"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; For everyone that asks receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened." Matthew 7:7-8
There are distinct differences between asking, seeking, and knocking. Notice the order and the meanings of these words: ask, seek, knock. When a child asks a parent for a toy or suitable clothing, it is an admission of helplessness. The child cannot earn its cost or provide it for himself. Likewise we adult Christians find there are many things we cannot do for ourselves. There seems to be no way out of our circumstances, so we ask for God’s help. We recognize we are God's children who have the right to ask of Him without shame.
Seeking is required for gaining the many things in life that do not come merely by asking. The 1870 American gold prospectors found there was no gold dust possessed by the asking. The prospector must diligently search, seeking for a place yielding gold. Seeking gold, he staked a claim, dug or panned for gold ore, having to work the claim. Many times the gold was there, but was awaiting the effort necessary of seeking it out. The miner had to repeatedly dig or pan, to keep hitting on that spot in hopes that veins of precious metal could be found.
Jesus assured us our Father shall give us good things if we ask. In the process of asking for things that we can receive in prayer, we learn to seek for insight in finding the most important things. We seek the gates that lead to LIFE, for heavenly doors to be opened to reveal the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. We are instructed to seek FIRST the Kingdom of God, then all the other things we need are added to us by God without asking.
Jesus warned of false prophets that would keep us from seeking the right things. His precepts of asking, seeking, and knocking should be applied to our gaining an understanding of what God is doing by the spirit. He "marks" us with His mind, seals us with insight about higher spiritual matters as we continually request entrance to experience our Father’s purposes. God’s Kingdom is opened to us when we apply ourselves to the precepts of the King by ASKING, SEEKING, KNOCKING in prayer.
“Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Matthew 7:7
What happens for the man who prayerfully KNOCKS about a matter? “IT SHALL BE OPENED UNTO HIM.” I may find a box of chocolates, but that is not the same as opening the box and eating some. The three words ask, seek and knock have obvious differences of meanings that the Lord exhorts us to apply. It is a mistake to treat them as though they were synonyms, supposing the Lord is saying the same thing in three ways. He is not. He’s describing the LEVELS of committed pursuit needed to obtain, find, and have the kingdom of heaven opened in us.
Doing the will of our Father refers to a progression of spiritual development, with each more intense and demanding than the last. This represents an ascending scale of staged increase of intensity moving toward a climatic relationship with God as His son or daughter. ASKING refers to the things we pray for, BUT I may ask and receive a gift without getting the Giver. SEEKING is the instruction scripture uses in finding the Giver, the Lord Himself.
”And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13
ASKING and receiving the gifts leads to SEEKING and finding the Giver. Finding the Giver leads to the KNOCKING for further openings that admit us into deeper, higher, and more holy realms where HE REIGNS. Knocking is more intense than seeking. It is a pressing for entrance into what we know God is doing. To KNOCK is to be persistent in need to obtain open entrance. Our inner spirit knocks for the right of open admission to Him.
Here our inner man is involved with a knocking for higher things of both time and intensity. Knocking is not a single rap; it is a series of raps. It is a frequent request for admittance, repeated as necessary. All are tested in following the Lord by waiting until He moves. Those who hunger and thirst deeply enough for entrance into the real POWER AND GLORY of the Kingdom of God do give themselves to a spiritual knocking in prayer.
Asking is a polite request. Seeking is a diligent search, involving greater effort. Knocking is yet a more insistent demand for a change in favor of God's ways! When we knock correctly, we find things open up in the doors of our understanding and we are bidden to enter, to experience, to participate, to become one, so we know about the realm of the King. Did we get Christ? Surely God’s spirit must reveal it before our apprehension can grasp what is the stature of a full grown man in Christ Jesus.
The quickened inner spirit demands a chance to grow. Our spirit longs to transcend our outer man's soulish rule so the things that motivate us are in line with God’s spirit. WE NOW BECOME ONE WITH THAT. Our transition is from mere awareness of possession of an inner spirit to a state of being controlled and possessed by His Spirit. He is of humble spirit. We soon confess, “Christ is my righteousness!” Yet, we are having to experience an imputed righteousness, an imparted righteousness. Christ is working within us by grace to BECOME the righteousness within us as this great and blessed truth in scripture states:
“He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” II Corinthians 5:21
In the precept of seeking His righteousness, we seek to be made as righteous as Him.Yet if we have not yet entered, in the third precept of knocking we are to knock UNTIL we experience the reality of the Father’s right measures. We knock until His judgment in Kingdom business is given. This makes us complete in righteousness, right now in His eyes.
