Pray and Keep Praying

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I read a story this week about a man during the California Gold Rush. Most of you probably learned a little bit about that in school. You all are probably about to when you finish up the Jacksonian era. But you probably learned a little bit about the California Gold Rush. There were a few people that made quite a bit of money in the California Gold Rush of the late 1840s and early 1850s. There were a lot more people who lost money as a result of it. But there was one story in particular that stuck out to me from this time. It was a man who went to California to prospect for gold, and he felt certain the area that he claimed had gold on the property. This was about 1853 at Sutter’s Creek, so it was not too far from where the original strike was. He had every reason to believe there was gold on this property, and so he dug, I don’t know what the technical term was, but he excavated.

He hunted for the gold, and he hunted and he hunted and he bought more equipment because he was just sure that it was there, and he kept looking and he kept looking and he kept looking, and finally he got frustrated and decided there is no gold here. And so he went and he sold his claim to another man there in town and sold all of his equipment to the same man, and he sold all of this stuff for pennies on the dollar, a fraction of what he’d paid for it. And the man said, I’m going to go out and I’m going to check this out myself. And so he goes out and says, you know, I can see where he’s dug here. I can see where he’s dug here. I’m going to try one more spot. And he tries one more spot on this claim and he digs down and he strikes gold. He finds it less than a yard from the last place the man was digging when he gave up. And that is, as far as I can tell, that is a true story.

There are some legendary stories, but as far as I can tell, that one’s a true one they have record of, of somebody that just gave up right before their breakthrough was about to happen. And that came to mind, as I’m looking at Luke chapter 11, at where we are in our study of the book of Luke, it came to mind because that’s how we deal with prayer a lot of times. We will pray and we will pray and we will pray and then we will give up just before something happens. We give up too soon. Sometimes we will treat God like a vending machine and we’ll treat prayer like a transaction. Have you ever stuck money in a vending machine and didn’t get anything out of it? What’d you do then? You kicked it, okay. Not the answer I was thinking of, but did you continue to put money in it? Who said yes? Okay, you and me. We’re slow learners. I don’t know if I thought as a kid it was like a slot machine.

If I keep putting money, eventually it’ll pay something out. Not that I’ve played slot machines as a kid either, but no, I’d keep putting money in and it wouldn’t give. So eventually you’d stop. But we treat prayer the same way, like God is a vending machine. And if we pray for something, and you know, I prayed two whole times for that, and I didn’t get it, or God didn’t do anything about it, so I’m done here. And a lot of times we will walk away and we will stop praying when God is not done working. And we give up on God too soon. That’s what we’re going to look at in Luke chapter 11 this morning. If you haven’t turned there with me, please go ahead and do so. And once you find it, if you’ll stand as we read together from God’s Word, Luke chapter 11, and we’re going to start in, it says verse 5 on the screen, but I want to go back and read the whole prayer that we started last week.

So, the first part won’t be on your screen, but we’re going to start back at verse 1, and then read through verse 13, just for context. Luke says, it happened that while Jesus was praying in a certain place, after He had finished, one of His disciples said to Him, Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught His disciples. And He said to them, when you pray, say, Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins. For we also, ourselves, forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. That’s what we looked at last week. Verse 5 says, Then he said to them, Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, Friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And from the inside he answers and says, Do not bother me.

The door has already been shut, and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything. I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs. So I say to 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 he who seeks finds and to him who knocks it will be opened. Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish. Will he not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he has asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?

And you may be seated. What Jesus is teaching His disciples there? Because don’t forget they have asked him, Lord, teach us to pray. They’re watching him in his prayer life, and they’re wanting to learn to do the same thing, so they’re asking, Lord, teach us to pray. And he gives them this model prayer, which, like I told you last week, is not something that we have to memorize and recite the exact same words. It’s more of a pattern, teaching us what our priorities ought to be in prayer, that we start, even if our prayer doesn’t start out with a verbal recognition of the Father’s greatness, that’s the posture that we bring to prayer. That model prayer demonstrates what our priorities ought to be in prayer. But then he goes, and if you want to learn to pray like Jesus, the most important thing they needed to learn and that we need to learn is to keep going.

