Luke 18:8 - … Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?"
I was reading a story in which one of the characters was a young teenage girl. She, who was a child herself, was desperate for her own child to get medical attention at a hospital. After jilting the taxi cab driver from his fee (she was by no means honest) – she demanded from the receptionist that a doctor see her baby. After the receptionist, the nurse and the security guard tried to brush her off, they found she just could not be brushed off. She stated over and over again that she wasn't leaving until the doctor saw her baby.
Scripture gives us another story where in Luke 18 of a woman who seeks justice between her and her advisory. She had to appeal to a judge who really didn't care. He didn't fear God or man and so wasn't overly concerned about justice, even as a judge, but himself. Yet he gives in. Why? Luke 18:4-5 tells us that “that the judge said …. 'Though I do not fear God nor regard man, [5] yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.' "
Now the agreement is simply if an unjust judge gave in and answered this widow’sprayer – how much more will a just God. There are a couple things that strike me as strange. 1) God seems to be asking us to make a nuisance of ourselves before Him. In a sense He seems to be saying “I will respond to your nagging.” Most of us don’t like to be nagged, He seems to welcome it. 2) If we can manage to be“troublesome” before Him, He calls this faith.
I have been told that God has three answers to prayer; yes, wait, and no. I think this is theologically sound. Yet I’m struck by how many times scripture seems to teach us that we should not take no for an answer. Have you ever wanted something so bad you just wouldn't be denied? Our son used to drive his mother crazy because after being denied something he would continually come and ask again. He would find all kinds of different ways to ask the same thing. His desire was harder to slay than a dragon. The next morning at breakfast, after we thought the dragon was slayed, you could see in his eyes the dragon was still alive: plotting, pondering, planning His next fire breathing appeal. Do our prayers look like that? Do they even begin to look like that? Do they even begin to begin to look like that? Can you imagine a human situation where that occurs – the urgency, the desperation, that attitude that “I’m not leaving until you say yes”? Has God ever seen that behavior in our approach to Him? Has he observed you digging in – appealing to His every ability? Has He seen your soul straining upwards with a hunger that must be fed, and ache that must be relieved? Is what you desire more important than five minutes of your time?
Maybe we fail to “persevere” in prayer before God because we don’t really think He hears us. Maybe we fail because we don’t give Him the honor of treating Him as if He’s real. If you’re going to be this determined with someone, you have to believe you can persuade that someone, and that someone must be real, and that someone must have the ability to do what you ask. May God teach us to knock on the doors of heaven in such a way. May He teach us to nag Him, rather than each other. He seems to rather enjoy it; the rest of us not so much.
