Faith That Persists

Faith That Persists

One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. Luke 18:1

JESUS TOLD A PARABLE about a widow and an unjust judge. She wanted justice—rightness, goodness, the fullness of God’s will in an adverse situation—and the judge ignored her. But she kept pestering him until he relented. He wasn’t concerned about her situation; he just wanted her to stop. Her persistence led him to act in her favor in the end.

God isn’t an unjust judge, and he doesn’t ignore our requests. Still, this hypothetical situation illustrates a need for persistence in our prayers. Where we might think we are pestering God, Jesus says to go ahead and pester him. Where we might think we are presuming on his goodness, Jesus says to go ahead and presume. And where we might wonder why God doesn’t answer after a first request, Jesus says to cry out day and night. These attitudes—these persistent, enduring, even pesky approaches to our Father—are called faith. And Jesus wonders if he will find it on earth when he returns.

The whole point of Jesus’ parable was to encourage his disciples to “always pray and never give up.” Like the Gentile woman in Matthew 15 who kept asking Jesus to heal her daughter, we are urged to look past silences, apparent rejections, the raised eyebrows of people around us, and the seeming inappropriateness of our requests to see the God who is encouraging us to come closer and deeper into his will and open arms. He never promises he will answer our prayers exactly as we envision them. But he does promise to answer them. His goal fits very well with ours. We both want to see his purposes, his goodness, and the fullness of his will established on earth—even in the details of our lives.

People living in a microwave society are not conditioned for such persistence, but it’s a dynamic of God’s Kingdom in this world. Embrace it and exercise it. Keep pressing in. Allow God to shape your prayers, but don’t just let go of them. They demonstrate the kind of faith he loves to reward.

Persistent praying never faints or grows weary. . . . It declines to rise from its knees until an answer is received.