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-   -   “Ask and It shall be given” A true interpretation. (https://www.landoverbaptist.net/showthread.php?t=115935)

Ezekiel Bathfire 03-03-2019 12:58 PM

“Ask and It shall be given” A true interpretation.
 
Does this mean that God is some Almighty Soup Kitchen Who will give you anything you think of?

Well, no, obviously not. Did not Christ Himself say
“M't:7:6: Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
M't:7:7: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
M't:7:8: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”?
And did Christ not say it again in Luke:11:9?

Allow me to give you a small example of how easy it is to wrongly think that God does everything for you:

I well remember when Miss Daisy Mae requested that Pastor Zeke organize a charity drive for a home for orphan kittens, that Pastor Zeke ordered the Prayer Warriors to pray for such a thing.

Unsurprisingly, it was suddenly discovered that Daisy Mae’s father had a worthless old building that was falling apart on a lot in a good part of Des Moines. Pastor Zeke realised this was God’s answer and Landover paid $10 million from Church funds for the house. Out of gratitude, Daisy Mae’s father donated $5 million to Pastor Zeke to do with “as he wished” and Landover built a new house, which it then sold for $20 million. Landover now had $15 million to buy the finest shed WalMart had to offer for those poor kittens for their use as a Christian Shelter!

However, you have probably taken the wrong message from the above.

This is how He works:-

Ask, and it shall be given you;
Read the verse above again - the punctuation and language of the verses are critical to their understanding. “It” is a pronoun and refers to the first singular noun, noun phrase/clause, etc., that precedes it. In this case, “It” in Ask, and it shall be given you; must refer to “that which is holy”in v.6. (And “it” can’t be given to dogs, but God is OK with cats.)

Note that Ask, and it shall be given you; ends in a semicolon – a semicolon is used to separate clauses and ideas.

The result is that asking for things that aren't holy is prohibited.

seek, and ye shall find;
You will note that in “seek, and ye shall find;” there is another semicolon, and there is no “it”. This means that the clause is separate and that as the “it” (from “And it shall be given”) is not stated, neither does “it” carry over.

Therefore, this verse merely says that if you look for something,you will find something, but it does not specify that what you will find will be what you are looking for! It means that you will find what God wants you to find. This is true because otherwise, what you find might not be “that which is holy”.

We can see this demonstrated constantly in real life when, for example, some homicidal maniac goes looking for a gun and finds the Bible and becomes a Christian.

knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
All too often people assume (and I have no idea why) that this involves knocking on some door or other and the door opening. There are very few significant doors in The Bible – they are mainly “gates”.

The verb “knock” is troublesome too: it appears only once in the Old Testament:
Song:5:2: I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.
So we see that, back in the day, voices knocked. Thus, there is no “door” – and “knock” means “speak”.

And you will have noted that “it” makes its reappearance -> i.e. “that which is holy” – Here “it” = God’s Word

Shall be opened unto you” = will be made available for your use.

So we can now see that knock, and it shall be opened unto you: means “say something and God’s Word will be made available to you.” – Or to put it in Modern American – “Ask a Pastor, who will tell you what God says about holy things.”

I hope this has cleared up some misunderstandings.


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