because as I mentioned last week, that was a common theme throughout Jesus’s life and ministry. He was constantly spending time in prayer. He was constantly going to the Father, especially, and we would see this anytime He’s about to make a big announcement or they’re about to enter a new chapter of ministry, He’s about to appoint somebody, He’s about to do anything big, He would get away alone for prolonged periods of time in prayer. And so if we want to learn to pray like Jesus, the first thing we have to learn is to keep going. And we see this at the very beginning of this passage that Jesus calls us to pray persistently. He calls us not to give up just because we don’t get the answer that we want the very first time.

I won’t name any names just because I haven’t asked, but I have a friend who talks about praying for their family for nearly a decade that they would come back to the Lord and have continued in that prayer. And now, after almost a decade, are beginning to see some small moves in that direction. Some small glimmers of interest in what the Lord is doing. Asking questions. And my friend has told me, this is the answer to years and years and years of prayer. And I just think about how important that is, and what a pity it would have been if my had given up after five years? If my friend had given up after once or twice praying for it? What if my friend had stopped at seven years? And it’s not that God can’t, it’s not as though God’s hands are tied and God can’t do anything until we pray X number of times. And once you do that, suddenly God is magically unlocked and He can do what you grant.

As I mentioned to you last week in this, prayer is not about bringing God’s will into alignment with ours, it’s about bringing our wills into alignment with His. And God many times can be working on the prayer request where we see nothing is happening, and it looks like God is just not paying attention to us, and yet God is working in the background in ways that we can’t see, and it’s all going to come together at last minute. I don’t know if you’ve ever done a project that right up until the last minute, it just looks like a mess of pieces, and then it all starts to come together. Some of the stuff we do here can look that way. You walk in on Fall Fest, and you see stuff on every table, and you see stuff sitting everywhere, and it looks like a mess, but Christy has a plan. And at the last minute, it all comes together, and it looks spectacular. God works very much that way.

And so while we think he’s taking eight, nine, ten years to answer this prayer request, really he’s working all the time, and sometimes the last part of it is for our wills to be fully in line with his, and then he shows us what the whole thing has been all along. So he calls us to pray persistently. He talks about this story of a man who goes to his friend to try to get some loaves of bread. And the reason he’s in such dire need for bread at midnight, I have never been so desperate for bread at midnight that I’ve gone and tried to wake up my neighbor’s. Children’s Tylenol, maybe, but never a loaf of bread. The reason why he is in such dire need of this bread at midnight is because a friend of his has come on this long journey, and hospitality is hugely important in Middle Eastern culture, especially at that time.

If you have somebody who has come in, and they’ve come from a long journey, and especially if you know them, but even if you don’t know them, and they come to your house, you are expected to put out a spread to show your hospitality and your generosity, and if you fail to do that, it is a major social faux pas. I heard somebody use the word social catastrophe recently, talking about one of these situations in the Gospels. It would have been a complete disgrace if he said, hey, I’m glad you made it in for your journey. Don’t really have anything for you right now, but I’ll see you in the morning. No, he needed to put out something for his friend right then, to be able to refresh himself before he went to bed. And so facing this kind of disgrace, he goes next door to his neighbor. Verse 5 says he goes to beg his friend. He’s pounding on the door.

And verse 7, his friend says, don’t bother me. Leave me alone. I’m in bed. The kids are in bed. The dogs are in bed. You know, everybody’s locked up. It does not say the dogs are in bed. But in our culture, everything’s locked down for the night. Sorry, you’re not getting in here. And we might think, what’s the big deal? Especially if you know him. I’m not talking about one of those ring doorbell camera videos on the internet that some strange person shows up on your door at 3 a.m. This is somebody you know. What’s the big deal? In our day, he might call first. Give him some bread. In their day and age, this was a major imposition. Many times, they slept in one-room houses. And everybody slept in one bed together. One bed area. They might take all the mats and push them together.