What has been credited to our account is by grace so NOW WE MAY EXPERIENTIALLY BECOME THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD. We become this by being led of His Spirit, bringing an inner transformation of union with God to our spiritual man, a union with His personality, a union that participates in understanding His word, knowing His plans, and His abilities.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery…”
As an example, God gives understanding of adultery in His word. He is not merely commanding obedience, trying to prevent us from “enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season.” Here He is telling us something about Himself. He is telling us how HE is, His nature, so we know how we should be. It means that GOD HIMSELF is committed, reliable, true, dependable, faithful and trustworthy. He keeps His commitments. He keeps His covenant. He honors His word. He is faithful to all His responsibilities.
He will not commit adultery by cheating on you, or lying to you, deceiving you, forsaking you, or defrauding you. He loves you and will take care of you, cherish you, nurture you, protect you, and cleave to you. THAT IS HOW HE IS! And that is exactly what he makes us to be. He is loving, He is kind, He is faithful, and His nature is fixed to be unchanging. He is not adulterous, with a roving eye and a lying, cheating heart.
When you understand the nature of One who is not adulterous in thought, desire, or action, you understand something about the character given us of God. The standard of that nature is what He intends us, His sons and daughters, to ask for, seek, and keep knocking for as husbands and wives, as fathers and mothers, as brothers and sisters in Christ. We are to seek for it with knockings until heaven opens as our reality NOW.
The scripture reveals His nature. When the law of life in Christ Jesus is written in our heart by His spirit, it places in our quickened spirit a desire for His nature to reign over us. We want to be one with how He is, living out of His nature in our lives too, here and now. God thus inscribes His Word and Spirit upon the tablets of our mind and our inner spiritual being.
Many of God's people are being brought to a new understanding of spiritual Mt. Zion. People in the seen and the unseen have been knocking on heaven’s doors for full redemption to be opened. When we are fully redeemed, we are transformed into oneness of spirit with God, bought back from every opposing force, made alive constantly within our spirit. He has promised to overwhelm us with a flowing forth of a river of life. This is the spirit of Christ sent to save us to the uttermost.
This is not the state of newborn Christians who merely find head knowledge about God. Rather, this state is for those coming to maturity with the seed of His Word planted within their spiritual being. To be made like Him, we must press on beyond the boundaries of man's thinking, beyond shallow interpretations of the scripture, beyond those who feed multitudes of Christians the husk of the word. They have been fashioned and conformed to a Babylon image of church, that — yes — has molded an image into the mind of the world that is supposed to represent God’s church.
In God’s church of the firstborn, the people respond to HIS VOICE. They learn to repeatedly be transformed to a more complete spiritual growth by knocking for the complete complement of divine metamorphosis that is creating perfect spiritual fruit within our lives. God has planted divine seeds of His truth as His word is planted within us. Thus, WE BECOME RULED OVER BY THE WORD WE CONTAIN!
God places His Word into us. We love knocking until entrance is granted for the fulfillment of each pure word that grows on our tree. Christ gives us the very fullness, so we are expecting now the complete measurement of the character of wisdom. We are to know the resurrection power that is making us into all that Jesus is. We knock on heaven’s door in prayer until it is no longer the I, but Christ in us, "the anointed hope of glory,” that is found continually knocking. Knocking is continuous in our heart, in our prayers, in our inner being, until our Father opens the complete revelation of Christ Jesus within us. Yes, we will be knocking until heaven is open and the ark is seen by all!
"…for the spirit's law of life in Christ Jesus frees you from the law of sin and death." Romans 8:2 concordant
The realm of the spirit is governed by spiritual laws just as powerful and precise as the laws of the physical world. God’s spiritual laws cannot be discovered by the natural mind of man nor by man’s intellectual search or investigation through natural efforts or scientific channels. Spiritual law can neither be discerned nor touched by the natural senses of man.
The spiritual law of life belongs to the divine and must be revealed to man by the Word of God and the Spirit of God — God’s two witnesses. Man cannot supplant this process. Man cannot nullify nor break God's laws with impunity any more than he can with natural laws. The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of spiritual law with precise principles that govern its activities, administrations, and manifestations. If we move into conformity with those principles we will meet with success — no question about it.
The Kingdom of God operates in the divine law of life in Christ Jesus, which makes us free from the law of sin and death. The law of the spirit of life negates the law of sin working in death — by superseding it — just as the law of aerodynamics supersedes the law of gravity when thrust enables an airplane to soar into the sky above the earth. No law can be broken without consequence, but any law may be superseded by a higher power. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus in a man can supersede the law of sin and death in that man.
