Summer On The Mount: Ask, Seek, Knock | Matthew 7:7-12 | Kyle Dwyer

Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side.

We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

Well, good morning, guys.

Morning, like Jerry said, my name's Kyle, and uh we're gonna be in Matthew chapter seven today.

So if you want to go ahead and get your Bibles out while you do, um we are here from Doxa.

We just moved to Madison a few weeks ago.

Um we I was uh I have my Salt Company t-shirt on.

Um so yeah, let's go.

Uh we we had our uh s'mores and spike ball last night.

Um it was awesome.

And it's just amazing to be in a place where God is working in college students' lives.

And uh we come from Gurney, actually, just down the road.

So the place where you drive to go to Six Flags, where we used to live.

Um, and we used to come to Milwaukee all the time.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Um, I was a teaching pastor there for a few years, uh, senior pastor in Iowa, where I grew up, uh, and now living in finally the Promised Land, Wisconsin, right?

So uh we've we've uh we've come full circle.

Um the place where all the other Midwest states travel to to have fun, right, is where we where we live now.

But um this morning we're gonna be talking about something that uh I don't even want to begin to say that I have mastered or gotten close to being feeling even okay about in my walk with Jesus, and that's prayer.

Uh you might have heard the name Billy Graham before.

Billy Graham is maybe one of the greatest evangelists that God has ever given to the church, uh, preached in to crowds of hundreds of thousands uh throughout his life, uh passed away several years ago, and towards the end of his life, and you can imagine, right?

We kind of elevate these guys, these the people that God uses in big ways.

And we must we kind of have this conception of their spiritual life.

And we think that they are like these, we we lift them up, right?

It's the it's we think, man, they must just like pray five hours every morning, they must get up at three, pray till eight a.m.

and then they probably just study the Bible for the whole day, and then they just go preach.

And at the end of his life, somebody asks Billy Graham, they said, What did what do you regret?

And he said, One of the things I regret is that I didn't pray more.

Now, if that's true about him, it's true about you.

And it's true about me.

Prayer is something that none of us should feel like we've ever gotten to the point where I do it enough and I do it great.

There's very few people I've known in my life that I would say this person prays like Jesus calls us to pray.

What are your struggles with prayer this morning?

Every single one of us struggles with prayer.

What are you struggling with when you're talking with God?

Maybe you're maybe you've been a Christian for a long time, and this morning talking with God to you is something that you've learned to enjoy, but there's still spaces that you struggle.

Maybe you struggle to trust God in a particular area, and so you're not even talking to him about it right now.

Or maybe you just came to Jesus recently, and you don't even know what it means to talk with God and pray.

You hear other Christians talk like Christianese about it, like pray this and pray about that, and we kind of get this language about talking about prayer, and this is again one of the hardest things talking about prayer is everybody kind of has a different conception of what prayer should be.

And so sometimes I think we can all get to this point with prayer where we get we start thinking about prayer, we think I should pray more.

I gotta get up at 5 a.m.

today, I gotta pray for 30 minutes.

Now, you when I get up at the super early to pray, sometimes I ended up praying for about five minutes and sleeping for about 55.

And then you feel guilty that you didn't pray because Jesus even said, like, you guys can't pray to his disciples in the garden.

So we get wrapped in our heads about prayer, and I'm so thankful for Jesus because in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus brings us to a place about prayer that starts to peel away the mechanical version of prayer that we all kind of lean towards.

By nature, we all lean towards God is a mega gumball machine.

I put prayer in, kachink, I press the button, amount of time I prayed, and based on the amount of time I prayed, the bigger result comes out.

Now, none of us con maybe we none of us consciously think that way, but we all kind of feel that way.

That stems to a deeper problem inside of all of us that actually began at the garden, where we relate to God in a way based on works and not based on grace.

And so, all of that to say, to come full circle to back to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is here.

He is teaching thousands of people who live, most of them live in a system that is based on works.

And maybe that's where you're at today.

Maybe you are in a place where you feel like your relationship with God with prayer is if I pray this much, God will bless me this much.

And what Jesus does is he comes into the lives of those who hear him and into our lives right here in Milwaukee this morning with a huge disruption to our prayer life, but the best disruption to our prayer life.

