Prayer review, Part 10: introduction; John 15:16.

Title: Prayer review, Part 10: introduction; John 15:16.

 

k. Should I be asking God for the same thing more than once? Matt 7:7-8.

 

Matt 7:7 "Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.

 

The verbs ask, seek, and knock are all present active imperatives which always indicate continuous action.

 

And the promises concerning these three activities are reiterated.

 

Matt 7:8 "For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened.

 

There are two words for “knock” in Greek, one which refers to an unceremonious pounding, the other to a polite knock, which is the one we have here.

 

So:

 “Keep on asking, and it shall be given to you; keep on seeking, and you shall find; keep on reverently knocking, and it shall be opened to you.”

 

This teaches us that if we don’t receive answers to prayer at once, we should persevere in prayer until we do, but the reason for success in this perseverance is not that God needs you to bother Him.

 

As we keep petitioning:

God may show us that it is not according to His will and so we change the petition.

 

We may not have the capacity yet, but in time we will, so keep the same petition.

 

God delivers in His perfect time and until that time continuous asking comforts the believer who trusts in Him.

 

1 Peter 5:6

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,

 

Therefore, the continuous asking, seeking, and knocking are not commanded because God needs to hear things more than once, as if He is playing a game with us (do you really want it), rather it is for our benefit. As I ask for something over and over throughout even years of time I recognize one or more things. I recognize that my petition was not according to His will and so I see the need to correct my perspective of God’s will. I recognize that I don’t have the capacity yet, but I keep asking, looking forward to the capacity. I recognize that God comforts me, for every time I ask I know He hears since I am a believer priest praying in the proper mechanics.

 

Matt 26:33

And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more.

 

 

Luke 18:1 Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart,

 

Luke 18:2 saying, "There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God, and did not respect man [therefore the judge is not a type of God].

 

These go hand in hand. The judge that has no regard for God will not regard men.

 

Luke 18:3 "And there was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, 'Give me legal protection from my opponent.'

 

Luke 18:4 "And for a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, 'Even though I do not fear God nor respect man,

 

Luke 18:5 yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, lest by continually coming she wear me out.' " 

 

Luke 18:6 And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge said;

 

If an unrighteous judge will grant a request due to continuous petitioning, how much more will a righteous judge grant a request to those who continuingly ask Him?

 

Luke 18:7 now shall not God bring about justice for His elect, who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them?

 

This doesn’t necessarily say that we raise the same petition day and night, but it doesn’t rule it out either. With all the adversity against ourselves and others from within and without we royal priests have much to pray for, so though we may ask for the same thing time and again, we may ask for many things time and again, until we see God’s will, receive encouragement, or recognize that the prayer was already answered and we just didn’t see it.

 

Luke 18:8 "I tell you that He will bring about justice for them speedily. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?"

 

I want to look at this passage more deeply.

 

Luke mentions widows more than do all the other Gospel writers combined.

 

In that day, widows usually had a difficult time making ends meet, in spite of the care God instructed His people to give them. The early church was serious about the care of Christian widows, which is a good example for us to follow today.

 

Satan has effectively removed much of the Church’s opportunity to support those in need as the government has infringed upon rights and violated constitutional principles in order to expand and gain more money and power.

 

In his article, The Reality of Welfare, Dr. Mark Cooray states:

The movement to centralized and generalized welfare drew its main inspiration from Benthamite philosophy [most happiness to the most people, no matter what the cost]. However, the two world wars acted as catalysts to this process by making governments feel that, in the situation of war, society needed to be organized and provided for by central management. The socialists who came to power after the Second World War found these arrangements totally conducive to their philosophy and proceeded to entrench the system permanently.

 

In 1940 [%EDITOR%].6 billion was spent on welfare by the feds [132 million people] in the US and in 2010 2 billion [308 million].

 

We have to see this parable in its Eastern setting. The "courtroom" was not a fine building but a tent that was moved from place to place as the judge covered his circuit. The judge, not the law, set the agenda; and he sat regally in the tent surrounded by his assistants. Anybody could watch the proceedings from the outside, but only those who were approved and accepted could have their cases tried. This usually meant bribing one of the assistants so that he would call the judge's attention to the case.

