Jesus told his disciples a parable
about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.
We tend to be fairly good at mustering some initial enthusiasm for prayer. When the freshness of the emotional need is still strongly felt we readily and "with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (see Hebrews 4:16). But then we perceive God being slow to answer and feel that he is disregarded our time of need. He does not reciprocate our sense of urgency and so we slide into complacency. We become accustomed to what were at first urgently felt concerns. The risk isn't necessarily that we stop bringing these petitions to the Lord, although can happen, so much as it is that we stop bringing them with any real faith.
But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?
Our faith is tested in this life by trials and our response must be prayer. We must be like the widow who does not tire of decrying the injustice of the adversary in our own world. We will, however, become weary if we give in to false images of the God to whom we go in prayer. Such images are properly designated, "stinkin' thinkin'." Our God is actually infinitely better than any human judge, particularly this one who neither feared God nor respected any human being. Even that judge would eventually answer out of self-concern. But the judge of heaven and earth desires to "secure the rights of his chosen ones" for their own sakes not out of fear or self-interest.
We experience what we perceive to be delays and note every variance of God's timing with our preference for immediate satisfaction. Rather than trusting him, we often harden our hearts. Is it not the case the many in the world see God as being exactly like a capricious judge, balancing self-interest against the annoyances of the prayer requests he receives? To them he seems disinterested, and seldom moves at all except in rare cases where he is perhaps pushed to do so by people like the widow. But this, emphatically, is not our God! Jesus calls us to pray because the Father himself desires to answer our prayers.
In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. (see John 16:26-27).
What are we to make of the apparent delays we experience in the fulfillment of God's promise? Why does it always seem that "night in its swift course was half spent" before the Word bounded forth from heaven's royal throne? Jesus himself did not arrive until what Scripture called the fullness of time (see Galatians 4:4). How can we learn to trust the timing of the Lord in such a way that our own zeal is not diminished? How can we learn to believe that the timing we experience is a part of his perfect plan?
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (see Second Peter 3:9)
Prayer works on multiple levels. It changes things around us even before any concrete objectives are realized. It works within us, opening us more and more to desire for God himself, creating space that God himself desires to fill. Further, it gives his people peace while they wait for his own timing. He will be neither too early nor too late. His answer will arrive at the exact moment that will maximally make manifest his saving power.
For all creation, in its several kinds, was being made over anew,
serving its natural laws,
that your children might be preserved unharmed.
Before it is becomes transactional and petitionary, prayer is meant to first be our connection with the God who loves us. We are meant to experience the Holy Spirit within us crying out, "Abba! Father!" in trust and in love. From this posture as sons and daughters we can await his gifts with eager expectation and in joyful hope. We can be like children desiring that Christmas comes soon to us and yet still realize that it will indeed and inexorably come. The Father delights to see such expectation in us and it is precisely this that he delights to fulfill.
For he remembered his holy word
to his servant Abraham.
And he led forth his people with joy;
with shouts of joy, his chosen ones.
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