Jesus comes in and sets us free from this way of praying where God just gives us based on how much we do.

And he at towards the end of his sermon, Jesus says this in Matthew chapter seven, beginning in verse seven, we're going to read through verse 12.

I'm going to read the passage.

Jesus says, 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, and the one who seeks finds.

And to the one who knocks, the door will be open.

Who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake.

If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the law and the prophets.

I just want to take a second before we start talking about this and do what Jesus told us to do.

Let's go, let's let's go to God for a second.

Just ask him to change the way we think about prayer to the way Jesus calls us to think about it.

Let's pray.

Father, we come to you because your son Jesus told us to right now.

And as we look at your word, as we come to you, as we come to you, we come to you with our hearts and we are burdened because prayer is something that I think if we're all honest, Father, it just is hard.

But right now, I just pray, Lord, that you would just fill us with the wisdom and knowledge and the heart change that only the Holy Spirit Himself can bring to help us to see what it really means to have a relationship with you.

Lord Jesus, let our hearts be soft to receive what you have for us this morning.

Thank you, Father, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I want to just this morning, if you come away from this time in God's word together with a confidence in prayer, then we will have grasped what Jesus is talking about.

A confidence in prayer because of what Jesus has done for you, because he calls you to a life of talking with God.

If you walk away this morning thinking, I can ask and I can seek and I can knock, and God will answer, then our hearts will have been changed and grasped what Jesus is grasp is calling us to this morning.

And so I just want to kind of break this passage down a little bit.

And I want to just aim at the first two verses here in verses seven and eight.

And this is where Jesus really hones in on this reality.

Is and I just this this first point is this that because of Jesus, you can talk to God.

And we have those first two verses.

I want to read them again, just because honestly, also if you come out of this time by with being able to recite verse seven, then that's actually also a win for this morning.

Because if you want to remember memorize a verse, this is a verse to memorize.

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, and the one who seeks finds.

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

Now I just want to take a step back and remember what Jesus is saying here.

There is an incredible amount of wonder in what Jesus is inviting you into.

Jesus is saying this that those who are his followers get to talk to God.

And I think sometimes as Jesus followers, we forget the wonder of this reality.

Today, sitting on these seats, you get, as a follower of Jesus, to have the confidence that you can talk with God.

And not only that, that he hears you.

When is the last time you just took that in?

When is the last time you just sat in wonder that you can talk to the true and living God and that he hears you?

And what Jesus is inviting us into here is actually even more than an invitation.

The words ask and seek and knock are all in this tense that they're continual actions.

And it's also Jesus commanding us to do it as his followers.

Prayer is something that won't save you, but you're really missing out if you don't.

In fact, I would say somebody who says, I'm a follower of Jesus, but never prays, never talks to God.

I I would, I would actually, I would ask you to consider like, do you truly believe Jesus is who he said he is?

Because what Jesus is telling us is that as his followers, we should be asking, we should be seeking God for things.

We should be knocking on his on his door.

And what, and I also want to take a step back into the context of what Jesus is saying here in his own sermon.

When we hear the word ask, what do we talk?

What is Jesus talking about?

Is he just giving us a blank a blank check to ask anything that we want?

And Jesus is saying, if what whatever you ask for, I'm going to give it to you.

Actually, the Jesus has told us what to ask for previously in the Sermon on the Mount.

In back in chapter 6, we have the Lord's Prayer.

Jesus says, Therefore you should pray like this.

And you know it.

You can you can say it with me.

Uh, our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

So when Jesus is saying ask, he's actually referring back to the things he told us to ask for.

Our Father who is in heaven, holy be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done.

Jesus is saying, you should be asking for this.

You should be asking for God to provide your daily needs.

Give us this day our daily bread to forgive, ask him to experience the anew, the forgiveness he already purchased for you.

And then allow that to work forgiveness into your own life of those who've wronged you, to guard you from temptation.

But all of that really focuses when Jesus is saying, ask for this stuff, again, our minds go to, okay, I asked for this, God is gonna do this.

And Jesus does want us to see that there's a cause and effect of our prayer.

But I want you to remember this praying is not asking God for things he doesn't know about.

