Persistent Prayer

Jesus invites us to pray with bold persistence, knowing that God gives the good gift of his Holy Spirit to his kids.

[00:00:03] This morning, we’re going to listen again as Jesus continues to teach us how to pray. You’ll remember two Sundays ago, we took a close look at the Lord’s Prayer, which Jesus taught to his disciples in response to one of their requests. They were listening to Jesus pray when he got done they asked him, teach us to pray like John taught his disciples to pray, They referring there to John the Baptist. And Jesus says, okay, well, when you pray, speak like this. And then he gives them language for categories of prayer. He outlines the content of what they should say. Now, before we get into Jesus further teaching on prayer, let’s wrestle for just a minute with with a question. Does it matter how we speak to God? Does that matter? Content, approach, tone, attitude, even posture. Do any of these things matter when it comes to speaking to the Lord? I had a professor back in college who said that when he prayed, he would use thee and thou to refer to God in prayer so that he would speak to God differently than the way he speaks to everyone else. It heightened his respect for God and his awareness of who he’s talking to. Now, I’m not suggesting you do that, okay? I’m not saying that you should do that this week. If you at small group this week go all King James on everybody, you’re probably going to get a lot of side eyes for that.

[00:01:37] But I want you to think of that as one end of the spectrum. So down in this end, a very formal end of the spectrum. And at the other end you have a very casual chatting with God. I also knew a woman once who would just sort of ramble, chat with God all day long. Lord, where are my car keys? Oh, there they are, thank you Lord. That kind of way of speaking to God. She was just talking to God like a friend. And the question is, is there a right way and a wrong way to talk to God? And I raised this question because I think that the Lord’s Prayer and the passage that we look at today speak to this question a little bit. It’s good to remember that in prayer we are speaking to God the Father. That would be the best way to remember what I’m about to say here. You’re speaking to God the Father. He’s the Creator God that invites us to approach him like a loving father. That’s how Jesus describes prayer. A loving and good father is someone that you can come to and talk to about anything, and he’ll be there to listen. I know that not everyone here has a father like that, and even good earthly dads are prone to sin and are sometimes not good and not approachable.

[00:02:56] Believe me, there have been plenty of times when my kids have thought, I’m not going to talk to dad. That guy’s a nightmare right now. They don’t want any part of me. But we can still picture it, though, right? We can still picture a good father, a good loving leader and protector who welcomes us into his presence. And he hears us, and he does what he can to provide everything that we need. And in that sense, from that perspective, there’s nothing too big or too small to discuss with our Heavenly Father. There’s no formal process for submitting requests to God. There’s no formal language. There’s no certain posture that makes your prayers more effective. Prayer should be without ceasing, as the Apostle Paul wrote, which means it should be happening all the time. Just like a good dad is there to talk to his kids, a good father, God is always there to be hearing from us. He’s willing to help us. He’s willing to listen. And at the same time, the disciples asked Jesus how to pray. They assumed that there was a right and a wrong way to go before the Lord. And if Jesus had wanted to correct the disciples on that assumption, he could very easily have just said, oh, it doesn’t matter. You can go to God the Father. You can talk to him however you like.

