Persevering Prayer

In Luke 17, Jesus is telling His disciples what it will look like when the Son of Man returns. And the point of His message to them is to be ready. His second coming will be unexpected and full of terror for those who are not ready – and anticipated and expected by those who know Him. It will be business as usual for the world – as it was in Noah's day and in Lot's day and the temptation will is that we will be consumed by the affairs of everyday life and not be ready for His coming. The real danger we face is that our faith in Christ and our love for Him and for each other will be swallowed up by opposition or by the sheer ordinariness of daily life. So how can we endure? How can we be found with faith and love? How can we avoid being like Lot's wife and those who missed the salvation of the ark?

In the very next chapter, Jesus tells a story to give us the answer. 'Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart' His answer to the question of how shall we endure is to pray. Keep on praying – don't get weary or lose heart, or as one translation puts it – faint. The biggest temptation that keeps us from prayer is fainting when we ought to be praying. When the Lord was engaged in the greatest battle of His ministry in the garden – He found his disciples had lost heart and were fainted dead away. In fact they were sleeping – they were overcome with the spiritual battle to keep on the alert and took refuge in unconsciousness. One of the symptoms of severe depression – another way to say loss of heart – is that a person will sleep incredible amounts. And the antidote to that is to pray.

So Jesus tells them a story to illustrate this. "In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. 3 "There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, `Give me legal protection from my opponent.' 4 "For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, `Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.' "

First of all we should not be put off by the fact that Jesus compares God to an unrighteous judge. It is exactly the same as when Jesus' own coming is compared to the coming of a thief in the night in 1 Thess. 5:2. The point is not that Jesus is a thief but that his coming is sudden and unexpected. So here the point is not that God is an unjust judge but that he responds with help to those who cry to him day and night. He says in verse

7: 'now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them?' If you cry to God day and night, if you always pray and don't lose heart, you will not be like Lot's wife: you will not be like those in Noah's day who scorned the mercy of the ark and were left in judgment; you will endure in faith and love, and God will vindicate you when the Son of Man comes. Therefore, always pray and don't lose heart.

In this story, a widow comes to an unrighteous judge and pleads for help. She is being oppressed unjustly and wants him to use his authority to seek her relief. And that widow is us: weak, poor, helpless against the enemy, and no husband to speak up for us. Her only source of help is the judge. And the point is that our only source of help is God. She comes again and again until he gives her the help she needs just to get her off his back. But be careful you do not draw the wrong conclusion here -because the argument of the parable is not that if you can wear out an unjust human judge, then you may stand a chance of wearing out God so that he helps you just to get you off his back. That would contradict the whole revelation of God in the Bible. God is not like the judge – He is not unrighteous and uncaring – He is not fickle and and He does not merely answer our prayers to get us off His back.

The point of the parable is that our assurance depends on God being different from the judge. Jesus tells us two things about the unjust judge in verse 2: "he neither feared God nor regarded man." These are repeated in verse 4: "though I neither fear God nor regard man, yet . . . I will vindicate her." In other words, these two characteristics of the judge are obstacles to his helping the widow. First, he has no fear of God and is, therefore, prone not to help her. This means that the fear of God would prompt a judge to help a needy widow. And if the fear of God would prompt a judge to help a needy widow, then God is not like the unjust judge but is the kind of God whose heart is toward those who cry out to Him. So when Jesus tells us that the obstacle that almost kept the judge from helping the widow was his failure to fear God, He makes it clear that the fear of God would move a person to listen to cries for help, and therefore, God Himself is merciful to all who call upon Him. Therefore, if a judge who has no fear of God can be swayed by persistent petitions, how much more certain we can be that God will help those who cry to him day and night?

The second characteristic of the judge was that he had 'no regard for man.' He didn't know the widow and he could care less. The assumption is that if he cared about this widow, he would help her. So the question is: Does God care for us? Is he indifferent to our needs? In verse 7 Jesus gives us the answer: 'And will not God vindicate his elect?"' Followers of Jesus are not strangers to God. They are his elect. He has chosen them. He has set his favor on them. He has adopted them to be his children. As Paul says in Romans 8:31–33, 'If God is for us, who is against us? . . . Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.' It means He has set His favor upon us fully and freely. He is for us with all his might. Therefore, Jesus argues, if an unrighteous judge can be moved by persistent petitions to help a stranger for whom he has no regard, How much more certain can we be that God will bring about justice for His own? How much more will '...God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them?'

This word is intended to be an encouragement to us to persevere in prayer until Jesus returns. Because Jesus asks: '...when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?' Will Jesus find that we have kept praying, or have lost heart and given up? And the implication seems to be that prayer and faith stand and fall together. If we lose heart and drift away from prayer, then the Son of man will not find faith in us when He comes. Prayer is the means through which our faith is sustained – if you do not pray you will grow cold and hard, and when the lightning flashes from sky to sky and the Son of man appears in glory you will be taken by surprise and not found ready for His coming. And the issue will not be whether you once walked an aisle, or prayed a prayer, or made a vow, or were baptized. The issue will be whether you continued in prayer and did not lose heart. God's elect will most surely be saved; and, as verse 7 says, the sign of the elect is that they cry to God day and night. Those who endure to the end will be saved.

The word from the Lord to us is: don't stop praying; don't wilt under the pressures of everyday life, don't faint; don't lose heart; but 'always pray and don't lose heart.' And this word increases in urgency as we see the end of the age drawing near. As Peter says (1 Peter 4:7), 'The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer.' The pressures of everyday life – the pressure to conform to the thinking and the pursuits of this age – the pressure to succumb to depression and faint rather than pray – will become greater, not less, as the end draws near. So we must always pray and not lose heart.

My prayer for Summit Christian Fellowship is that we would be a people of prayer – that our prayer lives would be the foundation of our daily lives and we would find ourselves daily drawn to the throne room of grace for ourselves, for our family, friends and neighbors, for the cause of Christ throughout the world. I pray that we would be those who persevere in prayer – who do not lose heart and grow cold – but rather in the midst of our eating and drinking, our our buying and selling, our planting and building – we would undergird it all with persevering prayer.