God already knows.

Jesus, in fact, Jesus told us your Heavenly Father already knows what you're gonna ask him.

He knows everything you're gonna say, he already knows what you're gonna say.

And so you praying, God's enough to like, whoa, man, I didn't know that.

I better get to work now.

And I'm I'm honestly I'm thankful for that.

Then what is prayer?

If it's not asking God for things he doesn't already know about, is it?

Prayer is actually more about you reorienting yourself to God.

It's like changing your heart to the right, to the God station, basically, where your mind and your heart begin to focus on God and ask God to be God in your life.

To for to recognize his glory and his power and his love for you so that then your life is then reoriented based on him and not you, that you have a vertical look on your life and not just a horizontal one.

And this is actually why Jesus says to those who ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find.

And back in verse 33 of chapter 6, Jesus says, but first seek the king, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.

That's actually the same Greek word seek as Jesus uses in verse 7, seek.

You see, what Jesus is pointing us to is that a life of prayer is not necessarily about, it's not about a gumball machine.

It's actually about you experiencing the God of the universe who is with you.

And actually, if you are a follower of Jesus today, the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, he lives inside of you.

I was just it's true.

So you don't have to like close your eyes and take an escalator.

He lives in you.

And when you speak to God, you don't have to act like it's like it's not like Harry Potter where the owl has to take the letter and fly.

He lives in you.

He knows you.

And prayer is about seeking, not necessarily these things that maybe horizontally and and in a in a way that maybe's really just focused on us that we want to like appear in our lives.

It's actually about seeking the God who lives in you.

About the God who loved you and about the God who saved you.

To seek something is to pursue something that you truly desire.

This is a heart-orienting word to seek.

What do you seek?

What do you want this morning?

What do you want the most from God?

If you if God could give you a blank check and he said, Okay, anything you want, and you're like, anything?

Anything.

All right, anything you want.

Lamborghini, Mercedes, big house, a picket fence, two and a half kids, apartment on the lake, a career, your degree, maybe.

You recognize all those things will never ultimately satisfy you.

See, what Jesus is saying is this is that a life of prayer will bring you what ultimately you were meant to have and satisfy you as a human being, and that is God Himself.

In fact, God makes this promise through the prophet Jeremiah, that won't be up on your screen.

He says, You, if you seek me with all of your heart, you will find me.

Do you want God this morning?

Do you want him more than anything else?

Because what the promise that Jesus is making to you is this is that when you begin to live a life of prayer that's not I give, God gives back, but it's you engaging and speaking with God who knows you and loves you, you will find the one who satisfies your soul.

Praying people who really have like a communing relationship with God are the most satisfied people.

I met a woman, her name was Anna Leaper.

Anna Leaper was 101.

No.

Yeah, she was 101 when I met her.

She was pretty frail, couldn't go to church, but I went with my pastor.

He took me, I was in the beginning of training for ministry.

He took me, said, Hey, you're gonna come with me today.

I said, Okay.

When your pastor tells you that, you should go.

They usually have a good plan for you.

It might be crazy, but they also have something really, really good in mind for you.

So uh my pastor took me, he he said, Come to church.

I got in his car, he took me to visit Anna Leaper.

Anna Leaper has since passed away.

She was 108 when she passed away.

She was 101 when we went to go visit her.

We walk in her house, and there's like stacks of Bibles on the on the on the side tables of these couches.

And she, I just, you know, I'm just asking questions at this point.

I don't even my pastor just doesn't say anything.

So we sit on the couch, she sits down, she's so thankful we're there.

I'm like, my pastor sits there in silence.

So I'm just gonna start asking her questions.

And I started, I asked her asking, she doesn't.

So I was like, what you know, what what are these all these Bibles?

She's like, Oh, I've read them all.

And like multiple translations, at least eight of them sitting on the table.

She's like, that one's my favorite, but I've read them all.

And I said, I so then I started like really like questioning, like, who is this this woman?

And I just said, I I guess I just asked her, I said, What you know, how has that changed your life?

Like, what what does your relationship with God look like?

And and she said, I really don't know why God still has me on her.

I'm too sick to go to church.

I can't, I'm too frail.

