Be Prayerful

I saw a T-shirt this week that I’m thinking of getting to wear around the house.

It read as follows: “If I said I will fix it, I will fix it. There’s no need to remind me every six months.”

Now, it would be appropriate here for me to stop and note that Annette isn’t laughing. Maybe this just hits a little too close to home for her to find it funny.

We have a wonderful marriage, and we love each other very much, but it may surprise you to hear that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. Then again, most of you know me well enough by now that you’re probably not surprised by that at all.

We do have our sore spots. And for Annette, one of the sore spots is my office at home. I like to think of it as a glorious mess. Annette just thinks of it as a mess.

Last year, about this time, when I was just finishing a semester at school, she suggested I might want to straighten it up a bit. And then, life intervened, and I ran out of time to do it before the next semester started and I got too busy.

Then, when spring rolled around and I had graduated from school, she mentioned it again, and we actually spent a bit of time separating things into piles on Saturday, and I got distracted, so we didn’t finish.

The piles of documents and books remain, and they’ve since been joined by other piles.

I haven’t forgotten that it needs to be done, but organizing and filing stuff is overwhelming to me, so I keep finding reasons to put it off.

She hasn’t said anything in a while, but I know she still wants me to get everything straightened up, and I fully expect her to gently suggest that I take care of it sometime in the near future.

Sometimes when she makes these suggestions I think she reminds me of the persistent widow in the parable of Jesus that Luke records in Luke, chapter 18.

Turn there, if you will, and let’s take a look at it together.

Now, the context of Jesus’ parables is always important to understanding the thing He was teaching with these stories.

So, the context here is that Jesus has been telling His disciples about the still-coming day of His return for those who have followed Him in faith.

We looked at a brief portion of that teaching in a parallel passage last week. Remember that He said it would be like the days of Noah, when people were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage. In other words, they were living as if this life on earth is all there is.

And His point was that people need to be ready for His return. Those who are lost need to place their faith in Him as their Savior and Lord while there is still time.

And those who have already placed their faith in Him need to be doing the work He gave us to do while He is gone.

And He continues this teaching in chapter 18, where He discusses how they can maintain hope in His absence and in the presence of the trials they would face. Let’s pick up in verse 1 of chapter 18.

Luke 18:1–8 NASB95

1 Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, 2 saying, “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.’ ” 6 And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge said; 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? 8 “I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

Now, the first thing to understand about this parable is that Jesus isn’t comparing the unrighteous judge to His righteous Father. In fact, what He is doing is contrasting them against one another.

In the Ancient Near East, widows were among the most helpless and vulnerable people in society.

This widow would have been desperate for help from a righteous judge, one who judged according to the Mosaic Law, one who remembered God’s commands to protect and speak up for widows and orphans.

But the judge in Jesus’ parable wasn’t like that. He didn’t fear God — in other words, He didn’t love God and keep His commandments. And he didn’t care about his fellow man. He was corrupt.

But the widow had a need. She kept coming back to the unrighteous judge, asking not for him to bring judgment against whoever was hurting her, but simply that he give her legal protection against that person.

And finally, the widow prevailed, not because the judge cared about her situation, and not because he finally became righteous, but because he just wanted to be done with her. She was wearing him out.

The point Jesus was making was that if such an unrighteous judge would finally give in to such persistent pleas, would a righteous God ignore the cries of His children of faith?

NO! In fact, Jesus said, God will bring about justice for them quickly.

Now, we have to be careful about how we apply this passage. Clearly, Jesus was anticipating the persecution that His disciples would face as they spread the message of the gospel after He had been taken back to heaven in His resurrected and glorified body.

But we know that He also told them to EXPECT persecution. And we know that they experienced it. In fact, the traditions from church history tell us that all of the apostles except for John were martyred for their faith.

So, we need to be careful in taking this parable to mean that God will hear our prayers in the midst of suffering and remove the suffering from us.

That is not the experience of church history, and it’s not what Scripture teaches us, either.

I think there are two keys to understanding what Jesus is promising here.

The first is the word quickly. “He will bring about justice for them quickly.”

