Men Ought Always to Pray

Read Luke 18:1-8

Prayer is a battle. It can be a daunting thing. While our supplications are yet in our mouths, that old serpent, our adversary, comes to us and brings distractions to dissuade us. He tells us that God won’t answer. He brings others that have been praying for the same thing who say that we, too, should give up because “it’s no use.” Maybe it’s been years that we have been praying for a specific thing. Let us consider these thoughts.

First, we must pray without fainting. The first verse of our text exhorts that “men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” This cross-references with 1 Thessalonians 5:17, which tells us to “pray without ceasing.” To faint means to be weak. We need to be strong in the Lord (Ephesians 6:10) and remember that we can “do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth [us]” (Philippians 4:13). Prayer takes effort. We must remember that prayer isn’t a part of the battle; it is the battle. The widow in the parable prayed without fainting.

Second, we must pray for protection from the adversary. Our adversary, Satan, will stop at nothing until we stop seeking God’s face. The widow pleaded for the judge to avenge her of her adversary. Since it was a parable, we could say that she may have wanted vengeance for her husband’s death. We could imagine that someone broke into her house, got caught, and slew her husband while trying to escape. We must ask for protection when our enemy decides to return. We know for sure that the devil will strike back as long as we keep praying to our Lord. We should be concerned when he stops attacking us. Then, we must seek protection for those we are praying for. Satan and his angels will do what they can to make sure that the other person doesn’t respond to the Holy Spirit’s tugging and pricking upon their heartstrings. They will need as much protection as we do. More so for them if they are unsaved.

Third, we must pray with expectancy, just like the widow did. She kept praying and praying and praying until the judge finally answered her. This unjust judge, who didn’t fear God nor regarded, or respected, men, just answered her to get her out of his hair! But we see that God, our just Judge, desires us to come to Him with our needs. Sometimes we feel like our laundry list is too much for God, but He tells us to cast all our cares upon Him because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). On a side note, He also wants us to talk to Him when life is smooth-sailing, too. Just like any good earthly father would. Except God is limitless when it comes to our problems (or anything). Nothing is too hard for Him! But we must pray with faith and know that God will answer us.

Fourth and lastly, we must pray with patience. Everything is made beautiful in God’s time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). From the parable, we don’t know how long the widow “troubled” the unjust judge. The Bible says that he wouldn’t answer for a while, Greek for chronos, which means “a space of time.” If God has us to wait for an answer, we can rest assured it’s for a good reason. It could mean that He’s waiting for something to come to pass, that we have unconfessed sins in our life, or that He may be trying to teach us a lesson. Some things that are handed to us right away are things that we so easily take for granted. We wait for things we much appreciate because we get to look back and see all that God was doing leading up to those answered prayers.

It is easy to get discouraged in prayer and begin crossing things off our prayer list that didn’t get answered or didn’t get answered in the way we wanted. I have family members that are unsaved that I have on my prayer list. There are times when I get discouraged when it seems like it’s no use. It’s like I’m waiting for that phone call from my family members to tell the news that they came to know Christ as their personal Savior. I don’t always pray for them as I should. I’ve found that when even a day goes by that, I don’t pray for them, it becomes easy for me to write them off. But we must keep coming boldly before the throne of grace (Hebrews 4:16) and believe that God will answer His children.