But every single day I read his word and he speaks to me through it, and then I talk to him.

And her face just started to glow and radiate.

And she said, And I know that Jesus is alive and that he loves me, and I just want to be with him, and I don't know why he won't take me.

That woman was at the 101 years old, basically lived in her home and prayed constantly, and she was the most satisfied Jesus radiating person I've ever met in my life.

And I just want to tell you this morning that that is possible for you, and you don't have to be 101 years old.

Because Jesus tells you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open for you.

All of those are relationship words, right?

If it was meant to be transactional, it'd be ask, it'd be ask and perform and check in, right?

But ask, seek, knock.

Who do you do that with?

You do that with somebody you know.

And what actually Jesus is promising you here today is that if you ask for him, if you seek him, if you knock on the doors of the throne of heaven, so to speak, you will meet him.

And he will satisfy your soul.

And this is the incomprehensible part of prayer that Jesus is pointing to.

It's the part about prayer that like type A theologian people struggle with.

It's the part you can't control.

It's the X factor.

It's a relationship with God who you can't put in your box.

But when you seek him, he promises you will find him.

This is really what prayer is.

Psalm 62.8 says this.

The psalmist writes this in Psalm 62.8.

He says, Trust in him at all times, you people.

Pour out your heart before him.

God is our refuge.

And that is what prayer is.

Prayer is pouring out our hearts to God.

And it's believing that when you do that, the God who tells you to do it will meet you.

Now, we say all this, verse 7 and 8, and we say, yes, that's great.

But what if God doesn't care?

All of those worries about prayer, right?

You're like, what if I actually gave myself completely to this?

What if I gave myself over to pray like this?

What if God doesn't answer me?

I put all my chips on the table and they just get stolen.

And that's actually a trust issue that we all have.

What if God tells you no?

What if God doesn't want to answer you?

That's where Jesus answered maybe the one of the greatest struggles that we all have with prayer in verses nine and eleven.

And this is point number two is because of Jesus, you can trust God with your prayers.

Verse 9, Jesus says, Who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?

Or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father- your father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?

Now Jesus is using an analogy.

And in it he calls us all evil.

Thank you, Jesus.

In fact, he says you being evil, he doesn't put himself, which is a very interesting thing I want you to note here.

Jesus is saying, you're not like God.

You are born, and this is the problem with all of us, you are born with a sinful nature.

But somehow, if our children come and ask us for bread, we don't give them a stone.

If they ask us for food, we don't give them a snake.

Jesus uses this analogy.

He's saying, even though we, born with a sinful nature, somehow figure out how to give good things to our kids or to people that ask us.

Maybe you don't have kids, maybe you have nieces and nephews, or maybe you have neighborhood friends that are kids, and they come up to you and they kids just ask you for stuff, don't they?

Kids just ask you for stuff all the time.

They're not even your kids.

They're like, Do you have food?

I mean, yes.

And you're like, Do I have food?

Maybe I do.

And then you what do you do?

You go like raid your kitchen.

You're like, I got like three raisins and a beef jerky.

Like what you just figure it out, right?

You figure out how to give good gifts to kids that ask them.

And Jesus says, if you can figure out how to give good things to little kids that ask you, then how much more your heavenly father to those can give good to those who ask you.

Now I want you to just, and Jesus says this for you to think about it for a second.

Because there's some huge things that he's saying about you if you're a follower of Jesus in this text.

And the first major thing that actually would have been incredible for his original hearers to hear this, and should be incredible for us this morning.

Let us never lose the awe of this, is that when you become a follower of Jesus, you get adopted by God.

Now, here's what Jesus is ultimately pointing to, and what he would accomplish later is that because Jesus is the perfect Son of God, he's the God man, he came, he was born of a virgin, he is truly God and truly man in one person.

He's the eternal son of God, incarnated, as we say, in human flesh.

And he is here teaching them that when they believe, people believe and follow him, they get a father who is God.

But what he would go do later would purchase it.

Roughly three years later, ish, Jesus would go to a cross.

And there on that cross, Jesus paid for all of what the Bible calls our sin.

Sin is disobedience to God.

It's that fundamental opposition to God that we all experience because of Adam and Eve sinning in the garden, specifically Adam who allowed, who took the fruit and willfully sinned against God and plunged us all into darkness.