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say that God will bring about justice SOON. This isn’t a promise to remove suffering from our lives as Christians. This isn’t even a promise that those who treat us badly will experience justice in this life.

What Jesus says is that God will bring about justice QUICKLY.

Those who perpetrate violence and injustice against the adopted children of God in Christ around the world may get away with what they’re doing HERE. But they will experience God’s justice and His wrath, and it will be sudden and overwhelming.

Paraphrasing the prophet Amos, it will roll down like the waters of a mountain stream in a thousand-year flood.

This is helpful for us to remember, but the truth is that it’s not much of an answer to the question of how we bear up in the here-and-now, how we live in the in-between time between the first advent of Jesus and the second.

How are we to live joyfully in the midst of affliction, and suffering, and even persecution?

The answer to that is in the second key to understanding this parable in its context.

Look back at verse 1. According to Luke, what was the reason Jesus told the disciples this parable?

He was showing them “that at all times, they ought to pray and not to lose heart.”

How can we live joyfully in the midst of affliction, and suffering, and even persecution? By praying. At all times.

This doesn’t mean praying continuously. That wouldn’t be possible. It means praying in all situations. It means living life in continual communication with God.

It means praying not necessarily for God to remove the suffering — or at least not exclusively for that — but rather praying that He would give you the grace to persevere through it. The grace to be joyful in it.

Paul prayed for God to remove the “thorn in his side,” and we don’t know what that thorn was. But what we DO know is that God’s response to Paul was this: “My GRACE is sufficient for you.”

The point was that God’s grace would enable Paul to joyfully persevere through whatever affliction he was praying about.

And there’s the connection to the next of Paul’s 13 imperatives for Christians and the church in Romans, chapter 12.

We’ve worked our way through nine of those commands during the past several weeks. Let’s read them together today, beginning in verse 9 of chapter 12.

Romans 12:9–13 NASB95

9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; 11 not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, 13 contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.

Now, remember that the first command, “Let love be without hypocrisy,” is the umbrella under which the others fall. The other 12 are manifestations of the command to love genuinely.

So, the first thing to note about today’s imperative — to be “devoted to prayer” — is that devotion to prayer is one way we demonstrate genuine love for God.

To be devoted to something means to be persistent in doing it, to be doing it in all circumstances. It’s the same thing Jesus talked about in His parable of the persistent widow.

If I’m devoted to my wife, then whatever else I’m doing, she’s never far from my mind. Maybe it even means I should clean up my office at home.

Being devoted to prayer suggests that God is never far from our minds, that we are ever looking for opportunities to communicate with Him, to commune with Him.

And the fact that this is what God wants is, frankly, amazing to me.

The creator of the universe wants me to talk to Him about my day. He wants me to share my hopes and dreams with Him. He wants me to share my fears and failures with Him. He wants to be the first one I go to when I’m happy or sad.

He wants me to tell Him I love Him. And He even wants me to tell Him when I don’t understand Him and what He’s doing.

That the almighty God should call us into such a personal relationship with Him just astonishes and humbles me.

But we see that devotion to prayer is a recurring theme in the New Testament.

Speaking of the apostles and other believers after Jesus’ ascension into heaven and prior to the Day of Pentecost, Luke writes:

Acts 1:14 NASB95

14 These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.

And then, writing about the new church that formed on the Day of Pentecost in Acts, chapter 2, Luke writes:

Acts 2:42 NASB95

42 They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

And when administrative problems arose in that church and the apostles had the church choose men to serve as the first deacons, Luke records that the apostles set priorities for what would become the elders of the church:

Acts 6:4 NASB95

4 “But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”

And then, in his letter to the church at Colossae, Paul gives the same command he gave to the church in Rome:

Colossians 4:2 NASB95

2 Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving;

Devotion to prayer — and especially devotion to prayer with an attitude of thanksgiving — is one way we demonstrate our genuine love for God and for Jesus Christ.

Prayer is communication with God. And just as a marriage without communication is in trouble, a Christian who isn’t regularly communicating with God in prayer is in trouble.

And that leads me to the second thing to note about this imperative.

It is no coincidence that the command to be devoted to prayer falls where it does in this list of 13 commands.

