Keep Praying

Luke 18:1-8

I saw a story recently about a couple of Chinese ladies who were sad and tired because there was no church close to them. They had to walk several miles to a different village every time they wanted to go to church. They prayed for many months that God would lead someone to build a church in their village so it would be closer. Then one day one of the ladies said, “You know what, I think God wants us to build that church ourselves!” That is how God answered their persistent prayer. He inspired them to build. Their husbands helped them. Then they had to get permission from the government.

Actually they just started building the church and then a government official noticed the new building and asked them to explain. They said “church” and he said you can’t do that without permission! Every new church has to be registered with the official state church. So they registered and got permission. But they also gave thanks that their village is so far from the government offices that there is not much supervision. Because of that they often invited real gospel preaching pastors from the underground churches who would come and give real biblical messages instead of the political drivel the state requires. So they persisted in preaching the gospel in spite of an unjust government that would have liked to stop them.

Then they prayed about how to build up their church membership. These same two ladies decided to go to the nearby hospital and pray for patients. They specifically wanted to pray for patients who had no hope of recovery. After a year they had 200 new people in their little church. They prayed persistently for one man for 20 days straight, even as the man’s family grew angry about the prayers, saying they were making the other gods angry. But now he and his family are in the new church praising Jesus for his healing.¹

The parable of the persistent widow is intended to teach the disciples and us that we should keep on praying, even while it looks like God isn’t going to answer the way we want him to. Jesus used the unusual example of an unjust judge to prove that God who is very just is actually eager to answer our prayers. The point must be that if persistence pays off with a corrupt human of limited power, how much more will it pay off with a just God of infinite power. That’s the purpose of the parable, to encourage Christians to persevere in their faith against all odds. But it also has two applications concerning justice itself.

First, the juxtaposition of a corrupt judge with a just God implies that God’s will is at work even in a corrupt world. The judge’s job is to do justice, and by God, he will do justice by the time the widow is finished with him. Elsewhere, the Bible teaches that the civil authorities serve by God’s authorization, whether they acknowledge it or not (John 19:11; Romans 13:1; 1 Peter 2:13). So there is hope that even in the midst of systemic injustice, justice may be done.

A Christian leader’s job is to work toward that hope at all times. We cannot right every wrong in the world in our lifetimes. But we must never give up hope, and never stop working for the greater good in the midst of the imperfect systems where our work occurs. Legislators, for example, seldom have a choice of voting for a good bill versus a bad bill. Usually the best they can do is to vote for bills that do more good than bad. But they also must continually look for opportunities to bring bills to a vote that do even less harm and even more good.

In our immediate context, we could say that we ought to be persistent not just in praying for God to make things right, but also in being part of the solution. We must persist in seeking truth and justice to prevail as we live together in Christ. This connects with what I said last week about being a confessional community that is open and transparent and supportive of discipleship and Christian growth. The Christian church is a special community with a mandate from God to show the world what love really looks like and how it behaves. We must persist in that just as much as in prayer. Notice the widow wasn’t just praying to God in the parable. She was going after the unjust judge himself, believing that justice would prevail if she just kept at it. She had faith in God for that, which leads to the second point.

The second point is that only God can bring about justice in a corrupt world. That is why we must pray and not give up in our work. God can bring miraculous justice in a corrupt world, just as God can bring miraculous healing in a sick world. Suddenly, the Berlin wall opens, the apartheid regime crumbles, peace breaks out. In the parable of the persistent widow, God does not visibly or obviously intervene. It looks like the widow’s persistence alone leads the judge to act justly after all. But Jesus indicates that God is the unseen actor. “Will not God grant justice for his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?”²

Persisting/perseverance is perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of the Christian life, and yet it is such a central part of it. In our flesh we hate waiting. Who wants to have to keep crying out day and night for one thing? Waiting and persisting in the Lord's strength is both a sacrifice (of the fleshly nature) and a testing of our faith in a very important and extremely effective way. It is in the active "waiting process" that we can very rapidly grow in our faith, but that is only if we, with frequent prayer, keep trusting the Lord in spite of it looking at times like we might even be going backwards. Christians are often at their most admirable when they persist at seeking justice without malice and have a determined resolve and trust in the Lord in the face of repeated adversity.

