A Study of the Book of Luke
Sermon # 29

“Persistent Prayer”

Luke 11: 5-13 

        Do you ever feel impatient with God? Does He seem late in answering your requests or meeting your needs?  Certainly all of us as believer’s had questions concerning prayer at some point in our Christian life. Why are we to continue to pray for something after if we have already prayed and we are believing God for the answer? Isn’t that unbelief? What about those times when we pray and we are certain of an answer, and yet no answer is forthcoming? We are confident that it is God’s will but nothing happens. What are we to do?

In Luke 11:1-4 in answer to the disciples request “Lord teach us to pray,” Jesus gave a  prayer that is sometimes called “The Lord’s Prayer.” This prayer was more than just a prayer to be repeated it was to serve as a blueprint of all prayer that would be acceptable to God. While it is not wrong to recite the prayer, it is more important to understand its principles.

Now having given the disciples a pattern for prayer, the Lord continues his instruction by telling a story.  But why does he give us this parable?

 
1. WE ARE TO PRAY SHAMELESSLY  vv. 5-8
”And He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves; (6)for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him'….”

        The poor unprepared host now faces a dilemma. His guest is hungry after such a long and exhausting journey and it is his duty as host to provide a meal. Not to do so would not only bring shame upon himself and his family but to the village as a whole. But what is he to do. Through this man cannot supply the need himself he knows of another who can and will supply this need. Jesus continues the story in verse seven, “… and he will answer from within and say, "Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you'? (8) I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.”

We can imagine Jesus saying to His listeners, “Can you imagine a friend who would react in such a way?” and of course in so doing, he expected a negative reply. “No of course not!”  Jesus is not comparing God to an sleepy, selfish and angry neighbor. He is contrasting the two He is telling the disciples that God if a neighbor can on the basis of friendship and social etiquette, be persuaded to met the needs of a friend, how much more will your father in heaven meet the needs of his children.

But does verse eight teach that we must keep beating on God ‘s door until he answers? That we must overcome God’s unwillingness to act, of course not. The meaning of the Greek word (anaideian) translated “importunity” (KJV, RSV)  and as “persistence” (NKJV, NIV) is  the key to understanding the lesson that Jesus is teaching here. This is the only time this word appears in the entire New Testament. The Greek word carries the idea of “shamelessness,” the question is which of the men in this story are shameless. Some point to the neighbor who arose and gave his friend bread, saying that he did so to avoid bringing shame to the village by breaking the rules of hospitality. According to the code of hospitality of that day

The other alternative is that it refers to the man who came making the request. He was shameless in his persistence, continuing his pleading until his friend responded.

2. WE ARE TO PRAY PASSIONATELY   vv. 9-10
"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.”

        Each of the three actions, asking, seeking and knocking occurs in the present tense in the original Greek language. It thus literally; “Keep Asking, Keep Seeking and Keep Knocking.”

There is a progression in this persistence, asking, seeking and knocking. “Asking means making a simple request. Seeking implies a stronger desire and a more definite kind of request. It is something that takes time. It implies a greater sense of urgency. Knocking shows determination to get an answer.” [The Complete Biblical Library. The New Testament Study Bible – Luke. Vol. 4 (Springfield, Missouri: The Complete Biblical Library, 1988) p. 351]

        In verse ten we are told, “ For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” The answer to each of the actions is also noted in the present tense, ask- receive, seek-find, and knocks-opened. All three of these principles are imperatives; in which our heavenly Father not only hears our prayers but promises to answer each and every prayer, in his time, to his honor and to our joy and amazement.

By a continued practice of asking, seeking and knocking we break the habit where prayer is no longer just an option, or is for emergency use only. Don’t just come to God with your midnight emergency keep an open line of communication with your father.  

        The truth behind this persistence is that we will not continue to ask if we do not really feel a need or if we believe we can do it own our own.

“George Muller, the founder of the great Christian orphanage work in England In the nineteenth century, was a man of prayer. He knew the importance of keeping at a prayer even when the answer seemed to be delayed. When he was young he began to pray that two of his friends might be converted. He prayed for them every day for more than sixty years. One of the men was converted shortly before his death at what was probably the last service that Mueller held. The other was converted within a year of his death. We, too, need to pray and not give up. We need to be like George Mueller.” [James Montgomery Boice. “The Parables of Jesus.” (Chicago: Moody, 1983) p. 158]

But more is being taught here than a mere repetition of the same request over and over again. As we keep on asking we are to keep on seeking and in this seeking and a part of this seeking is seeking to discover what the will of God is in this matter. 

 3. WE ARE TO PRAY EXPECTANTLY   vv. 11-13

 “If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? (12) Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

        From the first story we learned that God does answer prayer, and from this second analogy we learn that his answers are always good ones. Because God is a good God, a loving heavenly father, He can be expected to answer our prayers, but in such a way that it is for our highest good.

        The bottom line of the whole matter is now given in verse thirteen,  “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!" Do you as a parent ever worry about the answers that give to your child? When I say yes and give them what they want, am I spoiling them? Or when I say no, was my denial selfish or shortsighted. We do the best we can, but sometimes our best is just not good enough. But our heavenly father knows no such limits. God never says no because he is distracted, exhausted or irritable.

I want to just briefly  touch on the matter indicted by the promise found in the latter part of this verse, that the “… heavenly Father (will) give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!" Is this a promise of a second blessing to saved believer’s? Obviously not because the coming of the Holy Spirit as presented in the book of Acts had not yet accorded. You can’t have a second occurrence until the first has occurred. I believe context reveals to us rather that it speaks to the fact that God loves for his children to develop the habit of asking His help, but he does not leave us trapped by our own limited perception of the situation but makes the Holy Spirit available to present our needs to the Father. I think this may have been what Paul had in mind when he says in letter to the Romans (8:26), “And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don’t always (even) know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groaning that can not be expressed in words.” (NLT).

Conclusion

        Those of us who are parents do our best to provide for our children. We pay for there housing and upkeep, we finance their education; we gladly pay all the expenses necessary for them to live. But the one thing that we cannot give our children unless they want it is a relationship. So it is with God, he desires a relationship with you, he extends an invitation for a relationship, but it is up to you to accept his invitation or not.