Look at what verse 12 says Christians and the church should be doing: “rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer.”

You may remember that I said last week that they key to persevering in tribulation is to be able to rejoice in hope.

We who follow Jesus in faith can bear up under the trials of this life because we have hope in JESUS.

We have the hope that He is who He said He is and that He will do what He said He will do. We have the hope that God is good and that He keeps His promises.

We have the hope of eternal life — life the way it was meant to be in the presence of God and of Jesus. We have the hope of eternal life in resurrected and glorified bodies — bodies that are no longer subject to suffering and death, with spirits that are no longer subject to temptation and sin.

We can persevere, because we have HOPE.

But look back at why Luke said Jesus told the parable of the persistent widow, back in verse 1 of Luke, chapter 18.

He told them the parable to show them “that at all times they ought to pray and not lose heart.” In other words, so they could persevere through the difficulties they would face after He was gone back to heaven.

What we need to understand is that prayer is connected to hope, and therefore prayer is connected to perseverance.

One of the things prayer does for us is to remind us that God is good and that God is righteous. In fact, a big part of your prayer life should consist of reminding yourself of those things as you speak to God.

Something I picked up from an advent devotional I read this week was the suggestion to read Mary’s song — it’s sometimes called The Magnificat — in the Book of Luke and to make it a regular part of your prayer life.

I love that suggestion, because Mary lifts up a wonderful hymn of praise to God that is a fantastic reminder to us of His goodness and His righteousness.

You’ll find it in Luke, chapter 1, beginning in verse 46.

Luke 1:46–55 NASB95

46 And Mary said: “My soul exalts the Lord, 47 And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. 48 “For He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave; For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed. 49 “For the Mighty One has done great things for me; And holy is His name. 50 “And His mercy is upon generation after generation Toward those who fear Him. 51 “He has done mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who were proud in the thoughts of their heart. 52 “He has brought down rulers from their thrones, And has exalted those who were humble. 53 “He has filled the hungry with good things; And sent away the rich empty-handed. 54 “He has given help to Israel His servant, In remembrance of His mercy, 55 As He spoke to our fathers, To Abraham and his descendants forever.”

I want to encourage you to add this to your prayers for a while. Ground yourself in these Holy Spirit-inspired words as you lift up the almighty God in His goodness and His righteousness.

And as you devote yourself to praising Him in prayer, what you will find is that your hope is strengthened in the knowledge of His goodness. You will find peace in the promise of His righteousness and grace.

That’s what Paul said about God’s response to his prayer for relief from the thorn in his side. You’ll find it in 2 Corinthians, chapter 12, picking up in verse 9.

2 Corinthians 12:9–10 NASB95

9 And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 10 Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

Do you see it there? Because of God’s sufficient grace, Paul says he is “well content” — in other words, he is at peace — “with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties.”

Brothers and sisters, I don’t know all the difficulties you are facing right now. I don’t know the pains, the distresses, or the insults that have come your way.

What I do know is that every one of us is facing something hard in our lives. And if you’re not facing it today, you will soon.

That’s the simple fact of life in a sin-broken world, and it’s even more certain for those who follow Jesus in faith.

Whatever your difficulty is right now — whatever insult or suffering or distress has come upon you — take it to God in prayer. Tell Him about it. Ask Him to remove it even.

But more than that, praise Him for His goodness and righteousness and mercy.

Remind yourself in prayer of the hope you have in Jesus. And ask God to give you the grace to rejoice in that hope so that you can persevere.

Draw near to God in prayer, and He will draw near to you. That’s not my promise; that’s HIS promise.

The best antidote to suffering that you will ever find is prayer. This week, I want to encourage you to devote yourself to it as you never have before. And be as persistent in your praise as you are in your petitions.

In this advent season, as we await the second advent of Jesus, be devoted to communing with God in prayer.

And then, just watch as the power of God’s grace in your life. Watch Him bring you peace. Watch Him strengthen your hope — your confident assurance in His goodness, in His righteousness, in His mercy and grace.

Do you want to experience the power of Jesus Christ in your life? Do you want to know the true peace that comes from REAL hope? Then, devote yourself to prayer.