[00:04:19] But he didn’t do that. Instead, he instructed them, as he will again today for us. He instructs us in how to pray. He gave them ways of respectfully speaking to God, to worshipfully speak to the Lord. There’s an honorable way to speak to God that aligns really well with the instruction that God gives us for honoring our earthly moms and dads. You don’t just speak to your parents any old way, do you? Well, at least you shouldn’t. We’re called to honour and love and respect our parents. That’s what the Bible tells us to do. How much more then our creator, the Holy God, the Heavenly Father, who provides literally everything that we need in this life and guides us through all of this world into eternal life. All the examples that we have of thoughtful prayer throughout the Bible demonstrate respect and honor to the Lord. Even the laments, even the Old Testament laments where people are crying out because they can’t find God. They need him to intervene. Even those moments where we question God because of something painful that we’re going through. Even those are delivered with love and trust and respect. As we heard earlier in Psalm 80. And so whether we’re talking about formal prayers, or even written prayers, or if we’re just talking about the moment by moment discussion that we have with the Lord, the right way to talk to God is with the tone of love and trust and respect for a Heavenly Father who always welcomes us. I believe that’s the biblical balance there. Now, with that understanding, let’s turn to the part of the Bible where Jesus tells us to badger God with our prayers. Did you know that was in there? There’s a place where we are told to badger God like a kid asking if it’s Christmas yet. Is it Christmas yet? No, it’s not Christmas yet. Is it Christmas now? No, it’s not Christmas now either. Like a kid sitting in the back seat asking, are we there yet? Over and over again. Did you know that there was a part of the Bible that tells us to pray like your child, waking you up in the middle of the night and saying, are you awake? Are you awake? Well, I am now. That’s not how God responds, by the way, when we do that, that’s how I respond. It’s not how God responds, as we’ll see. But we are supposed to pray like that. Jesus invites us to pray with bold persistence, knowing that God gives the good gift of His Holy Spirit to his kids. So if you have your Bibles, you can open to Luke chapter 11. We’re going to begin in verse five. Today it will be on the screen as well. There are three parts to what Jesus teaches here. And you’re going to see a progression in these parts from how we ask God to what we receive from God.

[00:07:15] And the first part of Jesus teaching is a short parable. And he said to them, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer him from within. Do not bother me. The door is now shut. My children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. So you’ll remember that the Lord’s Prayer ends with three things we ask the Lord to do to give us our daily bread, to forgive us as we forgive others, and to lead us not into temptation. Or said another way, we are asking our Heavenly Father to provide, to forgive, and to guide us through this world as we head toward eternity. And this parable here is expanding on that. How do we ask these things from God? Boldly and relentlessly. The story is a hypothetical scenario where we need three loaves of bread because another friend has come over. And in this scenario, we don’t have the food we need, which is very unacceptable in that culture.

[00:08:47] I know that’s a little weird for us because we would not go over to somebody’s house at night expecting that they’re going to be able to feed us if we just show up uninvited. But maybe a close example would be, some way for us to get a handle on this and how this would be seen in the culture would be, some of you hosted Thanksgiving here a couple of days ago. And imagine that you had all these friends come over and family come over and they all had side dishes, but you were going to provide the turkey, but you forgot to take the turkey out of the freezer. And it’s going to take four days for that thing to even be thawed enough to be able to cook it. And that’s not going to be the same meal, is it? I mean, everybody will try to make do. It’ll be a dinner of side dishes and everybody will laugh a little bit about that. Ha ha ha. It’s just not going to be the same, though, is it? It’s going to be pretty awkward for everyone. You’re going to feel a little bit of desperation inside of you as you figure out how to fix this. And that desperation is an important part of this story that Jesus is telling here.

[00:09:57] In desperation, we go to a friend’s house to get the food that we need to treat our other friend right. Do you see how often the word friend is used in here? It’s used three times in the first two verses of this parable. This is all supposed to be very friendly. That’s the point. Very, very friendly. So we knock on the friends door. Friend, are you in there my friend? Could I just get three loaves from you? And the words of response are don’t bother me. Doesn’t sound very friendly. It doesn’t sound real good. This guy doesn’t even open the door. He shouts this from. From within. Did you see that? He doesn’t even get up. Don’t bother me. The door is shut. The kids are asleep. I can’t get up and give you anything. Looks like our friendship here isn’t as tight as we thought it was. Our so-called friend can’t even be bothered to get up for a minute and help us out. But remember that desperation okay, We’re going to push through this because remember the desperation. Remember that incredible drive inside of us to get what we need. We can’t take no in this situation. We can’t take no for an answer. And so in Jesus story, we’re going to keep knocking on the door. And Jesus says that that guy is going to get up and he’s going to give us bread, and he is going to give us anything that we need.