 

The widow had three obstacles to overcome. First being a woman she had little standing before the law. In the Palestinian society of our Lord's day, women did not go to court. Since she was a widow, she had no husband to stand with her in court. Finally, we must assume that she was poor and could not pay a bribe even if she wanted to. Widows did not always get the protection the law was supposed to afford them!

 

Now that we understand something of the setting of this parable, we can better understand what Jesus was teaching. Basically, He was encouraging His disciples to pray, and He did this by presenting three contrasts.

 

1. Praying contrasted with fainting or losing heart.

 

Luke 18:1 Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart,

 

 “lose heart” - evgkake,w[egkakeo] = to be weary, to lose courage, to faint.

 

If we don't pray, we will faint, lose heart, and get so discouraged that we will want to quit; it's as simple as that!

 

The context of this parable is mid-way through the Tribulation when the Abomination of Desolation enters the temple and sets himself up as god. Israel is told to not even pack a bag but to go straight into the wilderness for there will be the worst anti-Semitism the world has ever seen.

 

Yet there are examples given of what this may be like. In Luke 17 the historical examples of the antediluvian age and the age of Sodom and Gomorrah are given which show men and their society as a rotting corpse, and so shall it be in the years directly before our Lord’s second coming.

 

Though I wouldn’t venture to say our environments are like these extremes, but our society has portions of this. There is evil in the world and it will increase and decrease from time to time, or at least seem like it does, and that evil can slowly pollute our souls as we have already studied from Matt 6.

 

The ends of these ages were swift and unexpected. The flood as well as the fire and brimstone that rained on S&G were sudden and unexpected. So shall the Rapture be as well as the Second Coming of Christ.

 

If society is like a rotting corpse, then the "atmosphere" in which we live is being slowly polluted, and this is bound to affect our spiritual lives. But when we pray, we draw on the "pure air" of heaven, and this keeps us from fainting.

 

Again, prayer is no substitute for doctrine. They go hand in hand. Actually, the whole plan of God for your life is not made up of isolated parts, but of one seamless whole.

 

Think of what we’ve seen of the upper room discourse from John 13 to 17.

 

Servitude, love one another (4), love the Lord (7), bear fruit (6), guard doctrine (6), prayer (3), ministry of GHS (5), indwelling Trinity (3), peace (3), joy (6), abidefellowship (6), electionpredestination (1), persecution (4), Angelic conflict (1).

 

This is just the introduction of the mystery! There was more to come and for us more to come. All flow as one seamless whole, just like our Lord’s inner garment that was given to man, initially to a man whose job it was to crucify Him. So we are not to isolate doctrine and neglect prayer or to isolate prayer and neglect doctrine, we are to do all with the energy of a freed slave who loves his Master and desires to serve Him alone.

 

But what does it mean "always to pray" or to "pray without ceasing"? (1 Thess 5:17) It certainly doesn't mean that we should constantly be repeating prayers, because Jesus warned against that kind of praying (Matt 6:5-15).

 

Pray without ceasing (1 Thes 5:17) means to make prayer as natural to us as our regular breathing. It should be a natural habit in which we are always ready to pray.

 

Unless we are sick or smothering, we rarely think about our breathing, we just do it likewise with prayer - it should be the natural habit of our lives, the "atmosphere" in which we constantly live.

 

Prayer is much more than the words of our lips; it is the desires of our hearts, and our hearts are constantly "desiring" before Him, even if we never speak a word.

 

So, to "pray without ceasing" means to have such holy desires in our hearts, in the will of God, that we are constantly in loving communion with the Father, petitioning Him for ourselves, and others along with thanksgiving.

 

Do you want to pray - or faint? If our habit of prayer ceases the evil that envelopes us in this world will not. It cannot cease but only increase. Passages like 1 Tim 4 and 2 Tim 3 paint a dark picture of the last days.