 Now, in pastoral situations, many times people will come and will say, I've been praying about this for years. I've been urgent in prayer about it. And we as pastors don't have an instant or easy answer for that. Sometimes somebody you love is very sick and you pray earnestly, shamelessly, persistently for them to get better and then they don't. There is no easy answer. Prayer is not a slot machine where you just put a coin in and get an answer straight out. However, part of the mystery of the kingdom breaking in is that though there are dark forces ranged against us, God the Father is merciful and wants us to be part of his ongoing purposes. Prayer is not just sending up a message in the hopes of something vaguely happening. Prayer is actually becoming, taking up our dignity as human beings. God has wanted from the very beginning in Genesis 1 to work in his world through obedient, wise human beings. Prayer is part of that stewardship. It's part of the way the world is supposed to work. The reason we don't understand it is that we're not very good at even thinking of living at the overlap of heaven and earth. But that's what prayer is all about. And in that moment, in that place, verse 11, Jesus says, if your son asks you for a fish, is there a father among you who will give him a snake? Or if you ask for an egg, will you give him a scorpion? And he says, OK, you are evil, but you do know how to give good gifts to your children, how to feed them healthy stuff. How much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? It's a very interesting little twist there that's in Luke's version of this saying. It's not just the Father giving good gifts to those who ask him. It's the Father giving the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. As though the Holy Spirit contains all other possible good gifts that the Father might want to give us. So that whatever it is we're asking for, ultimately this is a prayer for the Holy Spirit. And within the gift of the Holy Spirit to seek healing, to seek food, to seek refuge, to seek reconciliation, whatever it is that we need. Very powerful teaching on prayer. And I suspect, as I've said, that most of us, most of the time, need to be reminded of it. However regular and faithful we are in our daily and weekly praying, we probably all need to up our game a bit. And Luke 11 is a very good place to start as we go about it.