Persistent Prayer

 “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterwards he said to himself, ‘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.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And 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 justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” ~Luke 18:2-8

Leading into this parable, verse 1 says, “he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” The NIV says, “to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” 

Do I pray like this? 

For a lot of my life the answer has been no. And not only because I didn’t have the prayer habit to support it but because I was afraid that if I prayed like this, I would be going against God. That I would be lifting up my petition above His face and His will. That I would be disobedient in my refusal to accept my circumstances by continuing to pray as my heart was burdened. That I would be failing to accept God’s will.

But the widow persists before an unjust judge, and he is moved even by annoyance to grant her petition. We do not come before an unjust judge but before our Father, and He is moved by His heart for us.

When we believe God is less than that, when we believe He cannot or will not answer our petition, we journey into hopelessness. We lose heart. We give up. 

As I heard someone pray for those who have lost hope, this image from a TV show came into my mind.  

 A man has been wrongfully accused of murder, and this woman has testified to his innocence, has tried to clear his name by finding the guilty party, and has continually advocated for him before the ruling authorities in the wake of his conviction. She’s done everything she can, and it hasn’t worked, so as he is being brought out for execution, she prays. 

This is the depiction of prayer we expect in fiction, and in a lot of ways it’s true to reality. People pray when they are desperate. When they come to the end of themselves. When they have no where left to turn. 

But sometimes I wonder if, as Christians who are used to coming to God, we sometimes miss the persistence of the desperate. If in our desire to submit to God’s will, we at times hold back in our prayers, fearing that we will be out of alignment with Him or that our circumstances are His no. 

Where in our desire to be faithful and surrender to God have we actually believed Him for less? Where have we lost the raw desperation laying at the feet of Jesus that keeps us praying when everything looks impossible? 

In Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools (a personal favorite, which I will one day be able to reference without looking up the title) Tyler Staton writes, “How does God respond to the real, deep questions of those praying faithfully, waiting patiently, and beginning to grow weary? Persistence. ‘Keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking.’” He continues that the story of the persistent widow “serves as biblical ground zero for those who, in response to the waiting that prayer entails, have lowered their expectations about God, watered down Jesus’s blunt ‘ask, seek, knock’ declaration into some good but lesser version that allows them to hold onto the God they love without being disappointed or angered by the ways that God seems to be failing them” (p.175). 

This is too many of us in the church. We are afraid of being upset with God. We are afraid of being out of alignment with His will. We are afraid of what happens if God doesn’t grant our petition, and so we give up on our prayer when we meet resistance, slowness, or unchanged/worsening circumstances and call it accepting His answer. 

But desperation is not the opposite of deference.

We come before God with humility, declaring who He is, testifying to the truth that He doesn’t change no matter our outcome, surrendering our hearts to Him, trusting Him even when our perspective can’t see the goodness of His answer or the wisdom with which He is writing the story. But we also come with boldness before our Father, asking for Him to move, to provide, to restore. And when things remain broken, when the healing doesn’t happen, when the provision doesn’t come, when the relationship remains unreconciled, we keep coming. We keep asking. We keep persisting before Him, knowing He is still good no matter His answer and that He hears us, He is moved by us, and He is able. We don’t let circumstance speak for Him; we wait on His answer as we continue in prayer.

Sometimes that creates tension for us. When we persist in praying for what we earnestly believe is good, we can be let down when the answer is no. We can start to doubt that God is who He says He is. Because when we truly believe God will, it can hurt when He doesn’t. And even when we know the truth, at times our disappointment can drive us away. But God is present in it all. And this very tension that we feel can be the place where we draw into Him—with frustration, with lament, with doubt and confusion, with questions, with feelings of betrayal, with heartbreak, with whatever emotional responses come when such persistent and powerful hope seems to have failed us—and we can actually discover more of who He is in that place. Our trust can be strengthened in the disappointments as well as the victories as we depend on God through them all.

In a sermon by Tim Keller called “Petition: ‘Our Daily Bread,’ he talks about how God knows the need beneath every request. How He doesn’t remove the thorn in Paul’s side, which Paul fears will make him ineffective, but He teaches him that His strength is made perfect in weakness. How sometimes God responds to our pleas for the storm to end by calming the waters and sometimes by teaching us how to walk on them. But He is our strength in every answer. Whether of miraculous provision or of sustainment when the waters continue to rise around us.

We have nothing to fear, friends. We are safe with God whether in the provision of the impossible or the comfort when it doesn’t come. He is the same God, and He is good.

We can ask boldly. We can pray persistently. We can come to the end of ourselves and cry out in desperation, letting it be the fuel for our prayers. And we can know more of God’s heart as we do. As we contend in prayer, submitting to our only hope for salvation and provision and protection, God teaches us more of His goodness, more of His wisdom, more of His peace and comfort, and more of His love for us. 

He is a good Father, and He will never be anything less than that. We can cry out before Him in desperation, in joy and wonder, in sorrow, in praise; He never asked us to hold back.

Keep searching after His heart for you, and you will find it. Do not lose heart. Our Father hears us when we pray.

Keep praying. Keep asking. Keep persisting. Keep going to the One who loves you, who knows you, and who fights for you.