Pain in the Butt Persistence ...

 

Have you ever encountered that toddler child who has already mastered the art of getting what he/she wants from mom and dad?  Nearly all the time “winning” that encounter consists of nothing more than outlasting the other guy.  The toddler asks, and asks, and gives hugs, bribes, promises, then goes back to asking, and asking until the parent is so worn down, they would give up anything just for moment’s peace.  It is not that the parent thinks any differently about the topic.  Their answer may always be a firm no, especially if life worked like it does in a court of law – “asked and answered your Honor”.  But that is not how the mind of toddler’s function.  When they see a thing; if mom or dad denies them, they just start a relentless campaign of “bugging” them until mom or dad caves in and gives it to them, just to shut them up.  Effective.  Now in fairness, a toddler carries the “cute factor” which makes it much harder to resist.  An ugly persistent adult in the workplace, might quickly find themselves on the unemployment line for similar nagging behavior.  But an adorable toddler, can last for days, never yielding an inch of cute, nor a moment’s peace until what they want, is theirs.

So have you ever thought about this where it comes to prayer?  Is it possible we wear God down by asking Him the same thing over and over and over again, until He grants our request; perhaps even if that is not what He would have preferred to do?  Now let’s face it, there are certain parallels in this.  God sees us all as adorable toddlers, no matter how old we are.  We don’t ever lose the “cute” factor as He looks at us.  But we sure take on similar behavior where it comes to getting something we want from God.  We beg over and over again, we throw Him kisses and hugs, we make promises and vows we intend to keep, well at least until it becomes “too hard” to keep them.  And then we go back to asking and asking again.  While it is impossible for us to outlast God in any one of these encounters, we might actually need to be taught a lesson about what it means to get what we ask for, even when God was longing for us to accept His “no” and trust Him over it.  And another similarity, toddlers don’t always ask for the right things.  They very often ask for outlandish things, and things that are decidedly dangerous for them to have.  Yielding to one of those requests could seriously put us in harm’s way.  But we go right on asking, not recognizing we are asking for the wrong things, at the wrong times, and may well be jeopardizing our very souls in the doing.

Nevertheless, there is a certain amount of success, in a persistence that borders on pain-in-the-butt levels.  Whether here with our fellow mankind, or upwards with our God who hears everything.  Jesus offered us a parable to get us thinking about this.  Luke recorded it in his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why in the eighteenth chapter right at the top in verse 1 it reads … “And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;”  Even if we do it wrong, better for us to keep on praying.  Even if we do not immediately get what we want, keep on asking.  The answer from God may never change, but the connection with God is critical to teach us trust, and faith, and look to see our prayers in the context of a reality that cannot be shaken by the words of others who do not believe.  When we faint away, when we give up, our prayer life recedes into a dark corner, and we begin to lose all hope that any prayer might be answered, or that God cares about us at all.  He does care.  And even if He is forced to withhold from us that which we toddlers keep asking for, the connection of the prayers themselves matters to Him and to us.

Luke continues in verse 2 saying … “Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: [verse 3] And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.”  To begin we are not describing God here.  This particular judge was effectively an atheist who did not regard God in any way.  Moreover, this judge was not exactly any kind of humanist, nor sensitive to the needs of others.  That would leave him a self-centered man only interested in making himself happy, however that needed to be.  Now in contrast to the judge (who most of the time are reasonably wealthy and happy) is the widow.  A widow by definition has experienced a primary loss, the loss of her husband, of her security, of her income stream.  That kind of loss is enough to make someone miserable.  And as we know, misery loves company.  Not long before it finds it.  Turns out the widow has a nemesis, an adversary she does not like.  Maybe this nemesis gossips about her.  Maybe she taunts her at the water well, or makes fun of her in the marketplace, or ridicules her at temple.  And what is more it is likely this adversarial relationship is a 2-way street.  Hard to have an enemy when you refuse to be an enemy.  So the widow plots the downfall of her nemesis, taking her grievances to this judge, to get the judge to avenge her cause.  “This” is not a good request, it is NOT a good prayer.

But how often do we pray the same exact thing?  And every time I hear someone offer a prayer for the destruction of others, I always hear a reference to the prayers of David.  But David was contending with the needs of the nation, in conflict with those who would eliminate the worship of his one True God.  Had David’s life been sacrificed Israel may have completely forsaken God at the end of Saul’s reign.  Our troubles with our earthly enemies rarely if ever have anything to do with forwarding of the gospel.  They are instead purely selfish in nature, where we ask for God to pick one of His children (us) over another (our enemy), even while both of us are in desperate need of His salvation, His transforming love in our lives.  If we were to embrace that transformative love, we might have long since lost the concept of enemy in our vocabulary.  But sometimes we like this widow, let perceived wrong-doing, or real wrong-doing against us make others our enemies we wish vengeance against.

Jesus continues in verse 4 saying … “And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; [verse 5] Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. [verse 6] And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.”  So the judge was not inclined to do what the widow asked.  Maybe because he just didn’t care.  Maybe because he was not inclined to punish the enemy of some widow who did not have a good enough case.  But this widow was not letting it go.  She kept coming back, day after day after day.  She was relentless, always in his face.  And frankly, this judge did not have time for this.  It was eating into his day.  He did not want to be bothered.  He just wanted it to go away.  He just wanted a moment’s peace.  Sound like the parent / toddler situation to you?  I don’t know about you, but I have seen this parable play out in every grocery cereal aisle I have ever been in.  Toddler wants Captain Crunch, or Lucky Charms (still my personal favorites); mom wants Total, or Raison Bran (not sure how those brands are still in existence) – but with some relentless begging, most of the time sugar gets put into the grocery cart.  Mom just needs peace after all, and values it more than vitamins on occasion.  This parable Jesus tells however is made up, an illustration of the same principle carried out in a much more serious way, even with imperfect protagonists.

