Dock Resource Kit
Sunday sermon, 18 January 2026
Summary
This week Mark spoke to us about seeking God in prayer — not as passive observers, but as people invited into maturity, authority, and deep dependence on Him. Drawing on Jesus’ invitation to ask, seek, and knock, Mark explored how prayer is like learning to “use our words” with God: stepping into the authority Jesus gives, while holding faith and surrender together. Through stories of unanswered prayer, revival, and personal weakness, we were reminded that God is trustworthy and approachable, that the kingdom of God advances through persistent, humble prayer, and that even our small offerings — our loaves and fish — can be multiplied by Jesus for the sake of East London and the world.
Key Points & Takeways
Prayer is part of spiritual maturity - Like children learning to “use their words,” prayer draws us out of immaturity and into agency, authority, and relationship with God.
We pray with authority given by Jesus, not our own power - Jesus shares His authority with His disciples — prayer is not self-generated power, but participation in what God is already doing.
Asking is costly, but God is trustworthy - Unanswered prayer and suffering are real, yet God remains faithful and present. Sometimes the prayer shifts from “remove the pain” to “redeem the pain.”
God is profoundly approachable - Despite His holiness, no one is more approachable than Jesus. If we don’t know what to ask for, we can always ask for more of the Holy Spirit.
Seeking God means seeking His kingdom - Revival is not an event to chase but a posture of prayer: “Your kingdom come.” What we do in prayer genuinely matters for people and places.
Knocking is persistent, humble dependence - We knock not because we have much, but because we need God. Prayer bridges heaven and earth as we surrender and ask God to move.
Revival begins with prayer and repentance - Before God transforms communities, He transforms hearts. Personal holiness and repentance prepare the ground for renewal.
Dock Discussion Questions
Which of the three invitations — ask, seek, or knock — do you find most challenging right now, and why?
How have experiences of unanswered prayer shaped the way you approach God? What does it mean for you to trust God in those spaces?
What might it look like for you to seek the kingdom more intentionally — in your street, workplace, family, or community?
Where do you sense God inviting you to “use your words” in prayer again, perhaps after silence, disappointment, or fear?
Long-form, edited transcript
Manifest.
Seeking God.
Luke 11:1-13
My name is Mark Bishop and I lead, with my wife Carrie, the House of Prayer for East London. There's a little backstory which might be helpful. I've been one of the clergy here at St. Paul's for six years - we are at home here - our center of gravity in lots of ways used to be right here especially in January really pushing into prayer, setting up the prayer room. But the more I spent time in those places of intimacy with God, the more I felt that sense of call to also go. The house of prayer is really an expression of seeking God for our borough and East London. Churches are absolutely doing that, this funny thing in God's economy happens that when you start praying, the more you pray, the more prayer happens. It's like prayer begets more prayer. I think we're an example of the fact that the church is praying rather than any deficit in that sense. Although we can always pray more.
Phil kicked us off with this series allowing us to realise that God is manifest in the world through Jesus and he appears in all these incredible ways. And he calls us into a life of prayer, a life of dynamic faith-filled prayer. And last week Brigid talked about seeing God and this amazing reality that as we see God, even glimpse God, we begin to step into this place where our hearts are set on fire afresh. And I don't know about you, but I am in need in our world today to have my heart set on fire by God, because there are so many other things that make my heart break. But if you set my heart on fire God, if I can glimpse you, then I have hope. Today we're going to look at seeking God. Seeking God who is manifest in the world.
“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: ‘ “Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation. ” ’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have no food to offer him.” And suppose the one inside answers, “Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children and I are in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. ‘So I say to you: ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you…..how much more will he give the Holy Spirit to those who ask” - Luke 11:1-13
I have two kids. They are 11 and 12, but they used to be a lot smaller than they are now. When they were younger, there was a wonderful moment where just in a domestic setting, they would point at something and grunt. And you'd be like, "Oh, okay. What is it you want?". Trying to guess! But Carrie and I both realised as we learned how to parent, there would come this moment where we would say "now please use your words". I don't know if anybody else has uttered that or heard that phrase used to them. Use your words. And so in the pointing and the desiring and the grunting and the groaning, we would be the ones going, "No, please use your words." And it wasn't because we didn't always know what they wanted. It was because there was something vital to them about learning to use their voice.
And so as we kind of approach this subject of seeking God and I'm actually just going to share around three points. Ask, seek and knock. I want to make this preliminary point to us that there comes a point where actually it's 'use your words' time. And this is the same for our faith as we approach God as children who he doesn't want to stay in immaturity but he wants to draw into a maturity. If I hadn't taught my kids how to do that, how would they know that there's something amazing about when they exercise their own agency and authority? And we're called into a life following Jesus that has a lot to do with realising the authority given to us by Jesus.