And so if you’re getting up and lighting the lights so you can see what you’re doing, and you’re getting out of bed, it’s going to disturb the kids. It’s going to disturb the servants. It’s going to disturb whoever is. The whole house is going to be awake. On top of which, it took a lot of effort. I couldn’t find what they looked like, but I read descriptions where these locks were apparently pretty complicated to try to keep people out at night. Because in that day, they would just leave the door open all day. But when it came nighttime, you bolt that door, and you go through this complicated procedure to make sure it’s secure, and nobody gets in or out. So for him to ask, for us, it just seems like, why not just give him some bread? This was a major imposition.

this is somebody showing up at your house in the middle of the night and asking for a large loan and you have they need the cash right then you may have it you may not but you also need that you know this is you know it’s hard to fault the friend who says no he’s not just being selfish so he refuses to help but Jesus points out in verse 8 the man could still get what he wanted or what he needed by continuing to ask all the friend had to do was make it more inconvenient to not answer the door than to answer the door so you keep pounding you keep yelling louder everybody in the house is going to be awake anyway and so the man would keep asking this this word, some translations have it as persistence, some have it as shamelessness, some have it as insistence. It’s a word that we don’t have one perfect translation for. All of those are correct.

But what it describes in Greek, this word that you may see as persistence or shamelessness or whatever else, in verse 8 that he tells him that because of this he’ll get what he wants, is basically a lack of sensitivity to what’s proper, to what’s expected. He’s not minding his manners. Some of the definitions given to it are insolence, audacity, impudence, shamelessness. He’s not saying be obnoxious. But if you’ve ever been in such a dire need that you’ve been willing to make a nuisance of yourself, you understand. Maybe you had a child that was very, very sick, and you’re rushing all over town trying to find the pharmacy that has the right medication that is going to take care of that illness, and you’re begging everybody. Can you just check in the back? That kind of shamelessness where you’re willing to beg because the need is so great.

You’re willing to make a nuisance of yourself if necessary. Jesus said because of that kind of attitude, the neighbor would get out of bed and give him whatever he needed. now he is encouraging us to be persistent in prayer he’s encouraging us to continue asking but this is not a comparison between god and the neighbor okay this is a contrast between god and the neighbor because the point is that if persistent asking would pay off with the neighbor who’s really put out by having to do this then jesus’s point is how much more will our persistence pay off in asking a God who desires to give us what we need. Again, we’re talking about what we need. But for God, it’s not an imposition to give us what we need. It’s what He wants to do.

And so Jesus’s point is, if this guy who is so put out and annoyed that he finally opens the door, if persistence pays off with him, how much better will it work with the God who loves you? Just keep asking is the point that he gives us. Unlike the friend, unlike the neighbor here, God is delighted to take care of us. And sometimes that means working in us before granting the request. Sometimes the matter is I need to change you a little bit before giving you the thing that you’re asking for. Because prayer more often than not deals with us as much as it deals with our circumstances.

God wants to give us what we need God makes no promise to give us everything we want but God wants to give us what we need God wants to take care of us God wants to do what’s best for us and sometimes we give up too quickly in asking because maybe the way he’s taking care of us is shaping us and changing us in order to be in a place where we can receive the thing we need. So Jesus calls us to pray persistently. Jesus also calls us to pray expectantly in verses 9 and 10. So building on that story, Jesus moves on to say in verse 9, So I say to 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 he who seeks finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened. each of these things where he says, ask and seek and knock, the way the Greek verb tenses are there, it’s not a one-time thing.

He’s saying, keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking. But we’re doing this with the expectation that when we ask, we’re going to receive. When we seek, we’re going to find. When we knock, the door is going to be opened. Now, one thing I want to caution you about here, as He gives us these three things, repeating them, because sometimes God has to tell us the same thing over and over, doesn’t He? Especially for me, who would keep putting the money back in the machine. Slow learner. He has to tell me multiple times. So, He’s given us these three ways of saying this, ask and seek and knock, and it’s kind of an escalation, but it’s three things written there to remind us to keep going and to expect. But one thing we’ve got to caution ourselves about there is to understand what it is that we’re to ask and seek and knock about.

