Article December 6, 1999 Issue

Why ask for God's help?

Getting to the heart of prayer

By Joyce E. Batchelder

NEAR THE END of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his listeners, "Ask, and it shall be given you" (Matt. 7:7).Yet earlier in this sermon, Jesus said something else about asking, something rather surprising in view of this later comment. It was "...your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him" (Matt. 6:8). Why, then, is there any need for us to ask?

To me, it seems that this asking must be something deeper than it first appears. In order to determine what this might be, I have found much help in what the Bible describes of Jesus' healings and prayers.

When people came to him for healing, if they did not first ask him to help them, he often asked them what they wanted even when the problem, such as blindness, was obvious (see Luke 18:35-43).

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