Today's Devotion

Friday of Easter 4, May 1, 2026 - Luke 11:1-13

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

St. James teaches us in his epistle: “You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (Jas 4:2-3). Jesus teaches that we should lay our requests before the Father, confident in His answer: “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish, give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”

So Jesus teaches us yet again that we are indeed to ask, and that our asking is to be done in faith, in belief that the Father is good, that He keeps His promises, that He delights in His children asking for what they need and providing for them. Jesus teaches this in His parable of the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:1-8), in which a judge gives in to the steadfast requests of a poor widow seeking justice. And this corresponds with our Lord’s analogy of a stubborn neighbor who asks to borrow bread at midnight for the sake of a visitor. In this story, the neighbor gives in because of the requestor’s “impudence,” meaning his shameless insistence.

This should be our attitude of prayer.

But our Lord does even better. When He was asked (and here you see that asking really works) to teach us to pray, Jesus teaches us to pray the prayer we call “The Lord’s Prayer.” Luke’s version is abbreviated from Matthew’s longer version, which includes seven “asks.” And notice that in the Lord’s Prayer, we don’t “ask wrongly” to “spend it on [our] passions.” Rather, instead of seeking our own will, we ask for that which God desires, and that which we truly need: His kingdom, our daily bread, forgiveness (for us and by us), and to be delivered from the temptation of the devil. In other words, we don’t pray “my will be done,” but rather “Thy will be done” (Matt 6:10).

Jesus says to “ask, and it will be given to you.” And He repeats this two more times using different words (imperative verbs that He invites us to do) to convey the same impudent asking: “seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” So let us impudently ask, seek, and knock; and pray to our Father whose name is hallowed, just as our Lord taught us to pray!

Amen.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.