The Parable of the Persistent Widow

In Luke 18:1 Jesus is preparing His disciples for difficult times that lie ahead and look at what Luke reveals to us in Luke 18:1, “And He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” Man, I am so grateful for this today. Jesus is going to tell His disciples a parable so that they will know they always ought to pray and never lose heart. It seems to me that one can gather from this passage that we should not lose heart because we can pray! Not only do we have the Gospel-have salvation, but, because of the Gospel, we can now pray in the name of Jesus Christ – enter God’s presence, have His attention, anytime. 

Let’s look at the parable. “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 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.’’ 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?’”

The first thing we get from this parable is persistence in prayer. We must not think that one mention is enough in our prayer lives. We must pray, we must speak our hearts over and over again. This shows two things: 1. The item we are praying for means something to us. If my kid asks for a certain toy he sees at the store and never mentions it again I am certainly not going to get it for him. But, if he keeps bringing it up – when his birthday comes along, or Christmas, or I just want to reward him I will remember that. This is a small example of what we are talking about. Sometimes I think God wants us to be persistent to get our hearts focused on and caring for the thing we are praying about. 2. It shows how much we believe God can answer this prayer. 

The second thing we get from this parable is we must believe God cares enough to hear and answer. You will not pray persistently if you don’t believe these two things. If a judge who doesn’t care will responds to persistence – what more will the One who loves you more than you can ever imagine do? 

The final lesson we must mention here is trust God to answer in the best way possible. In parables like these we are tempted to entertain the false teaching that if we have enough faith or are persistent enough, we can get whatever we desire out of God. This is not so. We only have to look at Paul praying 3 times for God to remove the thorn from his side or Jesus praying 3 times at Gethsemane for another way than the cross and see that God doesn’t always respond in the way we want Him to even if we have faith and are persistent. We must trust that 1. He will answer your prayers and 2. He will answer in the best way. C.S. Lewis once wrote to a friend, “It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good.”

So, pray persistently, knowing that God hears you and loves you and trusting that, no matter how He answers, it will be the best way to answer. 

And may you continue to pray and not lose heart!