And Jesus is saying, and here's a hard thing that Jesus is actually saying here is that in order to pray rightly and understand the privilege of prayer rightly, is you actually do have to understand He doesn't just say bad, he doesn't just say not great.

He says you're evil.

And that's a part of understanding the good news, is understanding the bad news, is that you and I are born not neutral, not good.

You and I are born evil.

Nobody had to teach you how to lie.

Nobody had to teach you how to lie to your parents.

Because sometimes you were you remember when your parents didn't give you what you asked for?

And how you reacted then?

We'll get back to that in a second about prayer, but nobody had to teach you how to lie, how to be selfish, how to hurt other people.

And it's evidenced in our lives today that all of us still have something inside of us that does not want God, that does not want the best for the people that are around us, that lies, that takes God's name in vain.

We don't treat God as he should.

We don't see him as holy.

We dishonor him by doing horrible things with our bodies and our minds.

And we know by nature we are not his friends.

We are actually his enemies.

Jesus says we're evil.

But what Jesus did 2,000 years ago is he came to earth to die for evil people.

You know what qualifies you to be saved?

Being evil.

Jesus died for sinners.

Jesus died for every single one of you who would put your trust in him.

And that, that's what he did that.

Why?

Because you could never earn a place to stand before God and ask him freely for stuff.

Because God is perfect and holy and you are not.

Jesus saying, you're evil, God isn't.

And there's a big problem, a big separation between you two.

But what Jesus did on the cross was he took the punishment completely for all of your sin, all the things that separated you from God, so that when he said, It is finished, what he did in that veil in the temple horn, there's a huge veil that separated God and speaking with him from the normal people.

And what Jesus did in his death is he tore that, the veil tore in half.

It was like this thick.

It split down the middle when he died.

Because what Jesus did through dying for you was take that separation between you and God away, so that now the minute, the second, the instant that you place your faith in Jesus, God says you are adopted as a child of God.

Your status, your cosmic status is now different.

You are no longer just you.

You are you in Christ, adopted.

God is your father, and this is now the new life you get to live is you no longer have to knock on the door with fear to speak with your father.

You only knock on it as you walk your way in.

There's a difference, isn't there?

And here's the problem: not all of us have had fathers where we could not just open the door and knock on our way in.

That is not the father that Jesus purchased to bring you into relationship with.

That knows that you are Buddhist.

When Jared came to Doxa a few weeks ago to preach in Psalm 103, he knows your weakness.

He knows who you are, and it does not turn him away from you.

In fact, it it brings out his desire to be merciful and kind and loving to you.

God is your father because Jesus died for you, and then he rose from the dead three days later and proved it and showed himself to over 500 people, thousands really, probably, of people by the time he wrote, he ascended into heaven, and he is still revealing himself to people today in Milwaukee, in Madison, and all over the globe.

And he is bringing you.

Here's where this isn't just about the world, this is about you today.

You are being called by Jesus into a life of speaking, of pouring your heart out to God, to a father who loves you.

But here's the problem we you don't get to determine what's good for you.

That's where it hurts.

Because sometimes we're like asking God, God, I really want this.

It's really good for me.

And you know, my kids do that too.

My kids, uh, they really, really believe that more tablet time is good for them.

They believe it with 100% of their being.

In fact, if you would ask them, what's the greatest thing God could give you right now?

More tablet time, right?

More screen time.

But I know as their father, it's not good for them to have more than the specific amount we've decided for them to have.

Because what happens?

They turn into wild monsters.

And I'm just telling you right now, with your life with God, if right now you're asking him for something and maybe you've been asking him for a long time, maybe his answer to not give it to you is actually because it's not right for you right now.

I just want to tell you that God has the right to determine what is good for you.

And the where the where trust comes in is that you don't always, God doesn't tell you, he's like, hey, I just want you to hang on.

I have good, I have a better thing or a good thing for you, or that's not good for you.

The trust comes in in this is you can trust God has your best interest in mind because he sent his son to die for you.

So in those moments where God is telling you no, or he's simply just not answering you right now, it's not because he's unable and it's not because you don't have a relationship with him, but it is because he knows what is good for you, and you can trust this.

