Let’s pray together. Father, we thank you that your spirit gives us life and your spirit gives us the very wisdom of Christ to know how to number our days, how to best spend our time, our energy, the gifts you’ve given us for your kingdom. Lord, thank you that you’ve called us to a higher calling in Christ Jesus and all of our days, even the ones that feel insignificant, they count, they matter. Lord, help us to use all we have and value all we have and make much of it for the kingdom of God and for the name of Jesus. Lord, we thank you for your perfect gift. We thank you for the perfect gift of Jesus in whom we have life, in whom we have forgiveness, in whom we have just eternal love and fellowship with you. We pray that we would gladly offer up, Lord, the best of what we have in our finances to say that we love you and we want to give you all we have. So we bless our tithe, our offering. We trust that you are our provider, Lord. We pray these things. In Jesus name. Amen.

Well, good evening. It’s good to be with you and being family, being family Sunday again. I’m not going to preach out of Revelation. I started preparing a sermon, Revelation again this weekend. I thought it’s family Sunday. And so I preaching on, I think the most important subject may be in the Christian life, but less symbolism to follow with and understand as we go, perhaps.

But it’s good to be with you. It’s good to be in God’s word and children. I want you to pay attention. I want you to sit up and see what God wants to say to you this evening as well. Jesus wants to talk to you, too, about what it means to follow him. So we’re going to be in Luke chapter 18. Luke chapter 18, verses one through eight.

And it says Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray. And not lose heart. He said in a certain city, there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, give me justice against my adversary. For a while, he refused. But afterward, he said to himself, though I’m not I neither fear God nor respect man yet, because this widow keeps bothering me, I’ll give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming. And the Lord said, hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the son of man comes. Will he find faith? On earth. So we’re not in Revelation, but then again, we’re Revelation adjacent, if you will. And here’s why the previous passage in Luke, Luke chapter 17, towards the end, Jesus talks about the end times. He talks about what one will be the fall of Jerusalem. In A.D. 70. But again, as we’re learning it in Revelation, it has its ultimate fulfillment when Jesus returns. So what is the thing that Jesus says to his disciples, to us after giving this account of what, as you know, because we’ve been in Revelation, seems oftentimes to be disheartening. Why? Because often it seems. It seems like the enemy’s winning. Right. And it’s not even just a revelation thing. It’s in any era in human history thing. Often it can feel like the spiritual struggle to follow Jesus is too hard. And it feels like I’m not winning. And it feels like the enemy’s greater than I can bear. And it feels like I can’t really endure.

And Jesus gives us, though, in this passage, and I think it’s so important that you see it and I see it. He gives us these genuine markers for all of his people in every era of human history of how we know we’re really following Christ.

And it’s not Bible study. I think Bible study is great. Right. We should study the Bible. We talk about that all the time. But there is a certain way to study. The Bible and people do it in just such a way that it’s like intellectual satisfaction. Right. Like you can get on YouTube or find a million podcasts or blogs. And it’s someone massaging their own ego about how much they can, you know, you know, articulate in regards to doctrine and theology. And it’s not helpful.

It’s not outward obedience. Like, how much can you do for God? Here’s the proof of how much you really love God is can you serve God in the hard time? Or can you not do certain things? That’s not really what Jesus says here. What Jesus says is really the qualifier for someone that’s truly a genuine Christian. And it can be seen in the hardest struggles of life is this. They pray. They pray. And even that I have to qualify it because there is a kind of prayer. That’s like wrote, you know, it’s liturgical. Like I pray these prayers because I’ve always been told to pray these prayers. And it’s kind of its own works righteousness because I said these prayers to kind of get God off my back for the day. I’m doing the thing I think I’m supposed to be doing. It’s repetitious. You know, plenty of, you know, Catholics have certain prayers. They pray. My grandmother used to have like a prayer to a certain saint. If you lose something in your house, you know, you pray this little prayer and the saint, whatever his name was, helps you. You find the thing, right? Certainly outside of Christianity, there are rote prayers. Muslims faithfully pray in the same direction, the same time every day. So what’s Jesus talking about that’s qualitatively different that identifies you as a father of Christ? And it’s this. It’s persevering prayer. It’s persevering prayer. Jesus says we ought always pray and never lose heart. So we’re the kind of people that pray always. Now, that doesn’t mean like 24 hours a day. Like I can’t drive a car. I can’t work. I can’t feed myself because I’m praying like I’m not. I can’t. I’m praying. Leave me alone. Doesn’t mean that. It just means the intervals in between you living your life and you talking to God are really short and small. It’s an odd thing for you to go. Many minutes without lifting up a prayer to God. You always are praying. You’re not long in silence towards the father. This internal dialogue in the spirit, it’s going on all the time. And secondly, you don’t lose heart in that endeavor. You’re never so discouraged by anything that happens in life that you quit the work of prayer. You never cease. You never lose heart. You never lose heart in the endeavor. So I think that’s a that’s a that’s an accurate picture or portrayal of a genuine follower of Jesus that always prays and never loses heart, no matter what the spiritual burden and trial is. So what you have to do and I have to do is hold up that perfect portrait that Jesus just drew and then hold up your face and say, does my Christian discipleship look like the Christian discipleship? Jesus just described.

