Luke 11:13

Plain English Version

You see, you might be bad, but you always give good things to your kids. Well, your father in heaven is a lot better than you, so you can be sure that he will always give you good things. He will send the Holy Spirit to everyone that asks him.” (We have not yet translated 11:14-36. You can read about that teaching in Mark 3:20-27; 8:12; Matthew 5:15; 6:22-23; 12:41-45.)

Cross References

Genesis 8:21

God smelled the meat cooking on that stone table, and he was happy. Then God said to himself, “People always just want to do bad things. They do that all their lives, from when they are little kids, right up until the time they die. But I will never again punish them the same way that I did this time. I will never again finish up everything that breathes air, and I will never again curse the earth. While the earth is still here, the seasons will stay the same. There will always be day and night, and every year there will be a hot time and a cold time, a wet season and a dry season. There will always be a right time to plant seeds for food, and a right time to get the food from those plants.”

Matthew 5:16

You have to be like that candle. You have to let everyone see that you are following me. They will see all the good things you do, and they will say good things about God, your father in heaven. They will say, ‘God is really great.’ ”

Matthew 5:45

If you do that, you will be just like your father in heaven. He gets the sun to shine on everybody, bad people as well as good people. And he gets the rain to fall on everybody, good people and bad people too.

Matthew 6:14

Then Jesus said, “If you don’t do payback to other people for the bad things they do to you, God, your father in heaven, will not do payback to you for the bad things you do.

Matthew 6:30

You see, we might think the grass and the wild flowers are rubbish, and anybody might burn them up at any time. But God makes them very pretty anyway. So God will give you the clothes you need. You have to trust God properly, and he will take care of you.

Matthew 6:32

Listen, God is your father in heaven, and he knows that you need these things. People that don’t know God are always worrying about those things, but you shouldn’t worry about them.

Matthew 7:11

You see, you might be bad, but you give good things to your kids. Well, your father in heaven is a lot better than you. He is always good, so he will always give good things to people that ask him.”

Luke 11:12

Or if your kid asks you for an egg, will you give him a cheeky scorpion instead? No, of course not.

Luke 18:7

Well, God is a lot better than that judge, and God picked you to be in his family. So if you keep on calling out to him for help all the time, what do you think he will do? Will he wait a while before he does anything?

John 4:10

Jesus said to her, “I asked you for a drink of water, but really, you should ask me for a drink. You don’t know who I am, and you don’t know about the good thing that God can give you. If you ask me, I will give you the fresh water that makes people live.”

Acts 2:38

Peter told them, “You have to turn around and follow Jesus. Then let us baptise you, to show that you turned away from the wrong things you are doing, and now you follow Jesus Christ. Then God will not do payback to you for those bad things. And he will give you the Holy Spirit to live in you, just like he promised. You see, God promised to give the Holy Spirit to everyone that he picks to be his own people. That promise is for you, and for your kids, and even for people in other countries a long way away.”

Romans 5:17

That one man, Adam, he did something bad, so now lots of people die. But that other man, Jesus Christ, he did something good, so now lots of people will live with God for ever. God is really good to them now, and he makes them good too. Yes, Jesus did a much better thing for us than Adam did.

Romans 7:18

We know that we can’t do anything good by ourselves. We want to do the right thing, but we can’t.

Romans 8:32

He really did a lot for us. He sent his own son to die instead of us. And that’s not all. He will give us everything else that we need too.

Titus 3:3

You know, we were like that before we believed in Jesus. We did silly things too. We didn’t do what God told us to do. People tricked us, and we believed things that were not true. And we wanted to do all sorts of bad things. We couldn’t stop ourselves. If anybody had a lot of things, we wanted those things for ourselves, and we were angry with those people. We hated people, and people hated us.