6 October 2016 - persistence perfeceted

[ Today's Readings ]

'I cannot get up to give you anything.'
I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves
because of their friendship,
he will get up to give him whatever he needs
because of his persistence.

Jesus asks us to persist in prayer. He tells us to ask and keep asking. Yet in doing so we don't change God's mind. We don't earn his answer. Although we often think of God as being in bed already, no longer concerned with our requests he is not like the man in the parable in this way. He does care. Yet we have to keep asking even though doing so doesn't earn or cause his response. 

I want to learn only this from you:
did you receive the Spirit from works of the law,
or from faith in what you heard?

It is about persisting in the Spirit. It is about persistence in faith from what we have heard. When we embrace the Spirit we receive through faith and continue to ask in this way it is not a work of the flesh. It is one way that God helps us to grow in holiness. To persist in this way forces us to detachment for our own ability to affect the results while still being constant in surrendering the situation to God.

The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (see Philippians 4)

The man who won't get up unless his friend keeps knocking and even the father on earth that will give his son an egg when he asks are still wicked compared to God. They give, but, "how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"

This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight
all the days of our life.