We could very easily take one passage of Scripture, verses 9 and 10, out of context, and just say, God will give us whatever we ask for. Jesus could have easily walked up to some random stranger on the streets of Jerusalem and said, ask and seek and knock and you’ll receive and you’ll find and it’ll be open to you. And we would take that as a blank check from God. While the scripture says what it says, it doesn’t say what it says in isolation from other parts of scripture. And we have to remember that Jesus is saying this to people who have just come and said, would you teach us how to pray like you do? And people that he has spent months and in some cases years pouring into them and teaching them about the kingdom and just training them as we saw all through chapters 9 and 10 to be on mission for God and to be kingdom focused.

Knowing they have that foundation, telling them ask and you’ll receive is a very different situation. About once a week my wife and I try to go have lunch together because all of our kids are in school. And so we can actually talk. And usually we’ll say, one of us will say to the other Thursday, I think it was, I said, we can go wherever you want to go. And I can say that to my wife because we have common goals and values. And one of those goals and values is to not be in crippling debt. Okay. I do not tell my children, we can go eat wherever you want, because they will want to go to all the places and order all the things. But I know there’s that baseline foundation that we understand in the background when I say, I’ll take you wherever you want. It’s the same way with Jesus telling this to his disciples.

It’s not just to random people off the street, it’s to people who have been trained all this time to be kingdom-focused and mission-minded. And when our focus is on God and His kingdom and His glory and our part in that and doing what is right and what He’s called us to do, what He’s designed us to do, when that’s our focus in life, He can come to us and say, ask and you’ll receive. Seek and you’ll find. Knock and it’ll be open to he’s able to give us this blanket promise because our prayers are going to be different. What we’re asking for is going to be different. And so he tells us to pray with this expectation that God is going to do what we ask. And sometimes this is where persistence in prayer changes us and shapes us and pays off. Have you ever had an idea that you thought was phenomenal until you told it to somebody out loud? Happens to me all the time.

I’ll tell Charla or Christy or Katie something, and you know that sounded a lot smarter in my head. Have you ever been praying and trying to tell God what you need, and once you start explaining what you think you need and why you think you need it, suddenly you have a hard time justifying it to God. Same. Lord, that sounded a lot better when I just thought about it. Probably because the reasons we convince ourselves we need that, as we’re praying it to God, we know that He knows that’s not true. So sometimes just spending an extended period of time getting real honest with God is going to change the things that we ask for. And as we persist in time, sometimes we’re praying for things we think we need, and God refines our perspective to where we understand that’s not what I needed.

And so we find ourselves, instead of asking for what we want and thought we needed, we just convinced ourselves it was a need, God is refining us and shaping us to ask and seek and knock for what we really do need and for what He wants to do in us. But God has called us to pray with the expectation that something is actually going to happen. To pray with the expectation that He is actually going to work in that circumstance. That I can pray God take care of this need. and he’s either going to take care of that need or he’s going to show me that it’s really not a need and lead me to pray for something else that he’s going to take care of he’s going to do something but we cannot come to God and pray with the expectation that he’s not going to hear me anyway okay, then why would we do it?

If we don’t think God hears us, if we don’t think God pays attention, if we don’t think God can be bothered to be concerned about little old me, why would we pray anyway? The only reason why we would ever pray is because we believe God hears us. He’s told us he would. As a matter of fact, his word says to come boldly before the throne of grace. that doesn’t mean that we walk in like we own the place but we come in like we’re going to see our father i’ve used this illustration before but i don’t know why but so many people in this room act weirded out about coming to my office like i’m scary but i’ve been told well it’s because it’s the pastor’s office i know but i’m i’m the pastor so it shouldn’t be scary. But some of you, a few of you still act like, oh, I’m sorry to bother you. Not Abigail. She just marches in. This is my daddy’s office.

Sometimes when I’m in the middle of a meeting, it’s not just Abigail, they’ll all do it. But this is my daddy’s office. And I try to keep them in line where they know they don’t own the place, pick up after yourselves, that sort of thing. But that’s kind of the way we’re supposed to approach the Lord. he’s told us because we’re his we come boldly before the throne of grace not terrified that he’s going to zap us if we knock but my dad is in there my father’s in there so i’m going to go ask him for what i need so we we come to him with the expectation that he’s going to do something that he’s going to hear us and that it’s in some way he is going to work out the situation or work through us for our good and for His glory. And then finally this morning, Jesus calls us to pray confidently.

