Lives Between Walls

Receiving From God Happens in a Child’s Posture

(Matthew 7:7–12)

The key passage for me is Matthew 7:7–12—the “ask, seek, knock” portion.

Jesus says:

Ask and it will be given to you.
Seek and you will find.
Knock and the door will be opened to you.

And then He clarifies it:

For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

The image is simple, but it’s also intimate. There is a door. There is a threshold. There is the act of coming near. And what struck me is that Jesus doesn’t only teach how to approach—He also reveals who approaches.

He asks:

Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?

And then verse 11 lands with weight:

If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him?

That wording is important. It doesn’t say, “Which of you being evil know how to give good gifts to men.” It says, to children. Not to everyone’s children—your children.

So the posture matters. The position matters.

In other words, we don’t receive from God merely by saying the right words. We receive from Him when we come to Him as sons, as children—when we adopt what I’ll call a child’s posture. That’s where we miss everything: we try to come as adults, and then we wonder why the door feels closed.

A small moment that opened the meaning for me

This dawned on me this morning in a very ordinary way.

I charged a device at home—something for hair. It looks appealing, and I know my son: if he sees it, he might take it and start fiddling with it. So I took it and put it up—not because I hate him, but because I love him. I didn’t want him to be tempted by it.

And if I’m honest, I also didn’t want to become angry at him. Sometimes I hide things not only to protect him from damage, but to protect him from my reaction—my frustration, my wrath. So in a strange way, hiding it becomes a kind of shelter. It’s a father creating a safer room for a child to live in.

And I thought: God does this with us too.

There are things that are tempting, things that would hook us, things we’d touch too easily. And the Scripture says God does not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability to endure, but in everything He makes a way out. Sometimes that “way out” looks like a door that doesn’t open, or something that isn’t placed within reach. It’s not rejection. It’s fatherly protection.

I actually thank God for this: that He hides certain things. That He shelters me from what would pull me too far. That He knows I’m still a child—still temptable.

The child’s posture is honesty, not performance

And here’s another layer: children don’t stop being children.

If I had left that device out, my son might still take it even after I tell him not to. And if he gets caught, he’ll apologize. But he would do it again. That’s a child. A child is not calculating life like an adult. A child is impulsive. A child gets tangled.

We are like that before God.

And what I’m learning is that God’s grace meets us when we stop approaching Him like we have everything under control. When we adopt a child’s posture, we sit down with Jesus and allow Him to put the things that entangle us—sins, patterns, distractions—under our feet. We allow Him to do it. We stop trying to wrestle everything into submission by sheer religious effort, and we let the Father father us.

My own pattern: when I became “adult,” I went quiet inside

I think about my own life.

There have been seasons when I adopted a child’s posture—where I didn’t overthink sin, didn’t overthink what I needed to do, didn’t try to prove myself before God. And in those seasons, God spoke to me in amazing ways. His voice felt close, clear, alive.

But when I went to Bible school, I cut sin off. I tried very hard to be holy. I tried to play Christianity by the book. I became strict, careful, measured—almost like I was building a wall of correctness.

And that’s when I didn’t hear His voice at all.

I didn’t experience His grace and favor in the same way. It’s like I had the structure, but I lost the living warmth inside it.

Then after Bible school, when I got into varsity, I slipped back into sins again. I was messy again. I was needy again. And somehow, I became a child again—less defended, less performed, more honest.

And then God spoke to me. I heard Him clearly again.

Now let me be clear: I’m not saying we should sin so we can hear God. Not at all. This is bigger than sin. This is about posture. Children don’t first become adults before they come to their father. They come as they are. And when we stop performing, we stop hiding behind walls, we become reachable—open to grace.

The prodigal son and the older brother

This is why the prodigal son story makes so much sense to me.

The prodigal son asked for his inheritance as a son and went and spent it on whatever he wanted—even prostitutes, women, reckless living. He dried out. He hit the end. And he came back to his father.

And the father didn’t just receive him. The father slaughtered a fatted calf for him. He celebrated him. He restored him. He gave him attention and tenderness.

And the older brother was angry:

“I’ve been playing by the book. I’ve been doing everything right. But he sinned, and you still receive him like this?”

What does the father say?

“You are always with me. You can ask for whatever you want.”

In other words: the older brother had access—but he didn’t live like a son. He lived like a worker. He lived like an adult in religion.

And it’s almost as if the prodigal—because he returned in weakness, because he returned needy—became the center of attention. The child becomes the center of attention in the Father’s house. The adult posture doesn’t.

The closer you get to God, the more childlike you become

Some people will say, “But we are grown now. We’ve moved beyond childish things. We want meat, not milk.”

But the closer you get to God, the more childlike you become. That’s just how it is.

In religion, you become more adult: more performance, more rules, more image-management. But in a living relationship with God, you become more of a child: more trust, more dependence, more openness, more receiving.

It’s almost like this: the kingdom is not a place you conquer through strength. It’s a home you enter through sonship. You don’t kick the door down—you knock. And you knock not as a stranger, but as family.

The crux

So here’s the crux of receiving anything from God:

You have to be a son. You have to be a child. And you have to be good at being a child.

Because God does not provide for His “adult posture.” He provides for His children.

And I believe in this season the Lord is calling us back into that posture—that we may receive from Him again: not by striving harder, but by coming nearer; not by building thicker walls of performance, but by stepping through the open door as sons.

Ask. Seek. Knock.

But do it as a child.