If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” Luke 11:13 [ESV]
This passage starts out with -> “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”
In my opinion, this passage is commonly misunderstood. There are a lot of ‘Prosperity Gospel’ proponents that reference this portion of Gods Word.
Jesus tells his disciples to ask, to seek, and to knock. He assures them that in each case there will be the appropriate response. All three verbs are continuous: Jesus is not speaking of single activities, but of those that persist. He is speaking of an attitude similar to that taught by the parable that I discussed yesterday. The repetition in verse 10 underlines the certainty of the response. People should not to think of God as unwilling to give: He is always ready to give good gifts to His people. But it is important that they do their part by asking. Jesus does not say and does not mean that, if we pray, we will always get exactly what we ask for. After all, ‘No’ is just as definite an answer as ‘Yes’. He is saying that true prayer is neither unheard nor unheeded. It is always answered in the way God sees is best.
Finally, in verse 13, Luke is interested in the work of the Spirit and here he sees the gift of the Spirit as our highest good. There doesn’t seem to be a reason for understanding this in terms of the ‘charismatic’ gifts. The mention is rather to the Spirit’s work in the Christian life generally, as in Romans 8.