Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

And so it's been quite interesting, I think, as we've taken now a few months to look at these teachings.

You know, these are verses and different concepts that are often taught all by themselves in settings like this.

But when you look at them all together, you start to see some themes and some threads that Matthew is weaving through Jesus' teaching.

And when we see the relationship of these different teachings together, I think it's quite helpful.

And so we're going to take another step today.

We're in Matthew chapter 7, going to start reading in verse 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

If you don't have your Bibles, don't sweat it.

It'll be up on the screen.

Matthew 7, 7 says, Keep on asking and you will receive what you ask for.

Keep on seeking and you will find.

Keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds.

And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Verse 9.

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.

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?

Alright?

We're going to talk today, okay, on the idea of asking, to ask, to seek, and to knock.

Okay, what do we make of this text?

You read it and it seems like if you just look at it right on the nose, it says, you know, ask God for something and you'll have it.

Seek and you'll find what you're looking for.

Knock and the door will be open.

And so if we take that and we go, what am I supposed to believe about that text?

What do I do with it?

I'm gonna give you guys a tool that uh for some of you, if you've been around for a while, this will look familiar to you, but I always want to do the best I can to set you up for success in uh reading your Bible on your own.

So I think it's great we come together, we worship God uh collectively.

It's a beautiful thing.

Um I share a message I hope uh helps and is encouraging and is uh you know ultimately helpful to you.

Um but beyond that, really what I want to do is sort of work myself out of a job, so to speak.

I I don't want you to be dependent on me or anybody ultimately for you to come, for you to be fed.

I want you to learn how to continue to feed yourself day in and day out all the time.

And part of that is gonna be as you read the scripture, what do I do when I come across a text like this?

So I'm gonna give you a tool.

It's called the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, is what it's called.

And this is a grid that you can run any verse through as you're trying to figure out how to what do I believe about God?

All right, here's the quadrilateral.

The first part is scripture.

Okay, so you start with a verse.

The second is tradition.

Okay, what I mean by tradition is that you and I aren't the first people to be looking at these verses and trying to interpret and figure out what they mean.

Um, there's a lot of people who have.

And so, for example, if if you grew up in church like I did, I grew up in the same church uh all my life, and then I went off to college and I got a uh four-year degree in theology and biblical studies.

And so what I really had, I looked at a bunch of scriptures, but really what I started early on, like in Sunday school as a kid, they would give me a scripture, but then they would give me their traditions interpretation of that scripture, right?

And so even when I went through my four-year degree and and and spent a bunch of money and focused tremendously, it was for a certain denomination or a tribe of people that really, really trained me like thoroughly in one traditional, their traditional view of what these verses and what you know what the Bible says and means.

Um, after I left school, then I really started looking at lots of different interpretations, looking at what other very sincere, highly educated people and how they see these scriptures and other ways that maybe it could be interpreted, and things that are just as plausible as the one that was handed to me.

And in so doing, it doesn't mean that you take your tradition or what you have and necessarily throw it away, but you approach it with an open mind and go, I want to just add data to this conversation because just because I grew up in the tradition and these people meant well doesn't mean necessarily it was correct.

I think it's taking a mentality of an investigator versus a defense attorney.

Right?

If I was a defense attorney and you hired me ultimately to set you free, okay, what some defense attorneys do is they they go, my job is to get you out of jail.

And whether you did it or not, and maybe you did do it, and I think you're super guilty.

And if I think you're guilty and all the evidence points that you're guilt, I'm gonna try to find a loophole or something because this isn't necessarily about the truth coming out.

This is just about you not going to jail.

And so if you start out with that view that you are defending a traditional position that you came from, ultimately you might be in a place where you're you feel like you're the defender of something that may or may not be true.

I I I saw a movie one time, it was called Making a Murderer.

I don't know if you've ever seen Making a Murderer.

Like, you know, season one, I'll save you the suspense.

The dude was innocent, they put him in prison.

In my opinion, okay, they put him in prison.

And and he, but I think he's innocent.

Well, season two, they bring this woman in Kathleen Zellner, who is like really famous for basically getting convictions overturned, wrongful convictions.

And she tells the guy, listen, if you hire me, you better be innocent.