So then why don’t you and I pray always and never lose heart? Why would you and I cease to pray? Why would you and I cease to be discouraged? Well, I think Jesus shows us here in the first reason why it’s simply this. We think about God wrongly. We have a we have a picture of God in our head. That’s incredible. That’s incredibly inaccurate.

Verse two. It says in a certain city, there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, give me justice against my adversary. For a while, he refused. But afterward, he said to himself, though I neither fear God nor respect man yet, because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual. Coming. So there’s this judge, there’s this sort of magistrate that Jesus is telling in this story. And this judge does not fear God. So he doesn’t care about what’s right according to, you know, Jewish standards of the Mosaic law. He doesn’t care about, you know, some judgment to come. He doesn’t care about fairness and whether or not he’s being fair in the sight of God. He doesn’t care. And then he doesn’t even have respect for man. So he’s not even trying to, like, keep up appearances to appear like a righteous judge, which is kind of refreshing, given the kind of politicians we have. At least he’s just honest. Like, he doesn’t care. He’s just doing it for him. He’s not a just judge.

And this this widow. She’s been taken advantage of probably because she’s a widow and she needs legal help. For some wrong done to her. And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care. He’s not listening. And I want to ask you a question. How often do we project that same image on God? Perhaps we don’t think he’s this immoral villain. But how often, and I think this is the point of what Jesus is saying, we imagine that God is kind of aloof. He’s not really. He’s not really approachable. He really wished we weren’t talking to him. We feel like there’s something disqualifying in me as the one praying as to why God wouldn’t listen to me. They’re like these other notable, you know, more pure Christians that God’s paying attention to. But God’s far off when it comes to my prayers.

And when we look at the Psalms, we see something of an identification. That David would have with that. In Psalm chapter 13, the psalmist says, How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? So it’s not a foreign feeling for a Christian. And I think this is a really, really important lesson. This is not a foreign feeling for a Christian. And if you’ve ever prayed for. A wandering child that that you love dearly, that doesn’t know the Lord. If you’ve prayed for a family member or a friend that, gosh, you just you hurt for them and you want to see them know the Lord. If you’ve ever wrestled against some great sin that seems to keep winning over you. Right. Perhaps there’s been a season in your life where finances are really tight and you’re like, God, I’m pretty sure you don’t care here. Perhaps it’s a it’s a it’s your own marriage that that seems to maybe live on the rocks. And certainly when we think about like in times persecution and we think about hostility in the culture and kingdom affairs, it’s really easy to come to the same conclusion that I think Jesus is getting out and that we see David, you know, kind of resonates with him and his prayers. God, you don’t care. You really don’t care.

And John Calvin says this. God does not all at once grant assistance to his people because he chooses to be, as it were, wearied out by prayers. I love that. And that how however wretched and despicable may be the condition of those who pray to him. Yet if they do not desist from the uninterrupted exercise of prayer, he will at length regard them and relieve their necessities. Entertaining this conviction, let us contend against our impatience so that the long delay may not induce us to discontinue in our prayers. You see what he’s saying? He’s saying God often will show himself to be a hard, uncaring God so that your faith will say back to God. No, I know that’s not true. God pretends to be careless so that you and your faith will go, no, Lord, you’re growing me here. You’re testing me. I believe you’re not that thing. And I will grow and I will believe you will come through in your own time. And I want to say to you, it’s your continuing to pray. It’s your willingness to pray or your willingness to give up in the pursuit of prayer that shows the nature of your of my faith. When I stop praying. When I stop praying. When I stop praying for my lost family member, when I stop praying for the spiritual vitality of Providence Fellowship, when I when I when I stop attempting to persevere in a wicked culture and asking God to help me, it becomes hard proof. I really don’t believe God’s going to do anything about it. That’s what that shows about our faith when we stop praying. Now, there’s a huge footnote here, and here’s a huge footnote. This is a difficult admonition to give to us if we can’t say we were ever involved in the business of praying in the first place. You can’t receive a correction to start doing something again if you never did it at all. So I think I have to go back here and say to us as Christians, didn’t you know? Didn’t we know it is our chief business to be praying? I have to go back and say, Christian, didn’t. You know that God would have you shake on the gates of heaven all the time. And it’s a high calling that he’s given you that you and I could affect change for his kingdom by our prayers.