Luke continues in verse 7 saying … “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? [verse 8] I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”  Here is where the parable or analogy gets real and gets very intense.  Persecution and murder are no laughing matter, as one child of God inflicts it upon another allowing evil to reign in the heart, the pain of the victim reaches up to God in heaven.  Those prayers of deliverance come with the intensity of life and death, for they suffer a very real life and death matter.  And not all those prayers of deliverance can be answered.  The heart of God must break as He watches one precious child suffer or die at the hands of another, in a desperate attempt to break the evil in the other, and bring salvation to all.  It is what the faithful would wish, if they could see the tapestry God weaves for the salvation of us all.  But that is decidedly NOT clear when you are under the curse or evil of persecution and facing your own mortality because of it.  And here Jesus says that God hears those prayers.  And while God has born our grief and suffered long with us, in order to save us, His patience has an end.  There will come a time when God says to mankind – “enough”.  Let he who is evil, be evil still (chilling words of revelation to our hearts); and let he who is holy be holy still (mysterious words few can comprehend).  But when those words are uttered, patience will be at an end.  What follows them is destruction brought about by the hand of God Himself.  A very targeted destruction against only the wicked.

Jesus says of this end, it will come speedily.  Perhaps as was just discussed earlier in the analogies of Noah and Lot, speedily because we are all too busy living our lives, getting through our days, and completely unaware that time is upon us.  Then Jesus ponders an even more chilling question of His own.  When He does come back … will he find faith on the earth?  Those are very sad words my friend.  In the time of Noah only 8 souls were saved the destruction that wiped the earth clean of evil.  A proof that evil’s time would not last forever, and its destruction universal.  In the case of Lot, only 4 souls were saved, and even one of those lost later by turning back to see an entire evil city be wiped from existence for the evil that consumed the hearts of all those who lived there.  A second proof offered before the final destruction of all of evil.  But SO few saved, willing to seek the grace of God, or move with faith to follow what God had asked.  The rest, evil to the core, and completely unconcerned with matters of faith – more concerned with matters that please self to the core.  And Jesus ponders out loud, will ANY faith be left upon planet earth when He does return?  That would argue that just like in the time of Noah, or Lot, few, very few souls, look past the lives they live to the prayers they offer and the faith they build.

Jesus began this segment by stating that persistence can accomplish so much more in our own hearts than giving up will ever do.  He told a parable of a desperate widow asking a crooked judge for something that should not even been asked, but finding relief because of her persistence.  To extend, we are not so much looking to change the heart of God by our requests, as we are looking to change our own hearts in the process.  For we are both widow, AND judge.  We ask the wrong things, and care so little about it.  But by persistently coming before the throne of grace, and looking upwards to our loving God in heaven, we begin to see Him more clearly.  By focusing our vision upon God – we begin to change.  We begin to care more, even about our perceived enemies.  We begin to ask less for their destruction, even though they persecute us, and more for their salvation.  As we begin to pray those prayers we are changed even further.  Our hearts become broken upon the anvil of God’s love and our faith is increased tenfold.  Our prayer life becomes one centered on the needs of others.  For our own needs we come to learn have already been addressed by God before we ask.  So we begin to focus on the needs of others, looking to free God to answer our prayers in the lives of others who may not otherwise ever ask.

Free will is a delicate line.  God cannot cross it without permission to do so.  A soul who rejects God pushes God away, and greatly constricts what God is able to do for them.  But when you or I pray for salvation to come to the erring rejecting soul – God is allowed to answer our prayers on their behalf, and try again.  God does not give up on the lost.  But our prayers for the lost, change us, and empower Him, perhaps to reach out to the lost using even us (His broken tools).  Will you find the faith to even care about the lost who surround you every day?  Jesus wonders aloud if anyone will.  Too many of us are consumed by only one priority – us.  We care about ourselves, about our own condition.  But we leave the lost up to God, and find no more care in our hearts about them than we do a piece of garbage that blows across our lawn.  When Jesus returns will He find an entire earth of people so apathetic to the needs and hearts of others?  It is possible.  But it need not be.

The secret, or rather the key, is to continue praying – and not faint or fade away.  Let us make our prayer lives as active as our need to breathe.  Let us remain the cute toddlers constantly bugging our parent God, but begin to see our requests for ourselves, changing, becoming requests for the lost our hearts break to see.  For we have no enemies, we see only those in more desperate need of the love of Jesus.  Let us pray to be the conduits of God’s love, and not the obstacles of it.  Let us trust that our own needs have already been addressed (the Captain Crunch or Lucky Charms are already in the cart, and the cart is already overflowing).  Given this, we are free to pray to fill the carts and hearts of others with the blessings God has already seen to it, we receive. 

In my experience, the prayer “give us this day our daily bread”.  Is answered by God offering me not just bread.  But bread of many varieties, fresh, and delicious.  More than that, sandwiches, and pizza’s, and panini’s that are served with pasta’s and steaks, and vegetables, and fruits.  We ask God for daily bread.  And I find He answers with meals far beyond the asking.  This is how God takes care of me.  Not just in food.  I ask to be loved, and love is poured out upon me from sources I never dreamed would, with intensity I never imagined.  My wife becomes more precious to me than life itself.  So now perhaps I can come to trust that my needs have already been addressed by my God.  And I am free to pray for her, and for the world around me.  And beyond my prayers, I can become a broken tool willing to be used by God in the salvation of others, with a new found passion to see the lost come to Jesus and find what I have found in Him.  This is a process I can testify works, because it continues to work in me.  If nothing else I wish to be the Noah and his family at the end of all things, and I wish you and your family are as much Noah as we hope to be.