Because if you're guilty, I'll find out and I'll prove it, and you'll be there forever.

So you better figure out what you just tell me now, because I have no interest in getting you out of prison if you deserve to be there, so just tell me now.

Okay?

I love that approach because that approach is saying, it's not about my bias, it's not about what I want to believe, it's really coming and going, what is true?

And sometimes that means that I've got to stop being defensive about something I was given and you know consider other possibilities and listen.

So what we do is we start with the scripture.

We do want to know what how other people have viewed it and learn those things, but then we have two other factors.

There is um logic.

So does this logically make sense?

Does it pass the logic test?

And then the last one is experience.

What is my experience with this concept?

Okay, so let's take a look here, okay?

We we we looked at this verse that says, let's go, let's go to scripture.

This verse that says, you know, ask and you'll receive, seek and you'll find, knock and the door will be open.

Let's let's look at more scripture, okay?

Let's look at more scripture to add to this conversation to introduce some a little bit of tension to it.

Um notice what it's saying is um to keep asking.

That's what it says in the NLT.

Keep on asking.

Um, so there's something in here about persistence.

There's something about not quitting the first time you ask, so to speak.

But what's interesting in Matthew 6, in the same Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus is introducing the Lord's Prayer, he says, when you pray, don't babble on and on as the Gentiles do.

They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again.

Don't be like them, for your father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him.

Which would introduce a little bit of tension, because you're like, well, if I'm supposed to keep asking, but I'm not supposed to babble on and on, how do I know if I keep asking if I'm babbling or not?

Anyone ever wondered that and wrestle with that?

Okay, well, what he's talking about in Matthew 6 when he says babbling on and on like the pagans or like the Gentiles, what he what he's referring to is something that they would have known well, which was a lot of the Gentile pagan theologies were polytheistic.

So they think there's not one God, but there's a bunch of gods.

And so when you're praying, you've got to make sure you're praying to the right one.

Because if you need something and you go to the wrong God, uh you're not gonna get it.

So they would go God to God, they would pray in their name, in a bunch of different names, and then there were certain sort of incantations or phrases that appease the gods.

So this God wants this phrase.

And so I'm gonna run through all the gods and all the phrases and say all of it, because if I get it wrong, then my prayer won't be answered.

That was kind of what they did.

And so what Jesus is saying in Matthew 6 is it's not polytheistic.

There's not a bunch of gods, and you don't even have to worry about having the perfect language, because even if you get it wrong, your heavenly father knows what you need before you need it.

You're not even informing him, you're connecting with him, you're praying to him, you're communicating with him, you're telling him what you need, but he's way ahead, okay?

And he's cool if you don't get it perfectly right.

Don't worry about your inaccurate, so to speak, and get it wrong, and therefore he's gonna punish you by not answering your prayer.

So there's that.

There's, if you keep reading Matthew 18, 19, says, I tell you this, if two of you agree here on earth concerning anything you ask, my Father in heaven will do it for you.

Two of you agree here on earth.

But it seems like it's saying that if two of us get together and we agree, and then we pray, that God's gonna do it for us.

But this morning, I turned on the Olympics, and at like 5 a.m., it was live because it's in France.

The gymnasts are all out there doing flips and cartwheels and you know all this stuff.

And two or three are agreeing in Jesus' name that their daughter will win the gold medal.

But logic tells me that there's only one gold medal to go for that thing.

And so all these people from all these countries, there's lots of moms and dads and friends back home and aunts and uncles, and everybody is praying, God, bring gold to my kid.

But there's only one, a bunch of them aren't gonna get a gold.

So that can't be what that means, but it says it, but we'll add it to the we'll add it to the mix.

Um uh Matthew 21, 21 and 22 is Jesus told them, I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don't doubt, you can do things like this and much more.

You can even say to this mountain, may you be lifted up and thrown into the sea, and it will happen.

Verse 22, you can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you'll receive it.

Luke 18, 1 through 8.

Here's a parable Jesus tells.

One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up.

There was a judge in a certain city, he says, who neither feared God nor cared about people.

A widow of that city came to him repeatedly.

She kept coming to him, saying, Give me justice.

Look at her request, give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.

