"Prayer and Persistence" 

First Presbyterian Church

Peter S. Buehler

July 29, 2007

Luke 11:1-13 

I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything

because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence

he will get up and give him whatever he needs. 

This morning we look at the issue of persisting in prayer. Which is different from saying prayers, repeating phrases that are familiar. It is different from praying about something once or twice and leaving it up to God. Obviously it is different from not praying at all, or not taking time for prayer, on the assumption that God knows everything anyway and what will be will be. Persisting in prayer -- knocking at God's door over and over and over -- is the issue that is before us today. 

And it is an issue. It brings up many of our questions and concerns about prayer; the persistence that Jesus teaches challenges our understanding of prayer, our practice of prayer, our belief in prayer. Persisting in prayer goes to the heart of faith, to the heart of what we believe is possible with God. 

It is interesting that in Luke's Gospel, immediately after Jesus teaches the Lord's Prayer to his disciples, he speaks about persistence: asking, searching, and knocking. It is interesting because the Lord's Prayer is the most familiar of all Christian prayers -- and we have been known to just say it, to repeat it without thinking. By the same token, we have prayed this prayer weekly if not daily for years, for decades, for most of our lives -- and we have not stopped even though the kingdom has not come as we have asked -- so we could say we have persisted in this prayer. 

Yet Jesus takes us deeper. He teaches us to pray not just with our words but with our hearts, our whole selves. He is always teaching us to pray; we're always learning. 

So we join with Jesus' disciples in asking, Lord, teach us to pray. Not that we don't know how; not that the disciples didn't already know how. After all, they were good Jews, they had prayed strong, beautiful, faithful prayers all their lives.

But they wanted a Jesus prayer. John the Baptist had taught his disciples, what did Jesus teach? When it came to prayer, what mattered most? What did they absolutely need to know? 

He told them. Pray to God as Father, because God's love for you is deep and powerful and tender. Pray to God as God, because God's name is holy, and God's ways are not your ways. Pray that God's realm -- God's perfect justice, mercy, and love -- will be manifest in the world, and that all greed, hatred, violence, and suffering will end. Pray with confidence for daily bread -- that your needs will be met, physical and spiritual. Pray with confidence for forgiveness -- that God will forgives your sins daily, as God expects you daily to forgive. And pray with confidence for power to resist evil -- that God will stand with you when you are weak and give you the strength you need. 

Two thousand years later we pray the same prayer, we ask for the same things.

We keep on asking. Like children in the back seat of the car: Are we there yet? five minutes later, Are we there yet?-- our adult prayers also are childlike, repetitious and unceasing. And the amazing thing is that God wants this! God is not like us; God does not equate persistence with impertinence. In fact, Jesus tells us to do the opposite of what we adults assume we are supposed to do when it comes to prayer. Rather than teaching us to sit and wait and not ask, Jesus tells a parable about a persistent friend. He tells the disciples this parable after he teaches them his prayer, the Lord's Prayer, as if to say I taught you what to pray, now I'm going to tell you how to pray. 

We know the story. A guest arrives unexpectedly; it is midnight, the man was traveling late to avoid the heat of day; the host discovers he has no food in the house. Hospitality demands that the guest be fed; three small loaves of bread are needed for a proper meal. No shops are open, the host must be not only resourceful but determined, assertive, and loud. Banging on his friend's door, he yells up at the roof where everyone is sleeping, Open up! Wake up! I need bread and I need it now! I have a visitor! 

We put ourselves in this picture, somebody banging on our door at midnight, and aside from scaring us half to death and wondering if it's a bad dream, we have no trouble with the friend who yells back, Are you crazy? Come back in the morning! I'm in bed, the kids are in bed, the alarm system is on and I'm not moving! 

We can't believe it, he's not stopping. More knocking, more yelling. By now the whole neighborhood is awake and we know what everybody is thinking, You stingy so-and-so! Give the man his bread so we can all get some sleep! So we do. We're tempted to take the loaves of bread and pelt the man with them, but we resist the temptation because we wonder -- we hope -- we would do the same thing. 

Can you believe this parable that Jesus is telling? It is extreme! I admire this man who won't take no for an answer. Maybe because I have a hard time asking for things, especially when I know it's inconveniencing someone. I can't imagine myself knocking on someone's door at midnight. Just the thought of it makes me anxious. I'd much rather be the knock-ee than the knock-er: call me at midnight, wake me up, that's OK, I understand, I'll make up the sleep another time -- but don't ask me to go banging on my neighbor's door! If it's bread you want, I'll drive across town, I'll go to the 7-11 and get whatever you need, but don't ask me to wake somebody up. 

