Persistent Prayers

By: Pastor Rob Hamilton

Sep 20, 2009

F. B. Meyers wrote, "The greatest tragedy in life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer." Too many people never build solid prayer muscle because they give up too quickly. They toss up a feeble prayer or two, and then go their way with a shrug of the shoulders and a wistful, "It must be God's will not to give me what I wanted." Wimpy prayer warriors won't win the big battles of life.

Sermon Text:

[Text: Luke 18:1-8]

Introduction

Four years into the Great Depression, James J. Braddock found himself at the bottom of the barrel. In the movie Cinderella Man, which tells his story, there is a heartbreaking scene that shows the helplessness of his situation. At the time of the stock market crash in 1929, Braddock was a major contender for the world light-heavyweight boxing title. But four years later, Braddock found himself with a broken hand, no money, and struggling to find work on the docks to support his wife and three children.

The movie shows them one night inside their small tenement home, sitting at the dinner table to eat the last little portion of food. Candles are burning because the electricity has been turned off. They have no heat. The milkman won’t deliver to them anymore until they pay outstanding dues. All of their credit at the grocery store is gone. The children are coughing in their beds, sick with a cold. Jim cannot find work, and because his hand is broken, he cannot even make money doing what he knows how to do best.

They take each other’s hands and Mae begins to pray and give thanks for their meager meal. Suddenly, Jim pulls his hands back and shakes his head, saying, “I’m all prayed out!”

Maybe you’ve been there. Maybe you have not; but you might be there one day. We all in some way have had that experience of praying desperately for something that we worry will never come. The message today is for everyone who is “all prayed out.”As we look at the Parable of the Persistent Widow from Luke 18:1-8, we are going to answer the question:

What do we do when we are all prayed out?

The Purpose of the Parable (v.1)

First, let’s look at the purpose of the parable. Jesus has been teaching his disciples about his return and the coming of the kingdom of God (Luke 17:20-37). Then he turns to the topic of prayer by telling a parable about an unjust judge and a persistent widow. Luke’s editorial comments on the parable in Luke 18:1 show us clearly the purpose of the parable. Verse one reads, “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” There it is. The purpose of the parable is to teach us to keep on praying and do not lose heart.

Jesus knew that we would struggle with prayer. He knew that when the answer did not come right away we would lose heart and give up, or that we would shrug our shoulders and say, “Must not be God’s will!” He knew that when prayer turned into a marathon and we began to “hit the wall,” we would be tempted to stop praying.

Art Carey, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer once described his experience of “hitting the wall” while running the Boston marathon. We will pick up toward the end of his story.

By now, the rigors of having run nearly twenty miles are beginning to tell. My stride has shortened. My legs are tight. My breathing is shallow and fast. My joints are becoming raw and worn. My neck aches from all the jolts that have ricocheted up my spine. Half-dollar-size blisters sting the soles of my feet. I’m beginning to feel queasy and light-headed. I want to stop running. I have “hit the wall.” Now the real battle begins.

“Hitting the wall” in prayer is a common experience. We pray so long and hard for something that we end up losing heart, and then quitting prayer. We come to the point of being “all prayed out.” We are not sure whether we can go on believing, go on seeking, go on hoping. With each passing day, praying for that long desired request becomes more and more difficult.

Most of the saints we find in the Bible and Church History have “hit the wall” in prayer at one time or another. For instance, David once prayed, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” (Psalm 13:1). Hitting the wall in prayer is when we have been stretched to the outer limit of our human strength and we cry out in desperation, “How long, O Lord?” If we have not gotten to that point, then we probably have not prayed long enough.

Which brings up a great question: Why does God take so long to answer prayer? I will not attempt to fully answer that question. No one can. God is God, and he is not accountable to us. Some of the reasons why he delays in answering prayer will be forever hidden to our finite minds. Nevertheless, I think there are a few helpful things to keep in mind.

First of all, sometimes God delays in answering prayer because it is good for us. Charles Spurgeon put it this way:

“My brethren, there is no need for prayer at all as far as God is concerned, but what need there is for it on our account! If God’s mercies came to us unmasked, they would not be half so useful as they now are, when they have to be sought for; for now we get a double blessing, a blessing in the obtaining, and a blessing in the seeking.”

In other words, prayer does more for us than it does for God. The seeking is just as beneficial to us as the obtaining. The process of praying changes us for the better. When God delays, his people learn to pray. They grow spiritually. They develop stamina, perseverance, and faith.

Another reason God might delay in answering prayer is that it builds our relationship with him. We spend more time with him. We learn to love him for who He is and not for what he gives us. We move from being so concerned about what we get from God to just wanting to be with God. Sometimes prayer is more about how much God gets of us than how much we get from God. God is not a vending machine.