The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to them said to himself, I don't fear God and I don't care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy.

I'm going, I'm going to see that she gets justice because she's wearing me out with her constant requests.

Then the Lord said, Learn a lesson from this unjust judge.

Even he rendered a just decision in the end.

So don't don't you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night?

Will he keep putting them off?

I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly.

But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?

Okay, what what what do we do with this?

Because if I want to believe that if I just ask God for something and I believe that I'll have it, and I just have confidence in him, he's going to give me whatever I ask for, I fall into a mistake of thinking, which is I grab the verses that the I select a group of verses that say the thing I wanted to say, and I ignore the ones that say something different.

Which, if you just keep reading in Matthew 26, you're gonna see something that will add some tension to this whole concept.

We'll add some more scripture.

Matthew 26, we go to the Garden of Gethsemane, which we spent like months in a few months ago, where Jesus is asking, seeking, and knocking.

He's asking God to take this cup of suffering from me.

I don't want to do this.

Is there another way?

Give me something.

So he's asking to not go through what he's about to go through.

But he ultimately says, Not my will, but your will be done.

Does God give him what he asked for?

No.

Jesus' purpose was still to walk through something that he had asked very specifically multiple times to not do.

Keep reading in your Bible, 2 Corinthians 12.

The apostle Paul with his thorn in the flesh, he says, three times I begged the Lord to take it away.

He calls this thing a messenger of Satan that was sent to torment me.

And he said, Man, I was just going through, it was going through a hard time, and I just wanted it out.

I wanted to be rid of it.

And I begged God three times.

And the word that came back is, no, I'm gonna leave it right there.

My grace is sufficient, my power is made perfect in weakness.

So if we just select a few verses that say, all I have to do is give God my wish list, and I gotta just pray hard and believe, and then I'll have it, we end up with a theology of name it, claim it, maim it, pistol whip it, dip it, flip it, grip it, and rip it, and then God's gonna give it, okay?

And what you're doing is you're selecting some verses.

You're not, you, you're, you're maybe defending a position that's really not defendable because what I'm gonna tell you is if the truth was told in this room, this room is full of people who have prayed very specific prayers that did not come to pass.

And I'm gonna tell you, I'm right there with you.

I might be the leader of that group.

I've prayed a lot of prayers, highly specific, that did not happen the way that I prayed them.

So if it's just that you get specific, you ask for it, and you see this as a promise for your wish list, okay, you're going to be disappointed.

It doesn't stand the logic test, it doesn't stand the experience test, it might stand the tradition test, depending on where you came from, but even the scripture itself, and again, I just gave you a little cross-section, there are there is character after character, verse after verse in the Bible of people who wanted something and asked for it from God and didn't get it.

Okay.

So what do what are we supposed to get from this then?

What do we learn from this?

Uh, not only Matthew 7, ask, seek, and knock, but all of these verses together, as we kind of compile them and start to look at them, we start to see some important things that we need to understand about God and about prayer.

The first thing is it talks about the character of God.

So in Matthew 7, what does he say right after, ask, seek, and knock?

He says, look, think about that.

We talked about this on Father's Day.

He said, you know, think about how you are as a parent.

Even the mistakes you make as a parent.

Your heart is you want to do good for the people you love.

You want to do good for your kids.

If your kid asks for a good, reasonable thing like bread, would you give them a stone?

Would you give them a burden when they need a meal?

Would you give them a snake when they need a fish?

No.

So he's like, think about your character, and even when you mess it up, how hard you're trying to get it right, and the love that you have, and that is you being imperfect, me being imperfect.

I sin, I'm sinful, I've got bad motives at times, but I have this pure heart toward the people I love.

And so now he says, Your father, your father, what you've tasted in imperfection is a taste of the character of God in you, and your father, even more so, his character and his heart toward you is this way.

This is his demeanor towards you, this is his attitude toward you.

So that's a huge part of it.

That that keeps going, by the way.

That goes all the way to that Matthew 26, when Jesus is praying a specific prayer, he's asking, Take this cup from me.

But what does he say next?

He says, But not my will, but your will be done.

What is he doing?

He's demonstrating his confidence in the character of his father.

Father, if it's if if you're asking me to walk through this, I trust you.

