Matthew 7:8

For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

These words are far more than a promise to answer prayer; and, depending on what men pray for, they may be even a threat. Certainly, there is a statement of God's law that prayers, in some measure at least, determine the kind of answer. Goodspeed's translation is, "Ask, and what you ask will be given you. Search, and you will find what you search for."[3] Thus, if one pursues unworthy goals, he may attain them. Alas, many do. Prayers should be disciplined to request only those things which are truly desirable and should always submissively include the provision, "Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done" (Matthew 26:39).

Of all rash things, a rash prayer is the rashest. Rachel prayed, "Give me children, or else I die" (Genesis 30:1). God gave her children, "and she died" (Genesis 35:18). The children of Israel "lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And he gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul" (Psalms 106:14,15). Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

"God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers. And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in't."[4]

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way:

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us; as Goethe said, "What we wish for in youth, comes in heaps on us in old age," too often cursed with the granting of our prayer; and hence the high caution, that, since we are sure of having what we wish, we beware to ask only for high things.[5]

[3] Edgar J. Goodspeed, New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

[4] Frank S. Mead, The Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations (Westwood, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1965), p. 338, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora.

[5] Ibid., p. 339, from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Conduct of Life.