[00:11:25] Why? Because of friendship? No, Jesus says that he’s going to do it because of our impudence. Insistence, our boldness, our nerve. See, impedance means you don’t care what is acceptable. You just throw all that out. I don’t care what’s acceptable anymore. I need to get the thing that I need. Protests are a kind of impudence. Talking back to your parents is another kind. If you stand up right where you’re sitting right now and you shout me down from your seat, that would be a form of impudence. Please don’t do that. It’s just an example. Jesus says that in this bread scenario, we’re going to convince our neighbor to get up and help us. Not because of friendship, but because we won’t stop knocking and asking, upsetting that guy’s whole night. You ever get your kids to sleep and you finally get them to go to sleep, and then someone rings the doorbell. Oh, that is a mother’s nightmare when that happens, I just. I will take your pamphlet just get off my porch. That’s where the story ends. That’s how Jesus parable ends. It just ends right there. He will get up and he’ll get you this stuff. Is Jesus saying that that’s what it takes to get God to care about the things that make us desperate. We have to keep bothering him. Do we need to move beyond friendly asking to impudence. Bothering a reluctant God to finally get around to helping us out? Let’s leave the question about God’s attitude hanging in the air.

[00:13:07] Let’s just just set aside his his attitude for just a few minutes. We’re going to return to that at the end, because the focus of this story is actually not on the man inside the house. It’s on us. It’s on the bold persistence of our prayer. The point of the story is that even with a grumpy friend who doesn’t want to help, if you’re bold and persistent enough, you’re going to get what you need. So what about with God? When it comes to the things that we need does God want us to just ask once and then keep quiet? Should we keep our voice down and not bother a God who is busy with other things? He’s got a lot to do. He’s preoccupied with other stuff. Do you remember that part in that classic movie, The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and the gang, they come in before the wizard and they cower and they shake because they’ve come to ask for things that they need. And the wizard introduces himself and he says, I am Oz the great and powerful. And then he says, who are you in his big booming voice. Do you remember what happens? Dorothy steps forward and she introduces herself.

[00:14:18] She says, I’m Dorothy, the small and meek as opposed to the great and powerful. And as soon as she starts to ask for what they need, the wizard yells, silence! And then he proceeds to shame the whole group for daring to come before him, to ask for the things that they need. See, the Wizard sees this little team of people as wasting his time. How dare they speak to him? What Jesus says here is literally the opposite of that. He’s describing a scenario that is opposite of that in every way. He’s offering an approach to prayer that’s bold, that the prayer is bold and it is persistent. God is inviting, badgering. He says, go ahead, keep peppering me with your prayers. Keep coming after me. Now, we don’t yet know what his attitude is, what it’ll be toward this sort of peppering with prayers. But Jesus is saying that we can and we should go back to God again and again, boldly with our prayers, to the point that it would annoy most other people. And Jesus says this bold approach is effective. Check out these next three verses. I tell you, ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. And the one who seeks finds. And the one who knocks, it will be opened. These are some pretty big promises for prayer.

[00:15:57] If you ask, you receive. If you seek, you will find. If you knock, the door will be opened. Jesus says bold, persistent prayer with God ends with success. It is a promise to everyone who is faithful to Jesus that if you go before the Lord in prayer, he will hear you. Now I know what you’re thinking because my mind went there immediately too when I was reading this this week. What about all those things that I ask for in prayer and didn’t get? What about those things? What about that job or that house I didn’t get? What about the person I like who doesn’t feel the same way about me? What about the school I didn’t get into, or the team that I didn’t make, or the scholarship that I was counting on, but it didn’t come through for me. Or what about when I prayed for healing for my loved one and he never recovered? Or what about the friend that I prayed that she would receive Christ and she never put her faith in Jesus? I asked for those things and I did not receive. I sought them, but I did not find them. I knocked on the door and God flipped over the closed for business sign. No open door. You prayed big, bold prayers to God the Father persistently. You didn’t get the answer you were looking for. Can that be squared with what Jesus is saying here? Well, it’s really important to notice what Jesus is promising here specifically.

