While I’m the last one to be telling people anything about prayer, I would say I agree with Dean. The little that I do know about praying, I have learned by praying. One of my favorite verses on prayer is in Romans 8:26, “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words…” You see that? When we pray, he helps us to pray. Doesn’t say, “While you’re sitting there trying to figure out how prayer works.” It is while we are mired in our weakness that we are helped. And for me, there’s nothing like praying to remind me of my weak faith, to remind me that I do not know how to pray.
I think it is one of the reasons why Jesus, in both his explicit teachings on prayer in the Gospel of Luke, says something about learning to be persistent. Luke chapter 18 opens with, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” He then goes on to tell the comical story (comical to me at least) of a widow who seeks justice from a judge “who neither feared God nor cared what people thought.”
Initially, he refuses her, but finally he relents, saying to himself, “Even though I do not fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me.” C’mon, that’s pretty funny. That sentiment there, “… because this widow keeps bothering me,” reminds me of another of my favorite verses on prayer. Not so coincidentally, it also speaks of persistence.
Starting at the second half of Isaiah 62:6, “… You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest, until he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.”
What caught my eye was this part, “… and give him no rest…”
Just last week, I heard about a desperate situation of a distant relative. Neither of his parents believe in God, so I decided to spend the night praying for him, thinking, “This is a way I can stand in for his parents.” The next couple days, I expected his situation to change. It didn’t. A part of me wondered, “What’s the point?”
What caught my eye in Isaiah 62 is the idea that is re-enforced by Jesus in Luke 18: By prayer, I am to bother God. When I thought of this astounding invitation, an invitation to bother God, the only human parallel that made any sense was that of a loving parent to a child. Picture a three year old who goes, “Dad, dad, dad… dad, dad.” Until the dad says, “Okay, okay, what? Let me see.” Or a father telling his daughter, who is leaving on her first big trip with her friends, “No matter what it is or what time it is, even if you think it is too small, if you need anything, call me. You promise?” Only a loving parent does this.
Faith is not just believing that he exists and that he hears. Faith is believing that he is a loving Father who cares about you more than you can ever fathom. By praying, I wrestle with this unbelievable, and yet most important truth. God is my Father. It is more important than anything I will pray for. And in persistent prayer, I am being helped to believe it. I keep forgetting that that’s the point.
The passage on prayer in Luke 18 ends with, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” When the Son of Man comes, let’s have him find us in persistent prayer.