So God has his reasons for delaying, and it is his right to do so; but we should never lose sight of the fact that he also loves to answer our prayers. We should learn from this parable and never stop praying. As F.B. Meyer once said, “The greatest tragedy in life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer.” What do we do when we are all prayed out? Jesus calls us to keep praying and not lose heart. Let’s see how the parable helps us with that.

The People in the Parable (vv.2-5)

This parable is interesting and a little unusual. In it Jesus uses a despicable man to make a useful point about righteous living. He tells us the quirky and somewhat humorous story of a judge and a widow to make the point that even an unjust judge will give in to persistence. We can and should learn something from these two characters, and a third one who is not quite as obvious.

Disclaimer: a parable is story that is used to draw an analogy between something in earthly life and something in the kingdom of God. It usually only has one focus or point. One parable does not tell us everything about prayer or God. So we have to be careful not to over interpret this parable. Let’s get back to the story.

The first person we are introduced to is the unjust Judge who refused to help. Verse two tells us, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man.” This judge was a local official who had the right to decide smaller cases related to the law. He was a poor judge though. He neither feared God nor respected man. In other words, his character rendered him incapable of administering justice. He was a corrupt man. He weighed every case not by what God’s law required or what a person’s rights were, but how it might benefit himself. He was easily bribed, consumed by greed, and swayed by public opinion. Sounds strangely familiar, doesn’t it. But he was not prepared for the scrappy character he was about to meet.

Enter the persistent widow who beat him down. We are told nothing about her situation other than the fact that she was being denied her rights under the law by an adversary. “And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary’” (v. 3). She comes straight to the judge pleading for what the law promised her. She did not want special treatment. She wanted justice (and mercy). After all, that is why the judge is in office.

She was being taken advantage of by someone. Widows in first century Palestine and ancient Israel were in a very vulnerable place economically, socially, and legally. They were the easiest to cheat. Yet they were close to God’s heart. His law had required that they be given careful attention. Justice and mercy should never be denied them. Exodus 22:22-24 warns, “You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn….” This concern for widows was carried over into the teaching of the New Testament Church. James 1:27 reads, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” This judge could care less. You cannot make money off widows, and they have little to offer in terms of influence. So he sends her away at first.

The judge obviously underestimated her resolve. Jesus goes on to tells us that “For a while he refused her, but afterward he said, “Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming” (vv. 4-5). As they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease! This poor, little old lady took on the entrenched corruption of the government and won, not by the use of money, power, lobbyist, force, or bribery. She won by persistence. She beat him down with her continual coming. The term used there in verse 5 is a strong one drawn from boxing. It means “to punch under the eye, to give a black eye.” Figuratively speaking, the widow beat the unjust judge down by persistence. They went fifteen rounds in a title fight and the last one standing was the widow! Or to use Mixed Martial Arts terminology, she put him into a submission hold and he tapped out!

Jesus calls us to learn from this. It is unusual and surprising for Jesus to ask us to learn from the example of an unjust man, but he does. Starting in verse six he tells us, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will God not give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night?” Now we are introduced to the third person in the parable: The Heavenly Father who gives good gifts to his children. Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater to make his point. His logic goes like this: If even an unjust judge can be won over by persistence, then certainly God who is just will answer us when we pray. And so Jesus brings us to the promise in the parable that strengthens our faith and keeps us from losing heart in prayer.

The Promise in the Parable (vv.6-8a)

The glorious promise that is revealed by the parable is that God will answer when his people pray. Hear again the rhetorical questions Jesus asks us, “Will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give them justice speedily” (vv. 7-8). God is not like the unjust judge. You do not need to strong arm God into giving you justice or mercy, nor should you even try. Those who wrestle with God never win. You cannot pester him into a coerced acquiescence. We do not need to beat him down with our continual coming. He is more ready to answer us and bless us than we are often disposed to seek him.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us a similar principle when he said:

“Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are 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!” (Matthew 7:9-11).

If the unjust judge, who is evil, was won over by persistence, how much more will God, who is good, answer our prayers in his time! So keep on praying and do not lose heart.

David opens Psalm 40 with this testimony of answered prayer: “I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined his ear to me and heard my cry.” We may have to wait patiently and pray fervently, but God will answer.

There is no such thing as unanswered prayer with God. God always answers prayer. His answer may be yes, no, or wait; but he never leaves one prayer unanswered. We must leave the answer to him, but we must keep seeking him. He loves persistence in our prayers. He is the one after all who told us, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

We can be confident when we pray for what God has promised to us or the things for which God has instructed us to pray. There is a difference between “babbling” prayer that tries to manipulate one’s god (see Matthew 5:7-8) and persistent prayer that asks God to supply what he promised. This parable in no way teaches us to be presumptuous in prayer. We should never be demanding and rude toward God, yet we can have a humble boldness that pleads with him for what he has promised. As the Apostle John explained, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (1 John 5:15). If we pray according to his will, we can be confident that he hears and that he will answer. God always keeps his word. He always fulfills his promise.