[00:17:34] He is promising that God the Father will hear us and that he will respond. He does not say what the response will be. If you ask from the Lord, you will receive from the Lord. You will have an answer. Exactly what God chooses to give you is not the focus of these words. That’s actually the next point, and we’re going to get to that in just a minute. The point here is that a good, loving Heavenly Father hears you and will give you exactly what you need. We don’t have to worry that our prayers go unheard or that they’re disregarded. You will have exactly what you need. If you seek God, you will find him. If you knock on God’s door in prayer, he will open it. Back in the 90s, a singer named Garth Brooks wrote a song called Unanswered Prayers, where he thanks God for not giving him a relationship with his high school crush, because now his wife is so much better than her. I know it’s not a great song. Now I get there’s some poetic license. Okay, here’s the hook of the song. The hook of the song goes like this. Just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care. Because some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. Again, it’s not etirely wrong. I think I can see where he’s coming from on this, but there’s a reason that we turn to Scripture and not to country superstars for our theology.

[00:19:07] I think this lyric reflects a common assumption that people have about prayer. If I don’t get the thing that I asked for, then God didn’t answer that prayer. That’s a very common assumption that we draw. We draw an equal sign in between. If I ask for a thing, I didn’t get the thing. God didn’t answer the prayer. What Jesus is saying here is that for those who trust in the Lord, there is no unanswered prayer. Ask and you will receive. You might receive exactly what it is that you asked for. You might not, but you will receive exactly what you need for God’s purposes. The point of prayer is not to make personalized withdrawals from God’s storehouse of blessing. God is not Amazon. We don’t just fill up our cart with all the stuff we want and then go and check out with God. See, prayer aligns our hearts with God’s will. So if I have a desire, if I have a need, I take it to the Lord in prayer, knowing that he will hear me and he will give me exactly what I need. But just because I asked for something in prayer doesn’t mean I know what’s best for me. I don’t know all of what God’s doing. I don’t know all that he knows.

[00:20:27] I can only see from my limited perspective. God sees everything that’s going on. I’m just trying to get through my day. God is preparing me for an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all comparison. So my view and my plan are not God’s view and God’s plan. So as I pray, I need to factor in these things that I don’t know and recognize that God’s answer to my prayer is better, even if it’s not the thing that I asked for. See, maybe you’re like me. I tend to ask for things that I think will make me happy as the way I conceive of the world. The things that I think will give me happiness. But God is accomplishing a lot of things in me, through me and around me in the world that won’t make me feel happy, but are things that are far more important than my happiness. The Apostle Paul gives us some insight into this in Second Corinthians chapter 12. He describes God giving him what Paul calls a thorn in his flesh. Now, we don’t know exactly what this was. Paul describes this thorn in his flesh as a messenger of Satan sent to harass him. Sounds pretty bad, actually. We don’t know if this was some kind of a physical problem, or a pain, or some sort of a mental anguish. It’s hard to say exactly what it was. But Paul says he pleaded three times with God, three times that God would take this thorn in his flesh away.

[00:22:03] He asked God, he sought the Lord. He pounded on the door three times. And God answered Paul, not by taking the thorn away, but by showing him that the thorn that made him weak was meant to keep Paul from thinking too much of himself. The Lord was teaching Paul to be content with weakness, because this thorn was a constant reminder to him that he needed the power of Christ at work in his life, sustaining him. God was teaching through this pain. He was teaching through this thorn. Now I know nobody would ask for that. No one would ask for that. No one asks for things that hurt them and make them feel weak or unhappy or unfulfilled. And we’re not told to in Scripture. We’re  told to boldly and persistently reach out to God for daily bread, for guidance, forgiveness. That’s what we’re told to pray for. And Jesus promises that every time we will be heard and the father will answer and provide exactly what we need, even if it’s not the thing that we ask for, and even if we don’t yet know and understand why. So we have this one remaining glaring question then. If we ask for something good and God hears us and he provides for us, but he provides something that hurts, does this mean that God is not good? What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish, give him a serpent? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion.

[00:23:47] If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father who give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? I mentioned earlier that we would return to the topic of God’s attitude. Is he like the grumpy friend that we have to badger for a few loaves of bread? I also said that the focus of this final point would be on the content of what God chooses to give to his kids. This last little bit of Jesus teaching brings those two topics together. So we’ve moved from how we talk to God, to how he responds. And his response to his children, to the people that he has purchased with the sacrifice of Jesus, that he is adopted into his family as sons and daughters, is to always be a good, loving father. So Jesus uses what you call a lesser to greater argument here. Even cranky dads, tired, imperfect dads, dads with  anger issues, dads stressed out about money, dads who are far too selfish. Even those dads wouldn’t give their kids something that would hurt them. Your kid comes to you hungry and he asks for a fish or an egg or in my family’s case, Culver’s right.

