Education in Faith
In the gospel for the coming Sunday, Jesus provides his disciples, and all Christians, with a model for prayer. In keeping with this modelling by Jesus, it is significant that the Lord’s Prayer, or Our Father, is the common prayer of all Christians, regardless of denomination.
The parable and teaching that follow the Lord’s Prayer make clear the particular purpose of prayer that Jesus was highlighting – prayer as petition.
Jesus says in the gospel, ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.’ The actions of asking, searching and knocking are means by which we initiate the encounter with God. If we don’t ask, search and knock, how is anyone (including God) to know our needs or know what it is that we are searching for. Particularly in our spiritual lives, it is only through the search and the knocking on the doors of different experiences that we ever come closer to finding answers.