Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart. (Luke 18:1)
In Luke 18 Jesus told a story of a widow who came to an unjust judge, seeking justice in a legal dispute. The judge, though he did not regard God or man, eventually gave the widow justice because of her persistent requests. Jesus ended the parable with this application in Luke 18:7 – Shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?
It’s easy to lose heart in prayer because it is hard work. In Colossians 4:12, Paul praised a man because he was always laboring fervently…in prayers. Paul knew that prayer required fervent labor. It is easy to lose heart in prayer because the devil hates prayer. If prayer were powerless, it would be easier to pray! It is easy to lose heart in prayer because we are not always convinced of the reality of its power; prayer too often becomes a last resort instead of a first resource. Despite all that, we always ought to pray.
In the parable, the only reason the judge gave the woman what she wanted was she wouldn’t stop bugging him. In wording of the ancient Greek, he complained that the woman was “beating” or “stunning” him with her persistence – so eventually he answered her request. This parable has a unique approach. Obviously, God is not the unjust judge; but if the unjust judge will answer the persistent request, how much more will a righteous God?
The woman had to overcome the judge’s reluctance to help. We often feel that we must also overcome God’s reluctance by our persistence. But this misses the point of the parable. Jesus did not say we always ought to pray and not lose heart because God is reluctant, but because He isn’t. What seem to us as delays in answered prayer are not necessary to change God, but to change us. Persistence in prayer brings a transforming element into our lives, building in us the character of God Himself.
Some promises of God take a long time to fulfill. Will we persevere in trusting God? George Mueller was a remarkable man of faith who ran orphanages in England. In a sermon he preached when he was 75 years old, he said that 30,000 times in his fifty-four years as a Christian he had received an answer to prayer on the same day that he prayed it. But not all his prayers were answered so quickly.
Mueller told of one prayer that had been brought to God about 20,000 times over eleven and a half years, and he was still trusting God for the answer: “I hope in God, I pray on, and look for the answer. Therefore, beloved brethren and sisters, go on waiting upon God, go on praying.”
That’s God’s word to you today: go on praying, because God wants us to persist in prayer.
Click here for David’s commentary on Luke 18
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