DEPENDENT PRAYING

DEPENDENT PRAYING

Luke 18:1-14 NET.

¹ Then Jesus told them a parable to show them they should always pray and not lose heart. ² He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected people. ³ There was also a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ ⁴ For a while he refused, but later on he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor have regard for people, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps on bothering me, I will give her justice, or in the end she will wear me out by her unending pleas.'” ⁶ And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge says! ⁷ Won’t God give justice to his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he delay long to help them? ⁸ I tell you, he will give them justice speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” ⁹ Jesus also told this parable to some who were confident that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else. ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood and prayed about himself like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: extortionists, unrighteous people, adulterers — or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of everything I get.’ ¹³ The tax collector, however, stood far off and would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am!’ ¹⁴ I tell you that this man went down to his home justified rather than the Pharisee. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

It used to be that the only way we could learn more about our friends was by spending time talking to them. As we conversed, we learned about the things our friends liked. We would also learn what kinds of things made our friends mad or irritated them. Nowadays, we can find out those things without even holding a conversation. All we have to do is scroll through their posts on social media. We can find out their political views, how religious they are, and whether they are pet lovers.

Jesus doesn’t post on social media. If we want to discover what Jesus is all about, we must do it the old-fashioned way. We need to study the Gospels. As we have spent quality time in the Gospels looking for the things that Jesus commanded his followers, some themes keep occurring repeatedly. There are some subjects that Jesus keeps coming back to. One of those subjects is prayer.

We cannot help but conclude that prayer is essential to Jesus. It may or may not seem necessary to us, but for some reason, a strong prayer life is something that Jesus harps on. Prayer keeps showing up as high on the agenda of things that matter to Jesus. We have already looked at several of the commands of Jesus that relate to praying. He has told us to pray secretly so that our Father in the sky will reward us openly. He has told us not to be reluctant to ask for what we need and to keep on asking. He has told us to ask for more harvesters so the gospel can reach more people. We don’t have to worry about whether God wants us to pray. God always wants us to pray.

In today’s text, Jesus is underlining the message he has already given about prayer. Jesus told the disciples a parable to show them they should always pray and not lose heart. That was the parable of the persistent widow. It was very similar to another parable that Jesus gave, recorded seven chapters earlier: the parable of the persistent man who bothered his friend at midnight to get some bread to feed his guests.

Jesus teaches a second parable about prayer in today’s text as well. It involves two publicly praying at the temple: a Pharisee and a tax collector. There is very little new material in this parable too. Jesus had already taught his disciples not to pray for others to see. Otherwise, the public perception of your righteousness would be your only reward. 

But despite the apparent absence of new material in today’s section, I see these two parables giving us significant instruction about prayer. The overall theme is a particular kind of praying. I call it dependent praying. This passage gives us three keys to praying prayers that reach heaven and make a difference here on earth. We can’t choose to use one or two of these keys. All three must be used together, or our prayers will not be dependent.

The first key is persistence.

No surprise here. Luke tells us the reason for Jesus’ instructions. He shows his disciples that they should always pray and not lose heart. The Holy Spirit in the word of God is showing us the same thing. God values the persistent prayer and the persistent pray-er. He wants his children to trust him so much that they keep asking because they refuse to believe he does not care. He wants children who refuse to take no for an answer because they want what God wants and are unwilling to settle for something different.

The God who created our bodies wants them to be whole, not sick or disabled. We see that in Jesus. He didn’t turn those people away when he encountered illness or injury. He healed them. He didn’t give them a seminar to help them heal themselves by increasing their faith. They asked, and Jesus answered. They needed healing, and he gave it to them. Later in this chapter, Jesus meets a blind man as he approaches Jericho. The man will get the attention of Jesus and his disciples by repeatedly crying out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” Jesus will ask this man, “What do you want me to do for you.” The man will say, “Lord, let me see again.” Jesus gave that man what he asked for because he had the faith to ask.

The God who created us wants us to be restored to a right relationship with him. We see that in Jesus. He was parading through Jerich when he suddenly stopped, and nobody knew why. Then Jesus looked up into the sycamore tree. There was Zacchaeus. Being a short man, he couldn’t see over the crowd. But he did not give up. He climbed the tree. Jesus noticed his persistence. He told Zaccheus to come down because he would eat at his house. Later, Jesus said to him that salvation had come to his household. It pays to seek God persistently.