He says this in Roman, Paul writes this in Romans 8, verse 32.

Romans 8:32

Listen to this.

Says he, God, did not even spare his own son, but gave him up for us all.

He didn't spare his son for you, he gave him up for us all.

How will he not also with him grant to us everything?

He says.

So how how will if God didn't spare his own son, Paul says, how will he not right now give you more of Jesus?

More of his presence, more of his love, more of an understanding of who he is, more of an experience of who he is, and knowledge, as Paul writes in Ephesians 3.

He would know the love of Christ that passes knowledge.

How will he not, with Jesus, give you everything that you need?

Everything good.

What is the best thing that God could give you this morning?

It's Jesus.

And your life will be radically transformed when you begin by the power of the Holy Spirit through asking God.

This is Paul prayed for this in Ephesians chapter 3.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

He said, I bow my knees to God, and I pray that you, Ephesians, and I pray this for us this morning that you would know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge.

So, how do we respond to this this morning?

The the this translation, the CSB translation, includes verse 12, which actually I've grown to love.

Because Jesus says this, therefore, therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the law and the prophets.

Now, why would Jesus say, therefore?

Therefore is therefore a reason.

Therefore, if Jesus is calling you to pray this way for yourself, what's the best thing God could give you, Jesus?

Then how do you treat others?

You should be praying for them.

You should be praying with confidence for them.

You should be praying that knowing that your heavenly father wants to give them what he wants to give you, more of Jesus.

You should be we should be pouring out our heart to God for the good of our homes and our neighbors and our church and for Milwaukee.

What's the greatest thing that God could give your children?

Salvation in the person of Jesus.

What's the greatest thing that God could give to your neighbors?

It's Jesus.

What's the greatest thing that God could give to UW Milwaukee?

It's Jesus.

What's the greatest thing that God could give to this city of Milwaukee?

It's that Jesus.

Jesus.

What's the greatest thing God could give to you today?

It's a greater knowledge of how much Jesus loves you and the Father that you have.

And so I want to take a minute right now.

And just call you to what Jesus is calling you today.

Would you ask?

Would you seek?

Would you knock?

And maybe you have things on your heart that are burdening you this morning.

What I want to do is I want to pray, and as I pray, I want you to pray, and then we're going to transition into a time of communion.

And I want to, I want to, and I want to, in that moment, I want to challenge us all to pray and to experience the love and power and glory of God.

But right now, as I pray, would you just do what Jesus asks you to do?

Would you ask and seek and knock?

Would you pray with me?

Father, I just come to you.

You're a God who loves me and you love the people who are called by your name here this morning.

And you love those who have walked in here, maybe don't know you.

Father, I just pray.

We ask and we seek and we knock that God, you would give us a greater conception of the love of Jesus for us.

That you would give us the greatest thing you could give us.

The only thing that truly satisfies our soul is the person of Jesus.

Lord, we want more of you.

We know that we are already united to you.

We could not be any more loved than we are right now, but we don't know it.

We don't understand it.

We don't grasp it as we should because we are finite, we are limited.

But oh, Father, would you increase the work of the Spirit, send the work of the Spirit to open the eyes of our hearts to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge?

Because Jesus Himself said that as the Father loves me, so have I loved you.

So to know your love, Jesus, is to know the Father's love.

And we just pray for our homes, for our kids, for our parents, for the people that are living on our block, our street, that you would pour out the Holy Spirit's work upon them, that they would know that they are sinners, that they would know that they can be forgiven through the very precious blood of your son, Father, and that you, and that they, if they would turn away from their sin and put their trust in you, that they would experience what it means to have a heavenly father who's so much better than any earthly father.

And we pray for our campus and we pray for this city, and we lift our hearts to you, we pour our hearts out to you, knowing that it's not about how much and how mechanically we do this, but it is that we are talking.

We have knocked and walked in the room, and Father, you're there, and you've told us through your son.

Ask and you'll receive, seek and you will find.

Knock and the door will be open to you.

That's in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast.

To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at AmbassadorMKE.

And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 9 or 11 a.m.

at 2308 East Bellevue Place.

Grace and peace.