So begin in your prayers and then continue on in your prayers, despite and this is it, despite the apparent absence of fruit you wished you saw. You wished you saw certainly in the timing. You wish you saw it to pray at the start, but to give up along the way. That’s not faith. That’s well-wishing. That’s like flicking a coin in a fountain. Right. It feels good in the moment. I’m going to get what I want. I didn’t get it the way I wanted the timing I wanted. Forget it. Such kind of praying is more about me being satisfied with what I want than about God showing up in God’s way and God’s timing for his glory.

Mark chapter 10.

Talks about the blind man when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, saying, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, son of David. Have mercy on me. Friend, are you willing to be quiet? When you get discouraged in the work of prayer? Are you willing to shut up as it were because you’re not getting the answers? Are you willing to be so dignified that you’ll be quiet? And I think this is this is difficult for us because we live in a microwave society. Right. And this is very hard spiritual correction because we want it now. And I want it my way. And if it’s not happening now and it’s not happening my way, it must not be happening. But friends, again, God will often God will often appear distant. He’ll appear to be one who doesn’t want to answer all to keep our faith begging and believing until he does. I think it was Richard Sibbes who said that, that God will put on a mask until your faith demands he take it off. I really believe. I really believe. I really believe what we pray, how we pray, how often we pray reveals the nature, the nature of our faith.

Do you long for God that you would not only pray about a thing, but pray through a thing? It’s easy to pray about a thing. Oh, but. It’s a work of faith to play through a thing for days, for weeks, for months, for years in in in in in tear soaked prayer. God, I’m not I’m not giving up because I know who you are.

One of the best books I’ve read on prayer is called Old Paths, New Power by a man named Daniel Henderson. And he says in that book, desperation is a catalyst for a praying life. How do you like that? Desperation is a catalyst for a praying life. Whether the crisis is a new and unfolding awareness of one’s need for God or a calamity that brings brokenness and a disdain for self-sufficiency. God uses it to embed new conviction about the imperative of prayer.

Friend, don’t we? Don’t we know? Know that the Christian life, the whole thing is just one big crisis moment because I cannot affect change to my own salvation. I cannot affect change to my own growth in Christ, nor can I affect it in you, nor can I affect it in a lost person, nor can we in and of ourselves bring about any change. It’s only when God shows up and his people are hungry and thirsty and desperate and willing to sacrifice time and energy and sleep and whatever it takes to see. It’s only when God shows up.

He in that same book talks about how he was on an airplane once just sitting there convicted because he’d spent so much of his pastoral ministry so invested in organizational leadership and all the tips and tricks of how to grow a business. And he realized he had been doing ministry like a powerboat. But he said he was committed from that point on to being a sailboat. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. If God’s spirit doesn’t blow, then it’s not going to happen. And he needs to get back on his knees and start praying for God to show up.

Be it analog or digital, get yourself a prayer journal, get yourself a prayer journal. It’s amazing that as important as prayer is for the Christian, it’s incredibly practical the way we do it. Get a prayer journal. Whether you’ve got an iPhone or an Android, there’s some stock notes app that came on that phone. If you don’t like it, there’s 15 more you could download, I’m sure. Go to the store and get a little notebook, whatever, and begin to write down the things for which you know God would have you in the spirit pray that his kingdom may come. And you fill that notebook with the names of your lost coworkers and you fill that notebook with the sins you struggle and you fill that notebook with the things you want. And you pray and you pray and you pray and you pray and you believe God’s going to do it. And even to come down simply here, and I think sometimes we make things far more complicated than they are. What is what does it mean to even to pray? And that, I think, is as simple as it could be. Just if you’ve ever used the acronym acts. I know sometimes people say, well, I don’t know where to start in prayer. It’s it’s really easy. Just just acts. Acts, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. Start by adoring God for something he’s worthy of. And there’s a million. Move on to confession, something that you’ve struggled with your sin. There’s a million of those, too. And then thank God for something and then move on to supplication or session where you both pray for yourself and the needs around you and give that the best of yourself. I don’t know that there’s a there’s a better thing I could stand up here and say to you is God. People give the best of yourself to your prayer life. I don’t know if I said it a while back. Maybe I did, but it’s worth repeating. A man is not greater than his prayer life. No man, no woman is greater than their prayer life. Let the spirit sanctify you as you do what feels like really slow, really hard, inefficient. Sometimes useless work. But prayer is the stuff through which God works.

