So when someone is tempted to criticize his neighbor because her house isn’t clean enough, she seems ill-tempered, or she is a bit flighty—he should remember those same standards and judgments will come back to him. No one should criticize his neighbor for being short-tempered one morning, when he is snippish and snappish and waspish all the time.

Jesus: ³ Why is it that you see the dust in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but you can’t see what is in your own eye? ⁴ Don’t ignore the wooden plank in your eye, while you criticize the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eyelashes. ⁵ That type of criticism and judgment is a sham! Remove the plank from your own eye, and then perhaps you will be able to see clearly how to help your brother flush out his sawdust.

⁶ Don’t give precious things to dogs. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. If you do, the pigs will trample the pearls with their little pigs’ feet, and then they will turn back and attack you.

Now Jesus returns to prayer, an important and sometimes difficult topic. Here He gives the very essence of prayer.

⁷ Just ask and it will be given to you; seek after it and you will find. Continue to knock and the door will be opened for you. ⁸ All who ask receive. Those who seek, find what they seek. And he who knocks, will have the door opened.

⁹ Think of it this way: if your son asked you for bread, would you give him a stone? Of course not—you would give him a loaf of bread. ¹⁰ If your son asked for a fish, would you give him a snake? No, to be sure, you would give him a fish—the best fish you could find. ¹¹ So if you, who are sinful, know how to give your children good gifts, how much more so does your Father in heaven, who is perfect, know how to give great gifts to His children!

¹² This is what our Scriptures come to teach: in everything, in every circumstance, do to others as you would have them do to you.