As for those things that are not clearly promised, that is another story. I do not know what it is that you are praying for right now. I do not know what you have been seeking God for over the past months, years, even decades. Nor can I tell you what the answer will be. However, I can tell you this: he wants you to keep praying. Maybe you are praying for a job, or a spouse, or for a wayward child, or for the salvation of your friends or family members, or for direction in a major decision. Whatever it is, keep praying. Don’t give up. Keep putting one prayer in front of the other.

And you don’t have to move to a monastery to be persistent in prayer. As Martin Luther once advised, “Prayer ought to be frequent and fervent.” When you are all prayed out, keep praying. When you hit the wall, keep pressing through. The next point tells us why.

The Principle from the Parable (v. 8b)

Jesus started by dealing with the topic of prayer but ends by dealing with faith. “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (v.8b). Jesus ties this parable to his Second Coming, which tells us that in prayer we will sometimes be in it for the long haul. Just as we have to wait and pray patiently for the return of Christ and the coming of God’s kingdom, so we must sometimes wait on answers to prayer. Therefore, persistent prayer requires persevering faith. The thing that keeps us praying is faith. Only faith, and the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, can keep us praying when we are all prayed out.

First, faith trusts in God to answer. That is why it pleases God, because it glorifies God. Faith says that nothing is too hard for God (Genesis 18:14). Faith believes that God and only God can solve my problems, meet my needs, help the needy, and fulfill his will. Even if God has to move mountains, everything is possible with God (Matthew 21:21). Faith trusts God to answer prayer.

Second, faith waits on God to answer. Faith allows God to choose the timing and circumstances for the answer. It also waits patiently for it to come. Faith does not give up when the answer is delayed. It waits and prays. Faith remembers that Jesus promised God will not delay long in giving us justice (Luke 18:7). He may delay, but he will not delay forever. Monica prayed fervently and persistently for her wayward son. Monica was a devout Christian, but her son was not. In fact, despite his powerful intellect and gifted personality, he lived a very promiscuous and immoral life. He even got involved in pagan religion. But Monica kept praying. Eventually, many years later, her son, Augustine, was radically changed by the grace of God and received Christ as his Savior. He became a great leader in the church and society. His teaching helped steer the Church through the tumultuous fall of the Roman Empire. His writings were the favorite of men like Luther and Calvin during the Reformation, and his influence extends to us today. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest theologians of the Church, and quite possibly one of the greatest minds the Western world has ever seen. Moms, Dads, keep praying. Do not lose heart.

Finally, faith seeks God for the answer. Faith refuses to sit on its hands and do nothing while praying for God to act. Faith prays and waits, but it also works. Faith does not pray for a job and then sleep all day. Faith prays for a job and then gets up early to knock on doors, to hand out resumes, to study for classes, and to prepare for interviews. Why? Because faith believes that God will hear, that God will lead, that God will provide. Moreover, faith perseveres when the answer does not come immediately. When the first door is shut in its face, faith goes to the next. Faith asks. Faith seeks. Faith knocks. Faith causes us to persevere in prayer, even past the point of being all prayed out.

If our faith is strong, we will never lose heart, even when the answer to our prayers is delayed. If we never lose heart, we will never stop praying. We need persistence in prayer and only persevering faith can help us.

If you think you have perseverance, you have never heard of Arthur Webb. His story was told in a recent edition of Sports Illustrated. Arthur is an ultra-marathon runner. He has won the BadWater Ultra-marathon twelve times straight. This grueling 135 mile race through Death Valley climbs over 8,000 feet of elevation in temperatures over 100 degrees, and lasts about 40 hours! It is so hot that the soles will sometimes melt right off the runners’ shoes. The runners hallucinate from lack of sleep, exhaustion, and thirst. Did I mention that Arthur is 67! Webb says that unlike the Little Engine Who Could, his chant to himself is not “I think I can, I think I can,” it’s “I can, I can.” Now I am sure that there is a lot of unhealthy, dysfunctional, unspiritual self-reliance behind his drive. However, his example inspires us with a vivid example of perseverance. We who live by faith have even more reason to persevere and never lose heart in prayer.

What do we do when we are all prayed out? We keep praying. Let me close by asking you a question. Is there a prayer that you once prayed, but you have stopped because the answer did not come quickly enough? I do not mean a flippant or self serving prayer. I mean a request that is based in God’s promises and rooted in his Word. Whatever that prayer is, I want to encourage you today to keep praying. Don’t lose heart. Keep praying. God hears you. He will answer. He just might want to grow your faith and draw you closer to Him.

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