Pastor Tim Patoka
Christian Character #2 October 13, 2019 Christian Character: The Believer Is Persistent In Prayer Luke 18:1-8a 1) God Will Answer His Children’s Prayers 2) We Persistently Pray Because Of God’s Love
When you’ve asked for something from someone, how long do you typically wait to get it? Sometimes we quickly get what we ask for like last week when I picked up an Eegee’s party special for our campus ministry Bible study on Galatians. But usually it’s not that quick. A parent asks their child to clean their room and what ends up happening is that the piles of stuff get moved around. But sometimes, we later get what we ask for like when a child writes their Christmas list and later finds what they asked for in a wrapped present. You never know how long it’s going to take to get what you ask someone for. In our verses for this morning, Jesus tells us what we can expect from God when we ask him things in prayer. And he teaches us these things through a parable. The Sunday School definition I learned for a parable is “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.” Jesus doesn’t tell us parables to entertain us. Rather, these parables are teaching tools intended to bring home a point in a way that simply saying the truth wouldn’t do. And in this parable of the persistent widow, we learn that part of a Christian’s character is to be persistent in prayer. For we know that God will answer his children’s prayers. And we are encouraged to persistently pray because of God’s love. 1) God Will Answer His Children’s Prayers You got to hand it to this widow for all the difficulties she went through to finally get justice from her adversary! We’re not told who exactly the people are nor where this takes places. But it doesn’t matter if it’s fact or fiction It’s a parable! And in this parable we see a judge who answered only to himself for he “did not fear God and did not care about people.” (Luke 18:2b) There was also a widow who was denied some justice that was due to her. The judge refused to grant it to her because he did not care about her or any higher power. However, this widow refused to take no for an answer. She persisted and plead with the unjust judge for some time. And finally the judge gave the widow the justice she asked for. No one could have blamed the widow if she gave up asking for this unjust judge for justice. After a while, it must have seemed pointless for her to persistently keep asking for this. We know from our opening verse that this parable is about prayer. Might we too be tempted to think that prayer is pointless when we don’t get what we ask for? When you asked for help in that big project at work or test at school and you ended up winging it. When that unexpected bill came up that upset your life’s plans. Sometimes we ask for help from long-standing problems. A weakness of the flesh to some addiction or chronic health problems. Perhaps we 1