The video above will motivate you to press on in prayer even in the face of doubt.
Here’s the catch I find in my own prayer life. It’s sometimes hard for me to lay hold of the fact that the Father is good when everything is going bad—sometimes it just seems like heaven is silent.
Jesus would say to us two things in this text.
The first thing he would say there is, “keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking” (Matthew 7:7-8).
You know, the danger is not in doubting whether or not God is good. The danger is in abandoning your pursuit of him.
We all doubt. Doubt is not the death of faith. Doubt is the fertile ground in which faith grows. When I say, “God, this experience hasn’t been good and I feel as though I’m abandoned to you,” but I keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking—that is not the death of faith. That is the birth of a deeper faith.
And I find that I discover what Psalm 38:7 [should say Psalm 34:8] says, or whatever psalm it is, “Taste and see that the LORD is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8 NASB)!
“Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8 NASB).
If we abandon, then, the keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking, then we fail to taste and we’ve removed ourselves from the place of that refuge.
Jesus would say to us—these are hard words, these are hard words—he would say to us in the dark night of the soul, in the [garden of] Gethsemane, “Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking.”
He would hang that command on this truth—the second thing he would say to us— “Your Father, who is in heaven, is good and wants to give you good gifts” (Matthew 7:11, paraphrased).