Ask to Learn

I believe that too often, we ask to gather as opposed to learn.

“¹Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’” – Luke 11:1 (ESV)

This passage teaches the same model of prayer that is found in Matthew 6:9, except that here you see the disciples asking for the model of prayer. This full passage, Luke 11:1-13, is about asking and receiving. Jesus uses the simple ask for the model of prayer to teach of the importance of asking.

As I have mentioned a number of times, my career is corporate training and one of the things I make very clear is that it is important to ask questions that you need answers to. If you do not ask, you have very little if any chance at learning the answers. The key word in that last sentence is “learning”. There are ways of acquiring the learning that you are looking for such as seeking it out for yourself, recalling and applying things from the past, and asking to get answers from those that are in the position to know.

There are those that can teach us and it is a good idea to go to them when we find ourselves in need. Jesus is that one that can teach us and therefore we should seek answers from Him. Prayer is that way to ask and get answers. No, He may not tell you what it is you are wanting or needing to know, it may be that He just simply leads and guides you to where you can find the answers. His word is a great place to start looking before, during, and after asking. There we can find all of the answers, as God’s word is our manual to navigating our time in this world. But, it is important to remember that just looking in God’s word for the answers is not going to provide what we need, as you can see in the model prayer that Jesus has provided for us, in Luke and in Matthew, we have to ask for provision to learn and then work to apply them to the tasks of doing the work God has for us.

When you are seeking answers, where are you looking? Are you just looking or are you asking? What if we asked God for the answers and then allowed Him to guide us?