It’s the most important work you will or won’t do in your lifetime. Prayer is the most important work you will or you’ll choose not to do in your lifetime. Slow down. Slow down. Maybe you need to go. Maybe you need to go get the analog journal because your phone is a horrible form of addiction of looking at junk on the Internet or you’re obsessed with social media and you just need to get rid of that. I don’t know. But slow down. Slow down. We’ve talked about this. I think we stay so busy and we’re so fast paced. We don’t even have the time to even consider doing this great work because the devil’s God is so busy doing everything else. Slow down. Pray. And then I would say to you men, you are, and I’m saying it to me too, I need this rebuke sometimes. You are. We are failing our families if we’re not praying with our families daily. Pray with your children at night. Pray with them in the morning before they start their day. You’re setting the tone for what they value at a young age. Pray with your wife. Pray with your children. Let prayer be a cornerstone. Let prayer be a cornerstone in your home.

Verse 6 in chapter 18.

It says, And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily.

So the woman is persistent. And the reason why the woman wins over the judge is only because she’s persistent. She’s nagging this judge. And good for her. She’s wearing him down. And here’s what the Lord’s teaching us. If she could get what she needs simply through nagging an unwilling party. Right. How much more will we receive from God? If we were to ask. Ask with the kind of intensity she asks. Yet it’s directed at a willing party. Which God is. Which God is. In what may be a test of faith. When the Lord appears to be unwilling. Faith knows because of God’s own testimony about himself. And I think this is really important for us to understand. Because of God’s own testimony about himself. His self-disclosure. We believe. He is. A perfect provider. And how can I know that? Well, it’s interesting how much Jesus says in just these few lines. He says, will not God give justice to his elect? What is what does that word mean? It just means chosen ones. It means called out ones. In other words, did you approach God or did God approach you?

You didn’t approach God. I’ll answer it. None of us approach God. God in his mercy has approached us who are sinners. It’s God who came to sinners and said, I covenant myself to you by the blood of my son, Jesus. So prayer is not a shot in the dark to some deity hoping we catch him in a benevolent mood. That’s not true at all. The law and the prophets bear witness about this God who loves sinners. But then so explicitly, the father has shown us his character in his son, Jesus, who loved and who washed feet and who spent time with with those that no one else would and who forgave the worst of sins. And that same son died for you. And that same son was ascended to the father for you. And that same son sent the spirit to ever be present and comfort and guide you. So if I’m. I’m taking God’s word for it, not your word for it or anyone else’s word for it. God is a very present helping time of need by his own admission. We read what David said about how he felt forsaken. Yet in verses five and six, right after that, here’s how David ends that thought. But I have trusted in your steadfast love. My heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me. David knows how he feels. But then David knows who God has disclosed himself to be. And that’s where we got to live. That’s where you got to live. The whole thing hangs on God saying, I love you just because of my grace. You are loved because of God’s grace. And he would have us run to him as the perfect father he is. So the apostle Paul says the spirit of God is within us that we cry out. Abba father. However, how prone we are, though, aren’t we to misremember God’s self-revelation and his word in favor of a God that we often construct? I think a mixture of our fears, our circumstances and the enemy. I don’t know if God really loved me. And if I was in this jam, I can’t imagine. I don’t know. This is my fault. And I probably did this one. Chances are, if I was, you know, doing things the way I should have been doing things or I don’t know, I’m probably you can come up with so many versions of a God who’s unwilling to help you. Yet there’s the testimony of God. It reminds us time and time again. No, the blood of my son, Jesus, has has covenanted me to you. And he is a perfect intercessor for you. That’s the real God. OK. Question, then, how do I know if I have the real God in mind or I have some subquasi version of God that my fears and my circumstances in the enemy have crafted? Here’s how it says right after that he will not will not God give justice to his elect who cried to him day and night. There it is. Will you or won’t you keep crying out to him day and night? It’s in our ceasing to cry. Cry out day and night that the proof that we’ve stopped believing that the God who really is, is there. It’s when the spiritual darkness closes in and we go, oh, I’m lost. There’s no help here. There’s no help on this sin. There’s no help with that lost family member or friend. There’s no help with this lost culture. Have you seen it? Don’t even start asking, crying out to God day and night because that’s a waste of your breath. That’s what the enemy would want you and I to do.