The Bible states that this patient waiting is a process in which there is a very special work being done by the Lord in that Christian who is being "worked on" (James 1:4): "But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect, lacking nothing". This is an amazing scripture that underscores how essential persistence/waiting is in the making of a complete Christian.

Sometimes we Christians get confused about God's sovereignty when it appears that evil triumphs and justice takes too long. Yet as the above commentary states, "Civil authorities serve by God's authorization", whether they are aware of it or not, and that includes evil authorities despite at most times exercising their own evil free will or evil commands. It is sometimes the long process to justice that is more precious than the justice itself, but it makes little sense to us at the time because we fail to recognize the spiritual dimension to it all.³

But after the parable, why would Jesus ask this question: When the son of man comes will he find faith on the earth? How could faith fail? Was he really expressing a concern that the whole church could wither and die on the vine?

The context of this parable starts with a conversation immediately preceding it during which our Savior describes The Day of His Second Coming, including some sobering words about the fact that ALL believers living in the Last Days are going to experience a world as depraved as Noah's. Undoubtedly, we perhaps, or they if it comes later, will all experience injuries and injustices that will be so extreme as to be absurd (e.g., the neglected widow bringing her petition to a Judge with no compassion for her or regard for God IS absurd!) Anyway, the temptation for believers in that period will be to succumb to doubt and let our spiritual disciplines fall by the wayside. That is how faith could fail. Jesus is suggesting that the possibility that the whole church could wither and die on the vine is a very real possibility, unless we persist in faith, in prayer and in seeking justice.

I often quote this verse to say something about the end-times debate. You know some people think that all the Christians are leaving the earth in a rapture that takes believers right out of the tribulation period and spares us the suffering. Other believe that Christians will remain on earth during the tribulation. Otherwise how will anyone else be saved by the preaching of the gospel that explains what is going on and how close the end is? Still others believe that there actually is no rapture at all, but that the Church will just complete its mission of spreading the gospel to all the earth and all the world’s cultures will be transformed until they fully reflect the Kingdom of God.

Nobody really knows which scenario is most accurate. And I think Jesus’ question in this parable gives us a key to understanding why nobody knows. Here’s my take. Whether or not the Son of Man finds faith on the earth when he returns may really and truly depend upon the faithfulness of his Church in carrying out the mission assigned to us. If the Church fails in its mission, so that the Son of Man does in fact not find any active faith at work in the depraved world when he returns, then he will have to remove whatever Christians there are, as dead in their faith as they may be. And that will look like the first rapture scenario.

Or, the church will be hard at work when the Son of Man returns, but the work will not yet be finished because of the weedy soil in which the gospel is growing. In that case, some believing Christians will still be preaching the gospel of faith that saves, in a depraved world full of injustice, all the way through the tribulation until Jesus sets everything in order. Or, if the Church really persists in its work and excels at winning new converts, perhaps when it is time for Jesus to come again and take his throne, the world to which he comes will be actually ready to welcome him instead of still fighting against him. Maybe the answer to Jesus’ question really is up to us.

So, how THEN - and NOW - shall we live? By keeping our hope and trust in God, who being God and therefore GREATER than any worldly judge and SUPREMELY PERFECT in HIS justice and mercy, sees and knows everything and will "provide justice for His chosen ones" - "and quickly!" God does not ignore His children who are distinguished by their ongoing relationship through Christ. And this relationship is practically exercised in prayer. (Remember that prayer is as much a means by which God sustains us as it is a way for us to lay our anxious thoughts and concerns before God.)

He has bound Himself to us in the covenant of faith and He will redeem us on every level. We may not see it in "our" timing or in the manner that our outrage desires, but Jesus tells us to be assured, our Heavenly Father will set things absolutely right in His perfect timing. After praying about the abuse and doing what is right and proper in the eyes of the Law to protect oneself and the children, we then need to let the problem find its ultimate resolution in God's hands.⁴

¹Extreme Devotion, Voice of the Martyrs, Thomas Nelson, January, 2002, p. 138

²http://www.theologyofwork.org/new-testament/luke/power-and-leadership/persistence-the-parable-of-the-persistent-widow-luke-181-8/

³Comment from “Jimbo” on the same web site as above: www.theologyofwork.org

⁴Comment from “Pamela C. Johnson” on the same web site as above: www.theologyofwork.org