Keep on Keeping on
Scripture Reading: Luke 11:5-10
Don’t get bogged down in the details. Jesus compares God the Father to a friend we go to late at night with a request for bread, but he doesn’t want to disturb his sleeping children to go answer the door and give his friend the requested bread. We miss the point if we think that Jesus is telling us something about the character of God here.
The parable is not a lesson on the nature of God, it is on the necessity of perseverance in prayer. He explains that in the follow-up to the parable. There he says, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” The verb form used here means to keep on asking, seeking, and knocking. It is something we do persistently.
To further demonstrate this isn’t a lesson on God’s reluctance to hear and answer our prayers, the next thing Jesus does is talk about how God is our Father and He wants to give good gifts to His children. So, Jesus is not saying that God will give us what we want if we twist His arm hard enough, and badger him into it by nagging him about it like spoiled brats.
The lesson is about being persistent and not giving up. Interestingly, Jesus never explains why persistence is necessary. Why doesn’t God just answer all of our prayers immediately when we ask? I can think of several reasons.
Sometimes it is simply because the time isn’t right. We can’t see the big picture, at least not to the extent God does. It could be that God intends to answer, but He is saying, “Later.”
Possibly, the delay is meant to help develop something deficient in us. These delays and our persistence in asking might serve to strengthen our faith in some way.
Delays and our persistence might also have the effect of helping us see things differently. Maybe we need to change our perspective on a person or situation and making it or them a part of our prayers continually helps us achieve that end.
There could be something we are praying for that God intends to give us, but we aren’t mature enough to handle it at the moment. It is possible that if we got what we are asking for, we might become less dependent on God, less faithful in His work, and less devoted to Christ. God holds back because we aren’t ready to receive in a way that helps us.
These are a few possible answers off the top of my head. You can probably come up with many more. That may be why Jesus didn’t explain or give a reason for delays in answers to prayer. There isn’t one answer.
What Jesus does, instead, is encourage us not to give up asking. Until God shows you from His Word or convicts you by His Spirit that what you are asking for is something you shouldn’t be asking for, keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking. The person who does that will eventually receive what they have been asking for, find what they have been seeking, and see the door open they have been knocking on.
Very encouraging