Many of us in our spiritual walk through Pentecost have been taught to “die to self” in order to live. Christians in that realm have accepted the idea that if we can comprehend the bible and devote ourselves really hard to doing what the bible teaches, the law of death would be conquered within us. But in reality we search the scripture for an answer in knowledge when it can ONLY COME BY KNOWING THE SPIRIT.
To know we cannot do anything in order to live, we must become alive of spirit, becoming alive WITHIN our spirit. Then the life in our spirit dies to all the legalistic religious works heaped upon us Christians. We realize the strength of sin is trying to keep us doing something religious by the laws displayed in the bible. Precepts old and new can be marred by carnal minds with natural strength, but IT CANNOT BE DONE IN THE FLESH. Jesus was willing to really die to his own soul’s strength so He could say truly:
“Therefore the Father is loving Me, seeing that I am laying down My soul that I may be getting it again. No one is taking it away from Me, but I am laying it down of Myself. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to get it again. This precept I got from My Father." John 10:17-18 concordant
Jesus received the right to accomplish the Father's precepts and knew what to do to lay down his own soulish reasonings. We have come to life by applying these same spiritual precepts. They teach us, by the spirit, to lay down our soul life too. Then God’s precepts reign over us so that we live and walk in the spirit of Christ, laying down the soulish part of us.
Christ Jesus was secure in the crucifixion of His soul life within himself long before He was crucified on the cross. He trusted God's powerful law of Life, the inner transcendence that raised Him from hell, death, and the grave at opportune time. He is constantly arising to the occasion by applying the Father's precepts. Do you think He was boasting when He said, “I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it up again?”
Men and women who go out of this life unaware of God will find their spirits can only be lifted out of the darkened deadened state of torment when God's Word and Spirit reaches to bring their spirit to awareness of their real Father. They have to reach for the state of being filled with His spirit, which now enlightens the called out, chosen, and faithful in Christ, a firstfruit of what God will personally offer all men in due time:
"Faithful is the saying and worthy of all welcome (for this are we toiling and being reproached), that we rely on the living God, Who is the Saviour of all mankind, especially of believers. These things be charging and teaching." I Timothy 4:9-12 concordant
God has made us with a capacity to be saved, free from the law of sin and death even now. It is Christ anointing our spirit from within that enlightens us and dissipates our darkness and death. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus dissipates man’s darkness. He is causing love for righteousness to be quickened within our spirit to reign over our hateful ways, those mocking, prideful, soulish ways.
Reading the bible and trying to please God by religious efforts of keeping our-self from the works of the flesh grant only partial victory. When His spirit quickens our spirit to cry out to God as our Father, then the full victory is granted and found. The spirit of life in Christ Jesus can conquer everything within us that is unlike the Father. By His spirit being joined to our spirit, that victory has been given us.
It is God’s resurrection power that gives us real victory. God's resurrection power works to raise our inner spiritual man from the darkness of man’s own carnal mind, the death of it. Death will then be dissolved and dissipated in us. As there is increase of the inner spiritual light by understanding the mind of Christ, we will increase in the power to be laying down our soul life just like Jesus.
We are not an accident going somewhere to happen. And we do not just saunter into the Kingdom of God or slide into sonship inheritance. We will not stumble or fumble our way into the fullness of God. We will not accidentally enter into God's resurrection power. Yet we can awaken to ask, seek, and knock for His great light to open until we discover how our own spirit is being quickened by the Spirit of God.
The whole economy of God's Kingdom operates with spiritual principles by divine law. There are prescribed paths and precise processes by which God molds us. These processes perform major operations on us as described in the Sermon on the Mount. The Old Testament also is full of examples that teach of God's divine precepts. The tabernacle in the wilderness teaches many divine precepts of great spiritual value. The feasts of Israel instruct us of a pattern of God’s thoughts about abiding with a people, a type of His spiritual habitation that is of great value in wisdom and knowledge of divine procedures.
Yes, His spirit can teach us all things that need be revealed to us. We, like Jesus can have His understanding, the divine mind revealed. The keys governing access to life come to be opened within us, unlocking the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus to our own inner spiritual man. God makes an abode within us, becoming a blessing that rules in our favor every time!
He saves us and changes us, and we need changes wrought in us so that His work will be accomplished. God finishes what He starts. He has determined believing men shall be conformed into the image of His dear Son. We who have believed are even now mightily transformed into the divine image that indeed swallows up our death.
All this is happening more quickly as we learn to be taught by the spirit, to walk after it by asking, seeking, and knocking for conformity to the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. MERCY is on this law's main street:
"Now to Him Who is able to do super excessively above all that we are requesting or apprehending, according to the power that is operating in us, to Him be glory in the ecclesia and in Christ Jesus for all the generations of the eon of the eons! Amen!" Ephesians 3:20-21 concordant