Brothers and sisters, we pray but are tempted to give up too quickly. We lose heart when the prayer is not answered immediately. We are like that fox that tries once for the grapes, and when the first try doesn’t work, we claim that the grapes are sour anyway. God has an answer for us, and it isn’t sour grapes. We have to keep trying. Someday, we will be on display before the universe, and the Lord will tell all of creation, “These are my people. The ones who refused to give up.” These are the children of Jacob, who wrestled all night and would not let go until he received a blessing. These are the children of Jabez, who kept praying for the Lord to enlarge his tent. These are the children of Hannah, whose prayers were so passionate that Eli thought she was drunk. Jesus commands us to pray and keep on praying.

The second key is wisdom.

Remember I said that all of the keys have to be used together. It’s like going to the bank to get something out of a safe deposit box. There is more than one key, which must be used together. The second key is one that logically precedes the first. In other words, persistence without this key is useless.

You can persistently go to the bank and withdraw more and more money until you have nothing left in your account. But if your problem is not financial, the funds will not help. You can read your horoscope daily and get guidance from the stars, but if the stars do not determine your fate, reading your horoscope will not help.

When Penny and I visited our ministry in Thailand, we would walk the streets and notice that in front of every house, there was a shrine to the spirits. Those people persistently worship the wrong god. Their persistence was useless. Jesus warns us that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.

The second key is wisdom. It recognizes that there is only one solution to our problem, not two, not two thousand. Wisdom knows God is sovereign and seeks him because he is the only deliverance.

In the parable of the persistent widow, the widow got the justice she was after because she recognized that the judge was her only solution. She had no other resources. She had no other options. She had to keep bugging him because he was the only way out of her dilemma.

The third key is humility.

The second parable Jesus tells also contains a key: dependent praying is humble praying. The parable targeted some who were confident that they were righteous and looked down on everyone else.

I was once visiting a man who was terminally ill, and I had come to pray for him. I prayed for God to heal him. Another Christian was visiting the same man, and that man prayed as well. Our prayers were like night and day. That man prayed confidently. I remember feeling embarrassed that I could not pray such a powerful prayer. He seemed to be knocking out the demons of disease everywhere.

The truth is the man eventually died. I don’t know the heart of the other Christian who prayed with me that day. But I do know that his prayer could not be characterized as humble. We may feel humiliated when we come to the throne of grace, begging God to answer our prayers. But the truth is our humility honors God because he is the answer.

The Bible says that we should come boldly to the throne in prayer. Hebrews 4:16 says we should “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” But this confidence is not self-confidence. We always come to God from the standpoint of need. We need his help. We need his grace. His grace is unmerited favor. We cannot help ourselves. If we come to God praying with confidence, that confidence has to be in his love, compassion, and power, not our own.

So, the next time we go to the throne, we should remember to pray dependent prayers. These prayers persist as long as needed to get the answer. They are prayers that recognize that God is the only resource we have. Dependent praying is wise enough to seek the answer from the only One who can give it. There is no plan B. Dependent praying beats the breast and says, “God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am.” Humble prayers reach the throne.

For further study:

Barclay, William. The Gospel of Luke. Edinburgh: Saint Andrew, 1997. Pp. 230-234.

Beyer Douglas. Parables for Christian Living: Seeing Ourselves As Jesus Sees Us–Parables from Luke. Judson Press 1985. pp. 89-95.

Carlozzi Carl G. Pocket Parables. Tyndale House 1985. pp. 92-93.

Coates Thomas. The Parables for Today. Concordia Pub. House 1971. pp. 41-43.

Kok Joel. Luke: Taking Up the Master’s Mission: A Study Guide. CRC Publications 1997. pp. 34-36.

Olson Rudolph. Parables of the Bible. Valley Press 2000. pp. 58-59.

Schaap Ward B. The Character of the King: Studies in the Parables. Baker Books 1994. pp. 64-74.

Welborn Amy. Parables: Stories of the Kingdom. Loyola Press 2003. pp. 35-37.