Ask and it will be given to you. Really?

[tonychanyt]

Jesus started his Sermon on the Mount in Matt 5:

29a If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

and continued to 7:

7“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

Jesus and Eastern people often used poetic hyperbole to emphasize a deeper spiritual reality. This wasn't meant to be understood as a universal propositional statement. It was not a blanket guarantee that every request made in prayer would be granted. Instead, the point was to emphasize God's generosity and encourage his listeners to pray in faith.

9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Elsewhere, James balanced the above with 4:

3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

Everyone who asks receives. Really?

In the deeper spiritual sense, yes, but not in the mathematical propositional sense.

See also Give to EVERYONE who asks you