Jesus was so attractive to his followers because he showed this unique power. In Mark 1:27, the people asked, “What is this — a new teaching with authority? He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”
But then the crazy thing with Jesus is that he gives it away to his disciples. We hear echoes of the things that people said about Jesus said about his disciples. Jesus calls the Twelve and gives them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal diseases and illness. Later in Luke 10, the disciples come back to Jesus and they say, “Lord, even the evil spirits obey us when we use your name.”
Did you know that you have authority? You have authority from Jesus to go and do the things that Jesus did — not to do them purely in the shape of Jesus as we read about him in the Gospels, but by God's grace to do them in the shape that Jesus loves to show himself through you. Because you are a little Jesus in the world because of him. Not conjuring things out of your own power, but bearing fruit through the power of Jesus.
Prayer has a lot to do with that, and with how we approach prayer.
There was a wonderful Methodist preacher who used to preach in Shoreditch in the early 19th century — William Edwin Sangster. He said this:
“Prayer is the highest activity of which mortals are capable. It is learning to know God at first hand. It is the sovereign way to holiness. It is the royal road to assurance.”
There is something that we activate by praying that is similar to when a child learns to use their own voice. We step into a sense of authority that Jesus has given to us and wants us to operate in.
Jesus sets a high bar around prayer. He sets our expectations high. He says to the disciples, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes what he says will happen — it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
But we walk this line with Jesus where we hold surrender in one hand and faith in the other. So I’m going to share through these three lenses.
1. Ask
What does it mean to ask? We have this amazing authority given to us by Jesus, but the reality is that asking is not easy. I don't know about you, but I don't find it easy all the time to ask for things.
My path has taken me through many seasons in life — some that felt like spring and summer, and others that felt like autumn and winter. Asking looks different in different seasons of our life. There are many factors that affect how we feel we can approach God. There is a spiritual battle that can complicate things and draw us into places where we feel opposed, oppressed, or unable to ask.
Unanswered prayer is a reality for us. I actually felt burdened this week as I prepared because we’re going to look at seeking God and these realities that God calls us to face. But the first reality is our own pain. As adults, when we talk about asking for things, so much gets stirred up in us. And yet there is a moment to use our words.
In the parables and in the Lord’s Prayer, we see a consistent theme: Jesus, despite all odds, wants us to use our voice and ask him for things. And it is about more than just the things we are asking for.
Rather than preaching fully on unanswered prayer, I want to say this clearly: God is trustworthy. God is trustworthy. And if you’ve lost trust in Him, let me say it again — God is trustworthy. I don’t say that out of some kind of arrogance or because life has been easy. I say it because I’ve been to places of suffering, and I still deal with pain in my own life. The only way I have seen that redeemed is through the incredible ways God proves Himself trustworthy. He doesn’t always answer prayer in the way we want, but He is always with us as we ask. He always wants relationship, and He always provides an answer in some way.
Tyler Staten, from the 24-7 Prayer movement, said this after a journey through cancer:
“How can we trust a God who does not suffer?”
The gospel shows us that we do not have a saviour who expects perfection. Rather, we have a saviour who knows what it means to ask out of weakness and suffering. Tyler shares his own story and draws this lesson:
“At some point I stopped asking Jesus to remove the pain and started praying for Him to redeem the pain.”
Friends, some of us need to learn that. This side of heaven, before the promise is fully realised, there will be times where prayers seem unanswered. But even now, may we be a people who pray: “God, redeem our pain. Redeem the pain of the world.” Ask for relief, yes — I have asked countless times in my own life. But also pray, “God, redeem my pain,” and may we become agents of redemption even in the face of suffering.
We can ask because God is incredibly approachable. There are moments where we may be on our knees in trembling because we glimpse the King on the throne and the presence of heaven. The Spirit can feel heavy because of God’s holiness, which makes our own small holiness seem inadequate. Yet Dane Ortlund reminds us:
“For all His resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, His supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in all of human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ.”
Jesus is trustworthy and approachable. You can ask Him for things. And here’s a simple but incredibly biblical principle: if you can’t think of anything else to ask for, ask for the Holy Spirit.
Jesus shares this principle in the Lord’s Prayer and illustrates it in a parable about a father who longs to give good gifts to his children. If a father delights in giving good gifts, how much more will our Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit? The Spirit regenerates us, convicts us, empowers us with gifts, testifies in our hearts that we are children of God, leads us, makes us fruitful, nurtures us in resurrection life, enables us to kill sin, intercedes for us when we don’t know what to pray for, guides us into truth, and transforms us into the image of Christ. Everything we need, the Holy Spirit can give. Ask for more of the Spirit — and it will be given.
