Disciples Knock Because They Need

The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' orientation to His disciples on discipleship. In it He introduces the command/promise to ask, seek and knock. Later, Jesus develops this when He teaches them to pray. The real addition to "asking, seeking and knocking" is persistence and passion.

So, what does a disciple need? Jesus says the Father has food and clothing covered, so what does a disciple really need? In so much of what Jesus says, it is assumed that the heart of the disciple will be for doing His work of reaching the lost and making disciples. The hungering is for Him and His work. The weeping is for Him and His work. The need and what is asked for comes from, "my food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work."

The tragedy of all of this "need" and "hunger" is that in our culture, most of us never really "need" & almost never feel physical "hunger" much less a "hunger" for God and His work. But then, does this "need" and "hunger" for His will, and His work, and following Christ, and the saving of the Lost become so much of a need that we can't live without it, that we will not rest, can't rest, won't be distracted, can't be fulfilled, won't stop, until we see God's answer? That is the real question. Anyone can start. Few finish well.

I'm just saying, if constant "need" and "hunger" and "asking, seeking and knocking" are the marks of a disciple and the Lord develops us accordingly, could this be a reason why the "Christian" culture of the western world looks so superficial? We have the same divorce rate, the same preoccupation with stuff, the same lack of commitment to things that do not immediately fulfill us. And we don't make disciples who make disciples who make disciples. Leading someone to Christ, much less bringing someone from birth to reproducing discipleship is absolutely foreign to the average believer in Jesus. Jesus apparently "means" something else.

Disciples need, they hunger, and so they knock and knock and knock and they know they'll be answered so they keep on knocking. That is biblical, spiritual reality and sound teaching.

Even the secular world identifies the need for perseverance.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. Helen Keller

Nothing in the World can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not, nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Calvin Coolidge

But we have more than this. We have Romans 5:3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

We have the faith of Abraham Romans 4:17-21…-- in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations; as he had been told, "So shall your descendants be." He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead because he was about a hundred years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

We all agree that God's proving of our character and refining of our faith is important, but we don't endure because we don't really need it. But if our need becomes a hungering as Jesus had in John 4 and taught in Matt. 5, it becomes focused in Christ to know Him and to make Him known, now, in the harvest when it is so important. And nothing else can satisfy us. So, because of our need, we knock and knock and knock until we have our answer.

Thursday evening no one showed and we were talking. I said it would make a good story for us to be able to reflect back in a year at us sitting in Wendy's alone, at our first attempt to reach our area. It would make a good story provided we were actually alone at Wendy's and provided we keep hungering and needing and knocking. Already the Lord is stirring our hearts with deeper prayer and deeper resolve and more ideas and more knocking and more seeking. This is a good and exciting thing. And the part about sitting alone at Wendy's on our first attempt, we’ve already got that behind us!

Pray for tonight at our place at 7pm.