Answered Prayers
H. W. Beecher. Luke 11:9-10 And I say to you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.… If in a whole generation tens of thousands of men are praying to God for the things which they need, and if the result of their prayers, in long periods, is to give them larger judgment, better balance, more of those qualities which go to make manhood, then these results are an answer to their prayers. It may not be an answer to individual prayer; it may not be a specific answer to prayer; but it is larger and better than that — it is an answer to prayer such as God sees to be best adapted to the wants of those who pray. I hold that his prayer is answered who rises into the presence of God in such a way that for the time being he feels that he is in the Divine presence. In other words, I think that the whole tone of a man's moral sense and of his intellectual life will be altered by having stood consciously in the presence of Supreme Wisdom, Purity, Goodness, and Power. One day when I was with Mr. Hicks, the painter, I saw on his table some high-coloured stones, and I asked him what they were for. He said they were to keep his eye up to tone. He explained that when he was working in pigments, insensibly his sense of colour was lowered or weakened, and that by having a pure colour near him he brought it up again, just as the musician, by his test-fork, brings himself up to the right pitch. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. WEB: "I tell you, keep asking, and it will be given you. Keep seeking, and you will find. Keep knocking, and it will be opened to you.