Prayer is not just about personal blessing. It changes us, yes, but it also changes the world. It is a gift we operate in with authority for the sake of others. In the parable of the audacious friend, the one who knocks for bread does so not for themselves, but for the stranger visiting them. Will you operate in prayer for the sake of others?
Friends, it is liberating. If life is hard, it is a relief to realise it’s not all about you. God has given you a gift to lift up people and places in our deeply broken world. And what does Jesus tell us to seek? So, number one: ask.
2. Seek
But number two: seek. Jesus says, "Seek the kingdom." He says in Matthew 6:33,
"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you."
The kingdom of God, as we see it in Jesus, is the reality of the place where Jesus is King and His authority fully reigns. In the New Testament, we see this reality begin to break into the world around Jesus. Wherever Jesus was, kingdom things began to happen: healing, deliverance, salvation. These are signs of the kingdom that we should seek. What was Jesus seeking? He was seeking the fullness of the kingdom.
In Dirty Glory, Pete Greig describes this as the “presence paradigm.” He recounts the Hebridian revival that took place in the Outer Hebrides off the coast of Scotland.
The Hebridian revival began in the tiny village of Barvas on the Isle of Lewis, where two elderly sisters, Christine and Peggy Smith, were sitting by their peat fire, lost in prayer. One was 82, bent double with arthritis, and the other was 84 and blind. They could do little else, but they could still pray.
On this particular night, their hearts were deeply moved by the absence of young people from the church across the fields. Outside, the moon hung high in the sky, and the wind swept in from the sea. Inside, the fire crackled, casting gentle shadows across the room, as the Smith sisters poured out their hearts to heaven in their native Gaelic tongue.
Suddenly, one of the women received a vision of young people filling the church. It was as simple as that — the sort of thing we might gloss over in many meetings today. But these two prayer warriors were not flippant. They summoned the minister the following morning and informed him unequivocally that he needed to prepare:
“Revival is coming. What should you do?”
They told him,
“You should pray.”
What followed was a prayer meeting among the elders of the church, matched by the sisters down the road who said,
“If you do this, we will pray for the same amount of time at home.”
They prayed for five hours each night, twice a week. Between 1949 and 1953, the majority of the population of the Isle of Lewis and the Outer Hebrides surrendered their lives to Christ. Empty churches were repopulated with young people. Miraculous signs and wonders occurred, and the entire fabric of Hebridian society was transformed by the gospel in just four years. Those who lived through those years insisted that their experiences could only be attributed to a sovereign act of God in answer to earnest prayer.
When I read about these events, I cannot help but cry. The same Spirit that moved in the Outer Hebrides is the Spirit at work among us today. This is what it’s like to encounter the Spirit — we realise there is something greater than ourselves.
I want to encourage you to seek God. Seek God for yourself, but also for the people and places you live in. Friends, will you seek God for your street? For your neighbours? For your family? I imagine many of you are already doing that. Seek Him for East London, even for the drivers you’re annoyed with on the Mile End Road. Seek Him for the A12. Seek Him for London. Seek Him for this nation, and for the many nations we represent. Seek Him for the world. He has somehow engineered it so that what you do matters, and what you do in prayer matters most of all.
Seek Him. Seek Him. I implore you from this account of revival. Let me tell you, there are rumours of revival in our times. Amazing things are happening among Generation Z, one of the most open generations to spirituality for the past 200 years. Some are being drawn into church in miraculous ways. There are other signs too — in Sweden, for example, where the Telegraph reported that Sweden is no longer secular. Many people call this revival.
When we use the word “revival,” we mean that the kingdom of God is coming near. It is not a special event to chase, but the consistent practice of what Jesus teaches us in prayer:
“Your kingdom come. Your will be done, here as it is in heaven.”
Friends, may you be stirred today. It’s not just my job, as one of the House of Prayer, to pray. It’s not just your job either. This is our collective call — all of us are called to be prayer warriors, the most unlikely ones, whom God has called throughout human history. We may feel inadequate, we may have all sorts of issues, and we may not know the best way to pray. But still, may we bring what we have — our little loaf and fish — and may Jesus multiply it for the sake of His kingdom.
3. Knock
Jesus invites the disciples to an action: knock, and the door will be opened to you. This is a specific word pointing to the barrier between the realities of heaven and the realities of earth. Later, Luke uses it to describe Jesus coming back to earth, knocking and opening the door. Revelation uses the same image.
What Jesus invites us into is to knock on the door of heaven so that more of God’s kingdom might come on earth. Friends, this is not something we manifest by our own power. We do not create God’s presence ourselves. That is dangerous and will leave us feeling inadequate. We come to God to surrender, so that He might be manifest through us. Knock on the door of heaven. Our world desperately needs it.
