“And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “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 afterward 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 18:1-8
My friend very briefly mentioned this story this evening as I was on the phone talking with him and it made me realize a few things.
First and foremost, I am NOT persistent. I am the kind of person most companies depend on to stay in business. The kind of person that after they try once to get ahold of someone or get an issue taken care of and fail, I mope and walk out of the building.
I’ve never liked this kind of confrontation. In some ways because it always seems like such a minor thing to me. I hate making big deals out of such temporary things, but this comes back to bite you when you’re not willing to stand up for things that you think are true or need to happen.
I need to work on becoming more persistent — especially in the things that actually really do matter.
The second thing I realized is that if we ask God something, he does answer us. And the more persistent we are, the more likely we are to see and hear that response. To notice it happening and see the “fruits” of our labor.
A combination of these two things has made me realize that I’ve often been very lazy as it comes to praying for things in my life and in the lives of others, and I think because of that, I’ve missed out on some of the blessings of seeing God work in really cool ways in my life and in others.
God answers prayers in many different ways and in ways that we may not expect, but if we really do pray about something and stay consistently praying for that until we have or see the answer, I think we’ll find that we start to understand and learn more about God than we ever could only ever praying about things for a week at a time.
God loves to give good gifts to his children. How willing are you to ask him for those gifts and how willing are you to being okay with the answer? Start asking and start being persistent.