By the way, if you go to Luke 18, the the persistent widow, what's going on in that story?

Is that story about badgering God till he gives you what you want?

Is that about just knocking on the same door till your knuckles are bloody and he finally answers?

Is it about like when your kids come to you and they keep asking, How about now?

Can I have it now?

Can I have it now?

Can I have it now?

Can I have it now?

And you finally, in your weakness and your fatigue, you say, you know what?

Take it.

Take it.

Is that what it's teaching us that God eventually will get tired of hearing you badger him and he'll just finally give in?

Absolutely not.

Look at the text.

Look at the text.

He there it there is a contrast between the unjust judge who doesn't love and care about people and God who loves justice and loves people.

There is the question that the woman asks.

What is a woman in that story in Luke 18?

What is she asking for?

It's not just about you get whatever you ask for.

Look at what she's asking for.

What's she asking for?

She asks for justice.

What is justice?

But it's embedded in the character of God.

Remember in the Beatitudes at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, he says, he who hungers and thirsts for justice.

Some of your texts say righteousness, it says in some translations, which just means doing right by.

So he's going, he who hungers and thirsts for justice will be filled.

You're blessed.

It's a beatitude.

You're blessed when you're in alignment with the character and the heart of God.

So it's not just that this woman was going to get whatever she asked for, it's that what she was asking for was in alignment with the character and the will of God.

It was what she was asking for.

She was asking for justice.

And then the third part is the persistence.

The fact that sometimes justice doesn't come right away.

Sometimes even things in alignment with the will of God and the heart of God and the character of God.

Sometimes they take time in this world with nine billion free wills going on all at one time.

But I'm going to continue to not walk away from God.

I'm going to continue to come to Him.

I'm going to make my request known to Him.

I'm going to draw near to Him.

Think about asking, seeking, and knocking and the process of maturation.

You know, immature questions early on are really about getting what I want.

Right?

So we know this.

We're not trying to kick it on kids today.

We just did a video telling you to serve with them, and this is why you need to serve with them, because they're in a process of maturation.

And when they're little, the questions are can I have this?

Can I have this?

Give me what I want.

Can I have what I want?

And so it's all about stuff.

It's about consumption.

It's about leveraging your power to their will.

Right?

As kids get a little bit older, their questions start to change and they start to ask questions for information.

They want to learn stuff.

So smart kids, like, why is the sky blue?

Where do babies come from?

You're like, ask your mom.

Ask your mom.

Alright, they stay, they become curious.

I want to know how the world works.

They want information.

The process of maturation, as you mature even more, you go beyond just, I want something, which by the way, as Jesus says, nothing wrong with asking God for something.

It's just wrong when all you ever ask God for is something.

If that's all your prayers are, because we all need something, no matter how old you are, you never get to the place you don't need some help.

We ask for help.

And we ask God for help.

So there's nothing wrong.

Asking for something, but if that's the totality of your prayers, is just God, can I have this?

And when, God, and what are you waiting on, God?

And how fast, God, and hurry up, God.

Okay, now it's just about something and not just information, but as you grow in maturity, your questions in life become about wisdom.

Wisdom.

Young, the questions are about wish list.

Mature, questions about wisdom.

So when we think ask, seek, and knock, we see Jesus, this is modeled all throughout the Gospels.

Jesus was a prime question asker.

You remember the story where Jesus is found?

It's in Luke 2.

He's 12 years old.

He's a young boy.

And he's found in the synagogue.

He's found sitting among the teachers of the law.

And you remember what the text says he was doing?

He was asking profound questions.

And there was something that alerted everybody, okay, there's here's a mature, this is different here.

This is a mature kid, because usually 12-year-olds are just asking for stuff, or they just want a little bit of information.

This young man is growing in wisdom and stature and favor with God because of his wisdom.

So he he was desiring that.

So Jesus was asking questions at a young age.

307 times in the Gospels, Jesus asks a question.

187 times in the Gospels, Jesus is asked the question.

And only three out of 187 does he answer directly.

184 times he answers a question with a question.

Why?

Because often we think a question is about an answer, but answers end the conversation.

Come to me for a question, I give you an answer, conversation over.