The world around us is full of hatred instead of love, vindictiveness instead of joy, vilification instead of peace, alarmism instead of patience, discord instead of kindness, racism instead of goodness, prosperity instead of faithfulness, the imposition of power rather than the exercising of self-discipline. Our world needs prayer. We need to knock on the door of heaven so that God’s presence and authority might be made real in our midst.
We are called to be the people who knock. Often, we feel inadequate. We may struggle to know how to pray, but God calls us to bring what we have. Even our small gifts — our little loaf and fish — can be multiplied by Jesus for the sake of His kingdom.
In the Hebridian revival, before extraordinary things happened, the elders gathered and read Psalm 24:
“Such is the generation of those who seek Him, who seek the face of God.”
This passage points to those with clean hands and a pure heart. The elders fell down in repentance, recognising that revival begins with personal holiness. One of the elders said:
“Brethren, it is humbug to wait for revival night after night, month after month, if we ourselves are not right with God.”
In the parable of the audacious friend, the one who knocks at midnight does so not out of wealth, but out of need. He knocks not because he already has, but because he requires.
We are invited to do the same. We come to God acknowledging our need, bringing our weakness, and trusting His provision. Prayer is an act of surrender and dependence, not self-reliance.
Let us take a moment to reflect on this posture of knocking. God is approachable. He invites us to bring what we have, to lift our voices for the sake of others, and to seek His kingdom. As we do this, the door will be opened. The kingdom will come. And what we do in prayer, together, matters.
We are going to pray and ask God to move. But before that, I want us to take a moment to realise that God is so approachable that He wants to take from you now anything that is in the way of your relationship with Him. We call that confession. We call that repentance. It is about naming the things that are sin in our life and bear bad fruit, but also the things around us that we may have taken on wrongly, things that we are seeking falsely, or burdens that we do not need to carry. All of this God invites us to let go of in order that we might seek the kingdom.
Prayer is a way to release those burdens. We can ask God to cleanse and purify our hearts by His wonderful grace, through the power of Jesus’ life and blood given on the cross. We can pray for freedom – freedom from anxiety, from pain, from cynicism or prejudice. God draws us back into His freedom so that we might be the people who seek Him. In that same prayer, we can ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit in even greater measure, not only for ourselves but for all those around us.
Jesus is the king, and we long for His rule and reign to be revealed across the world. We knock, not out of our own strength, but out of our weakness. God invites us to remain in a place of quiet before Him, to receive afresh His presence, and to experience the nearness of the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. In prayer, we can adopt different postures – repentance on our knees, intercession through raised hands, and receiving with hands outstretched – each reflecting a way of encountering God and participating in His kingdom.
As we pray, we recognise that God is closer than we sometimes realise. He is near, and His love surrounds us. We can knock at the door of heaven, confident that it will be opened to us, and run into the realities of God’s kingdom. We can encounter the rule of Jesus, which is higher than any other power. Our prayers matter, not only for ourselves but for our communities, our streets, our families, East London, and the world. God calls us to be the people who pray, to bring what we have, even our small gifts, and trust Him to multiply them for the sake of His kingdom.
Lord Jesus, I ask now that you would take any burdens from anybody here. That you would do that by your wonderful grace, by the power of your life being given on the cross, your blood, Jesus, that you would cleanse us, Lord, and purify our hearts.
I pray for freedom, Jesus. Freedom from anxiety, from pain. Freedom from cynicism or prejudice. God, would you draw us back into your freedom so that we might be the people who seek you? And we ask Lord that you would give the gift of your Holy Spirit in even greater measure for us and for all of those around us.
Jesus, we seek the kingdom. Jesus, you are the king and we long for your rule and reign to be shown to the whole world. And we knock, Lord, not out of our strength, but out of our weakness.
Lord I ask that you would loose in this place a fresh knowledge of the Father’s love for us, Jesus of your love for us, Holy Spirit of your love for us. We thank you that you like us, that you see us, that you have come so that you might be close to us. Thank you that you’re closer than we think. You’re closer than we sometimes know. But would you increase today that knowledge of your proximity and your love? We ask for that. We seek it, Lord. We knock at your door and ask that you would come and bestow on us a fresh more of your presence. And I thank you that you open the door that those who knock the door will be open to them and that we can run into you, that we might run into the kingdom of God which is closer than we think. That we might run into the realities of heaven which is on its way. That we might run into the full rule and reign of Jesus which is higher than any other power. He is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings.
Closing Prayer
Jesus we declare your true authority in this place.
We lift you up.
We honour you.
We thank you for the way that you suffered and gave your life and we ask that you would move in our times.
Amen