It's outrageous asking, and Jesus isn't saying we shouldn't, he's saying we should. So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. One of the most familiar of all New Testament verses, yet we wonder how far we should go in believing it, in investing ourselves in it. Is Jesus telling us to be this persistent, this dogged in prayer, in our prayers? 

In his book, Deepening Your Conversation With God, Ben Patterson, chaplain at Westmont, tells about a friend who in Ben's words is "the best salesman I know," a man who "simply will not be turned away." His name is Pete. Ben recounts that Pete once called on a potential client who wanted nothing to do with him. He cursed when Pete walked through the door, shouting, "Get out of here, you (blank, blank), and don't let me ever see you walk through the front door again!"

Pete went outside and analyzed what the man had said -- never to walk in the front door again -- so he went around and walked through the back door. The business owner exploded, "Can't you hear? I told you to get the (blank, blank) out of here and never to come back again." "No, you didn't," said Pete. "You said never to come in the front door again. I came in the back door." The man began to argue, but couldn't help himself. He started to laugh, then invited Pete into his office, after which Pete closed the deal. 

What audacity! And, Jesus would add, What faithfulness. 

We hesitate, we hold back, wondering if we're getting a mixed message. After all, doesn't the Lord himself say that God knows our prayers before we ask them (Matthew 6:8)? Why then all the asking, why the persisting? Isn't faith a matter of simply believing -- trusting that God knows what's best for us, therefore we need not and should not make a lot of demands? Isn't faith a matter of accepting -- learning to take what life gives us, growing in gratitude for the blessings we already have? Aren't there a lot more people with far more serious needs; for that reason, shouldn't we keep our prayers to ourselves? 

Shouldn't we avoid asking for what we really want? After all, what happens when our prayer goes unanswered, will we not feel discouraged and disillusioned? Is our faith not proven stronger when we keep our prayers easier -- easier for God to answer, easier for God to grant? 

This is a tender subject for many of us. John Calvin writes: We must repeat the same supplications not twice or three times only, but as often as we have need, a hundred and a thousand times…We must never be weary in waiting for God's help. 

But we are weary! Some of us have prayed the same thing a thousand times and we are weary! We have come before the throne of grace for years, no wonder God knows our prayers before we ask -- it's the same one! We're weary -- but frankly we're also worried, because we honestly don't know if we're asking for something that's possible or not, we don't know if it's a good prayer or not, if it's theologically correct or not, it just happens to be what's uppermost in our hearts all the time, and therefore we just want to keep asking. God, are you listening? 

This is a tender subject for many of us. Persistent prayer, the way the Lord Jesus encourages his disciples to pray, brings up for us what is deepest in us, in our souls. It brings up for us what we most long for. It brings up for us why faith is so hard sometimes, so unreasonable, because Christ tells us to ask his Father for unreasonable things, unrealistic things, impossible things, wonderful, beautiful, heavenly, profoundly good and grace-filled things! 

And this is where we really start listening, because the Lord Jesus says, Don't you know -- your Father in heaven is not like that friend who tells you to go away when you pound on his door at midnight! Not at all! Your Father in heaven promises audacious things, not little things. "For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." 

The amazing thing about prayer, about prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, is the more we keep at it, the more we persist, the more precious it becomes. The more we pray, the wider we open our hearts, the more freely we share our lives with God, the more glad we are to pray.The more we allow the Holy Spirit into our lives, leaving no door closed, keeping no prayer secret, the more keenly we realize that God is not distant, but very close -- not perturbed with our persistence but present with us in infinite kindness and undying love. 

The amazing thing about prayer is not that we ought to pray, or that we should pray, or that we'd all be better Christians if we spent more time praying. The amazing thing about prayer is that it's the conversation that God initiates and God wants and God waits for. It's the gift given to those who seek. Lord, teach us to pray. The Lord's response, his teaching, the lesson we learn and keep relearning, is that we should pray our prayers, our deepest prayers, all our prayers, for in them we hear God's heart. 

So we ask, Does God need to be coaxed? Does our persistence overcome God's reluctance? If we just keep asking will God give us what we want? 

Does prayer change God's mind? I don't know. Maybe so. God's love is so great, and in my experience people who are loving are people who are willing to change their minds -- so maybe also God. Jesus wouldn't tell us to ask, seek, and knock if God were not a God who doesn't mind when we bang on his door. 

I don't know for sure that our prayers change God's mind. I do know for certain that prayer changes my mind. It changes our minds, over and over again. It is prayer that opens our eyes to how God is answering our needs; it is prayer that opens our hearts to God's grace and forgiveness, freeing us to forgive others;

it is prayer that gives us the strength we need to persist, to be faithful in every time of struggle. 

Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not lose heart. Let us pray always. 

Amen.