And a lot of times among churches and Christians, we become obsessed by answers.

But Jesus was obsessed by questions because sometimes the point of a question is not an answer, the point of a question is a quest.

Drive you deeper.

Hey, that's a good question, but that's not the last question.

Ask another question.

We don't want to go to a deeper question.

We want to ask another question.

There's more questions to be asked.

So don't take the ask, seek, knock text as I'm just supposed to ask, how about now, God?

How about now, God?

How about now, God?

For you to ask the same question over and over and over again for the rest of your life.

Sometimes continuing to ask, keep asking, means that I keep asking, but I ask a new question.

Keep seeking, but not keep seeking necessarily the same thing over and over again.

Keep seeking, but it might be time to seek a new path.

Keep knocking, but it might be time to pick a new door.

Every person in this room who has walked with God for any period of time can attest to the fact that you have knocked on doors that at the time felt like the right door, but if you knew then what you know now, you'd have been begging God to lock it.

You didn't know what was on the other side of the door.

You thought you did.

In fact, some of you knocked until your knuckles got bloody, God never opened it, and you kicked it in only to get there and want your money back.

I want a full refund.

I'm gonna moonwalk my way out.

I need to get out of here.

How did I get here?

Because you kicked the door open that you've been knocking on and God didn't open.

Now don't stop knocking, you gotta go find a new door.

Don't stop seeking, you might need to pick a new path.

Don't quit asking, but that question might be the wrong question.

It's time to take the question deeper.

Um, here's a scripture for you.

Hebrews 11, 6.

It says it's impossible to please God without faith.

Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists.

In other words, you have to have faith that he is God and that he's there and that he hears, and that you have faith in his character, so a faith in a real God.

And that look at this, and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

Look at that.

He rewards those who sincerely seek him.

It doesn't say he rewards those who sincerely seek rewards.

It also doesn't say he grants the requests of those who sincerely seek him.

It seems that our job is to be sincere and to keep seeking and allow God to determine what the rewards are, but we we we don't quit seeking, we don't quit asking.

And what happens oftentimes, I think, with well-meaning people who read a scripture, one scripture, instead of looking at more of them and maybe get lost in a tradition of how come I prayed and I asked this specific thing and I didn't get it, okay, the preacher's a liar, the book's not right, it's all a bunch of superstition because it doesn't hold weight with their experience and their logic, instead of looking at all of it together and seeing that this isn't necessarily about wish list, it's about wisdom.

It's about coming to God, trusting his character.

And when I trust his character and I diligently seek him, I sincerely seek him.

Now the doors I knock on, there are some doors you may be knocking on that the more you seek him and you align to him, you go, I don't even want that door anymore.

There may be paths that you're on that you wake up and go, this was the path I'd always dreamed of, and yet here I am, and all of a sudden I wake up to the fact I'm on the wrong path, I've got to go on a different path.

The more I earnestly, diligently, and sincerely seek God, the more aligned I become to God.

And the more that the I start asking the right questions and I get on the right path and I start knocking on the right door.

What people often do is when they don't get the specific thing they prayed for, they stop praying.

They stop seeking, they stop knocking.

Instead of saying, I'm gonna keep asking, but I gotta change the question.

It's time to change the path, it's time to change the door.

I end with this.

I I've shared some of this uh before, I actually shared some of this um at our album release night.

Um, was talking a little bit about our family.

So many of you know both of my sons are on the autism spectrum.

My son um Hudson, we it really, really caught me off guard.

I had no idea that Hudson was gonna have autism.

There was no, I had no clue.

And all of a sudden he's showing signs, and we had him screened, and turns out he he has autism.

And so immediately I went into ask-seek-knock mode.

Every night I put that boy to bed, I would lay both hands on his head.

It was part of my bedtime routine.

I would put him to bed and I would pray for God to heal him.

And I would go to scriptures, like, if you ask anything and you can say to the mountain to be removed, and I mean I'm quoting it and praying it, believing for it.

I tried to do my best mentally to like purge my mind of doubt.

Like, if you've ever tried to do this, like I'm found myself, like my eyes were squinting hard, and I'm like, doubt, get out, like I don't want any doubt.

