James 4: 2" You do not have because you do not ask.”
Matt 7: 7-11 “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...If you then, being 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!”
“‘Shall He not with him also freely give us all things’—Rom 8: 32 This Scripture reveals the possibilities of prayer to be as great as the boundless measure of redemptive grace. The unsparing God places no limit on our praying because there is no limit placed on His giving. If we believe that Christ was sacrificed to save us to the uttermost, we must likewise believe that He is able to supply our needs to the uttermost. T M Anderson, Prayer Availeth Much.
“God wills a great deal of blessing to His people, which never comes to them. He wills it most earnestly, but they do not will it, and it cannot come to them. This is the great mystery of man’s creation with a free will, and also of the renewal of his will in redemption, that God has made the execution of His will, in many things, dependent on the will of man. Of God’s will revealed in His promises, so much will be fulfilled as our faith accepts. Prayer is the power by which that comes to pass which otherwise would not take place.... (God) has left it to prayer to say where the blessing is to bring the living water to the desert places; the will of God to bless is dependent upon the will of man to say where the blessing must descend. ‘Such honor have His saints.’” Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer, (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1979), p. 167, 168.
“It is part of God’s great plan to grant us, in answer to the prayer of faith, that which He would not bestow did we not thus ask.” Ellen White, Great Controversy, p. 525.
“I have been shown angels of God are ready to impart grace and power to those who feel their need of divine strength. But these heavenly messengers will not bestow blessings unless solicited. They have waited for the cry from souls hungering and thirsting for the blessing of God; often have they waited in vain. There were, indeed, casual prayers, but not the earnest supplication from humble, contrite hearts....” Ellen White, Our High Calling, p. 129.