Your Father KNOWS what You Have Need Off

As an explorer of Christianity Without Fear, I love to explore questions that are alive within me and that may also resonate with others. The question unfolding within me at this time arises from the statement of the Master Jesus:

For your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
— Matthew 6:8 (KJV)

An immediate question follows naturally from this: If this is the case, then why is the world in the state that it is in? There is also the related statement of Jesus:

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
— Matthew 7:7 (KJV)

Yet human experience seems filled with prayers that appear unanswered. People ask, plead, hope, and wait — and still suffering continues. Nations pray during war. Parents pray for children. Individuals pray for healing, guidance, relief, or peace, and often what is asked for does not appear to be given.

How are these statements to be understood? How are they to be reconciled with the reality of the world we actually inhabit? And perhaps more deeply still — what is prayer, truly?

Is prayer primarily the act of asking a distant God to intervene in the circumstances of life? Or is something far deeper being pointed to by the Master Jesus when he speaks of the Father KNOWING what is needed before the asking even begins?

Perhaps the exploration itself begins here. So let me begin to explore this statement “Your Father KNOWS what you have need of before you ask.” What then is it that the Father KNOWS you have need off. For this writer the answer is simple.

The Father KNOWS that you have need of the revelation of unity with the Father. This is in essence all you need which is not to say that this is all you want. The reality for most humans on this planet whether Christian or not is the idea that we each live as separate personalities within a boundary of time and space.

This we take for our reality and as a consequence much of our focus is on trying to live the life we think we should live rather than living from the One Life that KNOWS how to live us better than ever we could.

While the Father KNOWS you have need of this revelation it cannot be given to you while your identity is focused on your personal sense of separation. This is why the Master Jesus advised that if you continued to save your life you would lose it.

This does not mean that you literally lose your life. It means that you lose the connection to the Source of the One Life that the Master referred to as the Father.

What you truly have need of is the revelation of sacred unity with the Father — not merely as something to believe in, but as a way of living, and perhaps more deeply still, as a way of being lived through.

This is what it means to: “Abide in me.” The experience of abiding is not primarily theological belief. It is direct revelation. It is a direct KNOWING of the Father within, from which the words of the Master Jesus begin to arise as living truth:

I and my Father are one.

This, perhaps, is what the Father KNOWS you have need of before the asking even begins, because it is the revelation that you are so much more than the idea of yourself as a separate, time-bound person.

This revelation is always available. It is not something earned through spiritual achievement or moral perfection. It belongs to your deepest nature as a unique expression of the Divine, created in the image of the Divine.

That image is not the body, nor the conditioned personality, but the timeless sense of BEING itself — the simple and immediate reality of “I AM.” Yet this revelation cannot fully flower while identity remains rooted exclusively in the separate personal self — the very life that seeks endlessly to preserve itself and in doing so loses conscious connection with its Source.

This is not because the Father withholds revelation until some standard of goodness has been attained. It is because the Father does not experience you as separate. Separation exists within human perception, fear, and conditioning, but not within the reality of the Divine.

So the next part of the statement: “Your Father KNOWS what you have need of before you ask.” is the exploration of how to ask and receive.

The way in which we begin to ask for the deepest need of our life is through the gradual disidentification from the separate personal self — the psychological “I” we imagine ourselves to be, but which in many ways functions as the veil through which separation from God appears to arise.

When I use the word “illusory,” I do not mean that separation does not feel real to human experience. It clearly does. I mean rather that separation has no ultimate reality within the dimension of the Divine itself.

So how do we begin to ask? Perhaps we begin by listening again to one of the most radical and liberating instructions given by the Master Jesus Christ — a teaching which, in the experience of this writer, is often overlooked even within institutional Christianity:

Take therefore no thought for the morrow...
— Matthew 6:34 (KJV)

This is not a call to irresponsibility. It is an invitation out of fear-based identity and psychological self-preservation. It is the beginning of loosening the grip of the separate self that is endlessly attempting to secure and save its own existence. And perhaps this is also the beginning of true asking.

For when identity begins to soften, LIFE itself can begin to flow more consciously through us. What the Father KNOWS we truly have need of can then unfold naturally through the state of at-one-ment — not merely for personal gratification, but for the highest good of all and for the greater glory of God.

Notice here that the emphasis is no longer upon fulfilling the endless desires of the separate self. This is perhaps what it means to deny oneself and take up the cross — not as self-rejection, but as the willingness to release the illusion of separation in order to awaken into the living KNOWING: “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.”

What emerges from this exploration is the possibility that when the Master Jesus said: “Your Father KNOWS what you have need of before you ask,” he was not primarily speaking about the fulfilment of the endless desires of the separate personal self, but about the deepest need of the human soul — the revelation of sacred unity with the Father.

According to this understanding, humanity lives largely identified with the idea of being separate personalities existing within time and space. From this sense of separation arises fear, striving, anxiety, self-preservation, and the continual attempt to secure life through the efforts of the personal self. Yet the Father does not experience humanity as separate. Separation may feel profoundly real within human consciousness, but it has no ultimate reality within the Divine.

The true need that the Father KNOWS is the need to awaken into conscious at-one-ment with the Source of LIFE itself. This revelation is not merely a theological belief but a direct KNOWING — the experience referred to by the Master when he spoke of abiding in the Father and declared: “I and my Father are one.”

To “ask and receive” is therefore understood not as a process of persuading a distant God to grant personal desires, but as the gradual surrender of the separate self through which the deeper LIFE of the Father may flow consciously through us. Prayer, in this sense, becomes less an act of acquiring and more an awakening into alignment with the Divine.

This is why teachings such as: “Take therefore no thought for the morrow,” and: “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” become central spiritual instructions rather than moral commands. They point toward the loosening of fear-based identity and the relinquishment of the illusion of separation.

The revelation the Father KNOWS humanity has need of cannot be earned through religious performance or moral striving because it is already the deepest truth of our BEING. Human beings are unique expressions of the Divine, created in the image of the Divine, not merely as physical bodies or conditioned personalities, but as manifestations of the timeless “I AM.”

The journey, then, is not toward becoming something other than what we are, but toward awakening from the illusion of separateness into the direct KNOWING that: “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.”

Tony Cuckson, Cordressogagh, Ireland