And I was trying to do everything in my humanity to have faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

And so I'm in there praying, I'm praying scriptures, I'm I'm praying with as much sincerity as I'm humanly capable of, and he wasn't getting better, he was only getting worse, and I got to the place where, and some of you will know what I'm talking about, I got to a place where I was so exhausted emotionally, I just didn't have energy to keep begging God for something that wasn't happening, it was like getting worse, and so I got to this place where now I've got an experience that's not measuring up to a verse I just read.

And so now I find myself sort of in this crisis, and so for a while, I actually just stopped.

I I like stopped praying for a while because I didn't know what to believe.

I felt like a hypocrite standing up in front of you all in front of this church and talking about stuff, and I'm like, I don't even know what I believe.

Like, I don't know what to do with this.

And so I start compiling verses and I'm wrestling through logical questions, like, God, do you have me on some kind of prayer count that, like, man, if I get to, you know, like it's like I gotta pray for him like 187 times.

And if 187, you're gonna be like, congratulations, you were persistent enough.

And you got 187.

That was the magic number.

I know I just arbitrary number, but you hit it, 187, now he's healed.

Is that what you're doing?

Because I don't think I can get there.

Because I'm wearing out here, and then I come across, and now I now Matthew 6 takes on a new light to me, which is hey, you don't have to babble on and on and try to make sure you get the right polytheistic God and make sure you get the right statement and you pray it just the right way so you can appease him.

So again, your heavenly father's way better than that.

Think deeper, think better.

He knows you better than you know yourself, he knows your requests before you even ask it.

He knows what the tear means.

There's a whole story in the tear, he knows your exhaustion, he knows it.

Have faith in him, trust him.

So I so I didn't think God had me necessarily on a on a prayer count, and I got to a place where God, I don't even, I don't even know.

I don't even know.

And I stopped praying for my son for a while.

And we have our second son, and we find out he's on the spectrum also.

It wasn't even like I was trying to stick it to God or whatever.

I just I just didn't pray for him.

I didn't pray for him, and it took a little while for me to realize like, and it was in that frankly, tremendously unpleasant, uncomfortable, painful.

So you know what I'm talking about.

Pain will drive you deeper into this conversation.

Pain will take you deeper if you'll allow it.

Pain will cause you to cancel, could lead you to cancel God, or to ghost God, or I'm not talking to you anymore.

But pain often will cause you to ask questions that you weren't asking when you weren't in pain.

So I finally got in enough pain.

I start compiling all this, I start praying about it, and I started to realize that I was asking God for something, and because God wasn't giving me the specific thing I asked for, I stopped asking, seeking, and knocking.

And I came to a deeper understanding and maturation, which is keep asking, Greg, but it might be time to ask a different question.

So now I'm seeking different things.

Like the path that I had been seeking, the father-son relationship I had been seeking, I'd already planned it out.

I already knew how we were gonna do it.

And yet that path was closed to me.

I couldn't go there.

And so now I have to decide: am I going to take this new path and keep seeking God in this path?

Am I gonna change my asking and my prayers from just God heal him to God, make me the type of person that can be the father that he needs to be?

Lord, use my son for your glory, whatever it looks like.

Doesn't need to be on a state, doesn't need to be with a 4.0, it can be with an IEP, it can be in special needs.

It can be in it, Lord.

I just pray you'd use them.

God, I pray that you would take me deeper, make me the type of person, make me the type of father that you okay, and now I'm praying different prayers.

Now, I still ask for stuff, still asking for healing, and I believe it's happening, but it's not happening.

It's not like he woke up one day and was like, hey, you know, it's all good.

Um he it's happening little by little.

God's bringing people into his life that understand him and that are helping him to grow.

We're seeing progress, we're seeing breakthroughs here and there.

It's not like this dramatic, like Lazarus come forth type of thing.

It's happening in a different way, but it's a path that God's taking us on.

I have to decide if I'm going to harden my heart because I asked for something I didn't get, I sought something that's not gonna happen, and I banged on a door that never opened, or am I going to ask new questions, embrace a new path, and knock on a new door.

Keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, go deeper in the conversation.

Don't stop praying.

Change the question, change the path, move on to the next door, but don't stop praying.