But if you and I would believe. Then we would fight in prayer day and night. You would fight for the lost. You would fight against sin. You would fight against the kingdom of Satan. And you would know in the end in Christ Jesus, you’re going to win. Will he delay long over them? Jesus says, will he delay long over them? Now, your definition. Your definition of delay and God’s definition of delay is two different things. And that’s where spiritual patience has to grow to say, OK, with the Lord, a day is a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. And so in that patience, God, I’m waiting. I’m waiting on you.

But at the end of it, in that waiting, faith apprehends the desired end. In the waiting, faith apprehends the desired end. Sir. Sir Isaac Newton. He once said, I can take my telescope and look millions and millions of miles into space. But I can lay aside. Laid aside and go into my room and shut the door and get down on my knees in earnest prayer. And I can see more of heaven and get closer to God than I can assisted by all the telescopes and material agencies on Earth. Friend, if we could just stop for a moment and realize what it means. To pray that God and his spirit calls you to come into the heavenly places moment by moment. God calls you in the quietness of the morning before the day starts. God calls you driving down the road, stuck in traffic. God calls you the moments before you go to bed. He calls you into the courts of heaven in the spirit to be with him. He wants to hear you. He wants you to trust and believe he moves and he asks. When his people pray in faith.

Do you believe it? Do I believe it?

God is a loving, listening father. So yes or no question. Jesus is. A friend. And that will never change. The spirit is ever present. We believe. These things. If you do clean your windshield. I’m terrible about when my windshield dirty and I run out of the stuff. I go months before I refill it. And then I finally, I don’t know, some wild hair. I’ll go buy some fluid and put it in there. And I clean my windshield off. And it’s like, wow, I could have been driving around with this kind of clarity. So we do that all the time to God. Run back to the self-disclosure of who God is. Be, be warmly reminded of who this God is and who he is to you and his son, Jesus. And if you did, you would by faith pray and you wouldn’t quit.

So I say to you this evening.

Pray. And pray some more. Pray and pray some more. I think. I think. I think that a church. Even as small as we are, our little church family here. I think if we really gave ourselves to the work of prayer, I think that we could affect so much more change for the kingdom of God than the biggest church with all the resources in the world could do in a thousand years without prayer. And I’m not wishing some big church doesn’t pray. I’m only making the point. If God’s people prayed. If God’s people prayed. God would do what he said he would do. He would show up in my and he would show up in power and he would show his glory in a way that only he could show his glory. It hinges on. It hinges on desperation. And so it’s kind of it’s kind of there’s two answers to Jesus is like to question here. In verse eight, it says, nevertheless, when the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth? When the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth? No. No. If if we’re the kind of people who think, you know, God is really distant and I prayed and it hasn’t worked out the way I thought and feel slow. And I just can’t believe that after all these years of praying, it wouldn’t seem like things would change. I don’t know. Surely, surely prayer is a wasted endeavor. For that person, it’s a big no. But I want to believe and I want to implore us to let it be a yes. I believe prayer is worth the best of my time and the best of my energy because I know who God is not. And I know who God is in the cross of Jesus. And I know that by faith, all things are possible. And God will show his glory in my life, in my in my children. In my marriage, in my church family, in the culture in which I live. Will I be desperate enough, though, hungry enough, thirsty enough to keep asking and keep asking? I pray that our answer collectively as Providence Fellowship is just yes. It’s just yes.

Father, we thank you for your word. Because it is the great clarifier.

Oh, how it. It brings a. A simple truth. It brings a simple peace. Where we can run amok in life. God, your word just simply tells us who you are. What it means to live for you.

God, we just ask for brokenness.

I don’t know what else to ask for, Lord, than you would just break our hearts. I don’t know what to ask for other than all the all the things that satisfy us and all the all the temporary happiness and securities and examples or excuses we have for what the good life is that God, you would just make those crumble in us. And we would just you would just be broken for your presence. We would be broken for your power. We would be broken for your kingdom to come in a way that only your spirit can bring it, Lord. So would you would you give us just a renewed brokenness or a new desperation, a renewed hunger and thirst for Jesus?

Or forgive us our sin.

Forgive us our lovelessness towards you. Our coldness towards the things of God. Lord, would your spirit.

Like a sharp knife, just cut down deep. Expose the darkness and shine the light of Christ.

Like a sharp knife, just cut down deep.