III.  And that brings me to the last question, namely, on what conditions these promises depend.

’Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened.’  I said at the beginning of these remarks that I traced a difference between these three commands, and I take that difference for granted now as the basis of the few words I have to say.  The first condition is—­desires presented to Him who can grant them.  To ask implies the will of a person that will hear and respond and has the power to bestow.  That Person is God in Christ.  Go and ask Him.  We all know that prayer is essential, and so I do not need to dwell upon it; go and ask Him, and you will get what you need.

Do you ever pray, you professing Christian people?  I do not mean with your mouths, but with your hearts; do you ever pray to be made less worldly?  Do you ever wish to be so?  Do you ever really desire that your love of this present should be diminished?  Have you any appetite for righteousness?  Does it seem to you to be a good thing that you should have less pleasure in the present and more joys in the future?  Would you like to be a devouter Christian than you are?  I very much question it about many of you.  I am not hitting at individuals, but I am speaking about the average type of professing Christians in this generation.

If you desire it you will ask it.  Is there any place in any of your rooms where there is a little bit of carpet worn white by your knees?  Or do you pray when you are half asleep at night, and before you are well awake in the morning, and scramble through a prayer as the necessary preliminary to going to the work that really interests you, the work of your trade or business?  ‘Ask, and ye shall receive.’

The second condition is effort.  ‘Seek, and ye shall find.’  There are a great many things in this world that cannot be given to a wish.  There are a great many things in the Kingdom of Grace that Jesus Christ cannot give to a mere wish.  There must be my own personal effort if I am to secure that which I desire.  That is the reason why so many prayers seem to go unanswered.  Think of the thousands of supplications that will go up in churches and chapels to-day for spiritual blessings.  How comes it that such an enormous proportion of these prayers will never be answered at all?  Well, if a man stand at the butts and shoot his arrow at a target, and does not care enough for its fate to stand there long enough to see whether it hits the bull’s eye, the probability is that it will never reach its aim.  And if men pray, and pray, and pray, in public, and then come out of their churches and chapels and not only forget all about their prayers but never expect an answer to them, and do nothing in their lives in accordance therewith, is there any wonder that they are not answered?  Men repeat the Lord’s Prayer every morning, and ask God day by day ‘lead us not into temptation,’ and then go out into daily life, and are willing to fling themselves into temptation, and go through the very thick of the fire of it, if there is a ten pound note on the other side of the flame.  And men ask God that He will help them to ‘grow in grace’ and Christian character, and seldom do a single thing that they know will promote that growth.  All such prayer is vain and unresponded to.  With prayer there must go effort.