So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Luke 11:9-10)
Persistence in prayer evoked the admiration of Jesus and wins the attention of the Lord when Abraham intercedes for Sodom. The life of the baptized—to be rooted and built up in Christ Jesus the Lord—is to be rooted in prayer. God hears and answers prayer and so strengthens God’s own. “When I called, you answered me; you increased my strength within me.”
Music for the Day
Traditional Worship Hymn of the Day: 742 What a Friend We Have in Jesus — Prayer and intercession rule as themes in today’s readings, and we echo those readings in this old standard of a hymn. In this text we encourage one another to pray to God not only about our own problems, but the problems of the community.
New Day Worship Song — Good Good Father — In New Day, our worship song we sing these words in the opening verse … I’ve heard the tender whisper of love in the dead of night. You tell me that you’re pleased and that I’m never alone. What more could we ask of our God when we come into God’s presence in prayer and supplication?
To pray is to change. This is a great grace. How good of God to provide a path whereby our lives can be taken over by love and joy and peace and patience and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. The movement inward comes first because without interior transformation the movement up into God’s glory would overwhelm us and the movement out into ministry would destroy us. In the beginning we are indeed the subject and center of our prayers. But in God’s time and in God’s way a Copernican revolution takes place in our heart. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, there is a shift in our center of gravity. We pass from thinking of God as part of our life to the realization that we are part of his life. ~~Richard Forster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home
