Like a child

Picture a child in a first-century Israelite home. He points at something round and flat on the ground. "Dad, I want that bread." His father sighs. "Son, that's not bread. That's a stone." But the child insists. "No, I want that bread."

At Heartbeat Melbourne this Sunday, Shinhea Kim opened Matthew 7:7-11 and turned a familiar passage on its head. The sermon also gave us something rarer than a fresh reading: a window into her own postpartum unravelling, and the three-word prayer that cracked her open before God.

Ask, seek, knock

Jesus stacks three verbs in verses 7 and 8, and each one ratchets up the intensity. Asking is simple enough. Seeking is looking for hidden things. Knocking is the urgent move, the open this space, I want to come in, I want this presence move. Three actions. Three promises. Ask and you'll receive. Seek and you'll find. Knock and the door will be opened.

So why bother asking, if God already knows what we need? Because prayer isn't a vending machine. He's not withholding information from us. He's inviting us into a relationship in which we ask, he responds, and we begin to recognise his hand in everything around us. A pram you never noticed before becomes obvious the moment you start thinking about having a baby. Prayer trains the eyes the same way. Without it, we walk past the places God is already at work and chalk them up to luck, hard work, or things we deserved.

The stone that looked like bread

Most of us read verse 9 as a contrast between good fathers and a hypothetical bad one. A child asks for bread, the cruel dad hands over a stone. A child asks for a fish, the cruel dad hands over a snake. See how much better God is than that.

But the cultural detail makes the parable land somewhere completely different. In first-century Israel, stones lying on the ground looked strikingly similar to small flat loaves of bread. The word translated "fish" was closer to an eel, which looked almost identical to a sea snake. The parable isn't about a father trying to trick his child. It's about a child who can't tell the difference, pointing at a stone and insisting that it's lunch.

The child's like, dad, dad, dad, I want that bread. And the dad's like, that's not a bread, son, that's stone. But the child's like, no, I want that bread.

Which lands differently, doesn't it. Most of us have prayed those prayers. We've asked for A. We've nagged for A. We've tried really hard to make A happen and asked God to bless it. When nothing arrives we wonder if God is ignoring us or doesn't care.

The reframe is this: maybe the silence is God saying that's a stone. You think it's bread, but it's a stone. And maybe what he's trying to hand you instead is X, Y, Z.

When we pray, we ask for A and we expect A in return. But what if that's not what you actually need? What if in fact God wants to give you X, Y, Z?

That doesn't mean stopping the conversation. It means going deeper into it. God, you know I want this. Do I really want this? If you're not giving it to me, can you tell me why?

God, I'm scared

When Shinhea's daughter Ella was born, the system shock was total. No sleep, no meals, no trips to the toilet without a tiny human factored in. The exhaustion was real. The fear of being responsible for a brand new person was real. And one prayer kept repeating itself: God, make me strong. Strong enough to hold it all together. Strong enough to be the kind of mother she had pictured being.

Nothing changed. She stayed tired. She stayed scared.

Around that time the church ran its annual Seven Days of Jesus. One of the speakers challenged the room to be raw and honest with God. The obedient Christian who'd always had what she called a "holy cloak on 24-7" didn't really know how to do that.

I had what you might call a holy cloak on 24-7.

She started with three words. God, I'm scared.

Those three words cracked open twenty minutes of weeping. Every fear she didn't realise she'd been carrying came up. Fears about Ella's health. Fears about her marriage. Fears about the kind of mother she wanted to be. The image of family she had built and couldn't reach.

When there was nothing left, she sat in the silence. A question arrived. Even if you lose all of this, am I enough? She heard herself answer almost before she'd thought about it. As long as I have you, Jesus, I have enough.

The circumstances didn't change. Ella was still little. She was still tired. But the fears that had been crushing her moments before were gone. The A she had been asking for was strength so she could keep her grip on the things she was terrified to lose. What she actually needed was the freedom to let go of them. And the way she got there was by asking honestly whether Jesus alone was enough.

Daddy-O

Verse 11 turns on a single word that we've heard so many times we miss its weight: Father. In Jesus' time, faithful Jews spoke of the God of Jacob, the God of Moses, the God of Abraham. The big almighty God, the Lord of Hosts. Occasionally, very occasionally, Father of Israel as a corporate title. Nobody called the God of heaven their Daddy.

They would say God of Jacob, God of Moses, God of Abraham, like this big almighty God. Rarely they would say Father of Israelites, but they never call him Daddy-O like Jesus did.

Jesus walks up and addresses that God as Abba. Dad. And he invites his ordinary, suburban listeners to do the same. The religious leaders heard it and bristled. Why is he claiming to be son of God or calling him dad? That was the scandal. The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of a Father. And he is your Father too.

Be a child before God

The closing call was the simplest thing in the sermon and probably the hardest to actually do. Be a child before God.

Everywhere else in our lives, we have to be the grown-up. Parents, colleagues, managers. Responsible, professional, organised, in control. People who make things happen for others and make sure things don't go wrong. We hold it together because that's what adulthood demands. But God isn't asking for the adult version of you. He's asking for the child.

Don't calculate, don't perform, don't put on things or elaborate or exaggerate before him. Just present yourself as is. You don't have to be a shepherd. You don't have to be a leader or a holy person or a know-it-all or believe in all for God to hear you.

He already knows you. He knows you don't have it all together. And he loves you.

The challenge

For anyone who's been keeping a polite distance from God, maybe stepping away on purpose, maybe just gotten busy enough not to notice, the word at the end of the sermon was gentle. You're not forgotten.

He's just waiting for you to step out of your hiding place.

So this week, try the prayer Shinhea tried. Drop the holy cloak. Skip the big words. Come as a child to a Dad. Ask for the things you actually want. Then go deeper and ask whether what you're holding out for is really bread, or whether God might be trying to put something better in your hand. And if all you have is three honest words, those are enough to start with.