This is a little bit different from praying expectantly, but He goes to this story, this illustration He uses about a son asking a father. And in some translations, it’ll say, if he asked him for bread, will he give him a stone? That would go over real well at my house. Here’s your rock. Some of my kids I can’t tease with. But if your son asks you for a fish, I’m hungry, can I have a fish to eat? Got to be able to trust that your father’s not going to hand you a serpent. You know that that’s not going to happen because I’m not going to have a snake in my hand. All right? They know. But he says, what kind of father would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or if you come and ask for an egg, because we have those all over the place. If you come and ask for an egg, gives you a scorpion instead. We also have those, but I also don’t carry them around.

Jesus’ point is, what kind of father does that? And really, unless somebody is seriously mentally ill, a father does not do those kinds of things. I read where one commentator was talking about some terrible people in history who have been fathers but have still not done things like this with their own kids. Well, and the example was used of Hitler, who was not a father, as incredibly evil as that man was. There are videos of him handing gifts to little children whose parents brought them to his house in the mountains, whatever. There are videos of him being kind to children, as awful, as evil as he was. The point is, who does that? Nobody in their right mind does that. We cannot approach the Father with the mindset that He’s that kind of Father, that He’s going to do those kinds of things.

When even those of us who are evil, and that’s on a spectrum there, because we’re evil compared to God, but it’s not saying we’re all as evil as Hitler or as evil as somebody who would do these things. But God is the best Father there is. Why would we approach Him thinking, oh, He’s going to give me a scorpion instead of an egg?

no we pray confidently not because of the circumstances not because we know how it’s all going to work out but because we trust him even an earthly father in his right mind would not treat his children this way and it’s kind of like the the contrast with the friend the neighbor who gives the bread finally it’s not saying God is like that it’s saying God is even better than that so if we could trust that an earthly father is going to even if he’s a bad man he’s going to give good gifts to his children if he’s in his right mind, how much more can we trust that God as the ultimate Father is going to give good gifts to his children when they come to him? God is even better than that. So we can pray confidently. And by the way, he doesn’t just say every gift. He’s going to give the Holy Spirit. This is literally an expression of God being with us at every moment.

it’s not just that God doesn’t okay a lot of people have the idea that God doesn’t care about them individually it’s not just that that is untrue but that is so untrue that God has given the Holy Spirit the third person of the Trinity to live inside you and go everywhere with you at every moment so that you are never out of communication with God so that you never lose that contact. And that kind of God who would go to those kinds of lengths to care for us and to protect us and to guide us is a God we can pray to confidently, not because we know how every circumstance is going to play out when we pray for it, but because we know who God is. We know what kind of father he is. And it makes me think of one of my favorite quotes from Adrian Rogers years ago, faith is not merely believing that God can. And we come to our prayer sometimes with that attitude.

I know God can do whatever I’m about to ask, but faith is not merely believing that God can, it’s trusting that God will do what He has said. And when God says He wants to give good gifts to His children, when God says He wants to care for us, when God says He will never leave us or forsake us, we can pray with confidence because we know who God is. I don’t know exactly how He’s going to answer the prayer, but I know that if he doesn’t do exactly what I’m asking, I know that what he gives me is going to be better in the long run. We trust God and we can pray confidently. We have this confidence that God will fulfill his promises. God has never not fulfilled his promises. Case in point, God spent thousands of years telling the Jewish people that he would send a Savior. And when the time came, he sent his only begotten son.

He didn’t send a lamb, he didn’t send a bull, he didn’t send a goat. He sent his only begotten son, who came willingly to the cross and took responsibility for my sin and for yours. So that he could take all of our punishment. He could make all the payment that was necessary so that you and I could be forgiven, our slate could be wiped clean. God goes to extraordinary lengths to keep his promises. Now, if you’re a believer, I hope that you will take what Jesus says to heart and pray persistently and expectantly and confidently.

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