[00:25:11] And they come to you what are you going to give? What are you going to give to them? Last weekend, my daughter asked me if I would take my daughter and her three friends to Culver’s. And so they get in the car and they’re already shouting, I think they started shouting at each other in the parking lot as we were getting there. And then they got in the car and they didn’t adjust that volume at all. And so they are shouting, and because they’re shouting, they’re trying to shout over the top of each other to be heard. And they are screaming at each other laughing and screaming, and I’m driving down the road and they’re screaming and there’s no reason for it. There’s no reason for it at all. And everything inside of me just wanted to pull over and just say, all right, get out. I’m the only one going to Culver’s. That’s it But I didn’t. Do you know why? Because I’m a good dad. No, because of police. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. I don’t think I can do that. But even I as a fallen, sinful dad prone to frustration, know that I need to take care of my daughter and her friends. I know I have to do that. I know that that I am the protector and the provider here. My job is to provide good gifts to my kid who needs me.

[00:26:26] How much more? How much more does the perfect Heavenly Father who has adopted us into his family, give good gifts to his kids? He’s not like the friend that we have to badger from earlier in the parable. God the Father stands in contrast to that first image. You and I as parents, may sometimes look like that guy in the parable. We will get frustrated. We will sometimes be reluctant to do our duty. God is never reluctant to do his duty. God is a loving father to us as his children. He always fully and faithfully provides what we need. And what he provides, the answer that he provides is for our help and not for our harm. We’re never going to go to God in prayer and receive from him something that will spiritually harm us. Every follower of Jesus can be assured that if God has allowed something to come into your life, that thing is for your good. And if you pray and don’t receive exactly what you want, it’s not because your prayer has gone unanswered or because God didn’t give you a good gift. It’s because the good gift God has chosen to give you isn’t what you expected. And this is one of the more difficult doctrines of Scripture, both to understand and to trust. I believe that there’s the reason it’s such a difficult truth from Scripture is because we can’t always look back, even after a long time, and see the good thing that God is accomplishing.

[00:28:08] If a hungry family asked the Lord to provide and food shows up on their doorstep, it’s pretty easy to draw straight lines from the the need to the prayer to the goodness of God. It’s very easy to draw those lines. But if someone experiences chronic pain for decades and prays that God would bring relief, and God chooses to allow that pain to continue, it’s difficult to know where the good gift is. It’s there. It’s there. It’s just hard to see. Like Paul asking God to take away the thorn he needed to look around and see. He had to look beyond the thorn to see what God was teaching him. That God was teaching him humility, and that the strength of Christ is what he needed through his own weakness. This is why I believe that Jesus ends by saying that the father provides the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. Notice he does not say that God gives you everything you want. This is not about getting stuff and getting our way. The Holy Spirit, as our comforter and our guide, is the one who consistently points us back to the goodness of God that he’s given to us in Christ. And so when when God does choose to give you exactly the thing that you’ve been praying for, you can take that thing and you can use it to the glory of God.

[00:29:36] You can worship the Lord with it. And when you don’t get the gift that you ask for, but instead get something you’d never ask for, the Holy Spirit walks with us through that trouble. He brings us assurance of our hope in Jesus even when when life seems hopeless, he reminds us of God’s Word when we don’t know what to do next. And so when we don’t get that job, or we don’t make that team, or we begin that relationship or recover from that sickness. When we don’t get these things, God is there to walk through it with strength and peace. And let me just close this morning by saying what this approach to prayer does. What it does inside of you as you grow toward this approach to prayer, if you will embrace this approach, it makes you less eager for specific answers to prayer. It causes you not to focus so much on, I must have this thing. You become less focused on specific answers to prayer, and more eager to experience God’s goodness in whatever answer he provides. You start to look like God, or I don’t know how you’re going to answer this prayer, but however you do it, I want to see your glory in it. I want you to show me your glory in it. You start looking for what God is doing in everything because you know you’re going to be better for it. Let’s pray.