A reminder of what put me on this blog path about prayer. We need to have a robust prayer life at work and the major reason why we do not is because it has not worked for us before. We have faced too many times when the prayers were ineffective, so while we would still claim we believe in the power of prayer, our prayerlessness indicates otherwise. Do we need an explanation or understanding of why our past prayers were ineffective (at least from our perspective) in order to recover a commitment to prayer? The stories that Jesus tells indicate to me that we should not be seeking that type of reconciliation. So if we are not going to get that, how do we recover a commitment to prayer?

The first answer is that while Jesus does not provide the explanation or understanding we think we need, he does provide a clear command to pray. Is obedience to that command enough to fuel our commitment to prayer? Given our experience, we probably cannot help but have doubts about the effectiveness of any specific prayer that we bring to the Lord. But is there any doubt about whether Jesus wants us to bring those prayers? When Jesus asks to not have to drink the cup of suffering, which is necessary for the salvation of the world, he models that we can and should ask our heavenly Father for everything that is on our heart.

The Friend at Midnight (Luke 11) and The Widow and the Unjust Judge (Luke 18) help us with the stumbling block of expectation in prayer. (Always remember that Jesus can tell any story he wants, so the details of his stories are significant.) Some of Jesus’ teachings create this stumbling block. Mark 11:23-24 Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.  This teaching has been understood to put an emphasis on what we expect from our prayers.

If we are thinking this way, we will try to muster the expectation. A common practice is to convince ourselves that our prayer is good and right and entirely in the will of God so we can expect that He will answer. So I find it significant that Jesus tells a story of a man who has every reason to expect that his request will be honored by his neighbor and yet faces an initial denial. Even when our request is entirely appropriate and right, we may need to persist for no reason that we are able to understand.

The longer you have had unanswered prayer, the more difficult it is to have expectation and believe that your prayer is going to be answered this time. In fact I would say that it is impossible to truly expect a prayer to be answered that you have unsuccessfully prayed countless times before. So if having doubts about the outcome of your prayer is a disqualifier, then I might as well give up on that prayer because I cannot muster the necessary expectation.

In the story of the Widow and the Unjust Judge, Jesus uses an unusual word in the explanation of the judge and why he is granting her request “so that she will not beat me down with her continual coming”. The word beat down is a boxing term that means to literally give someone a black eye. The effect is to produce an outcome that no one could have predicted. No one would have thought that a powerful judge would feel threatened by a powerless widow. Every indication in the story created the expectation that the widow was never going to get her justice from this man. When we are persisting in unanswered prayer, we are facing a situation that we have every reason not to expect to get our answer since that is how it has been countless times before. But if the widow can have her request granted when no one saw that possible outcome, then we have reason to expect that our request could be granted this time. Is the command to pray and the possibility that our prayers could be effective enough incentive for us to pray about our work?

I would love to connect with you about these posts if they have stirred any thoughts or questions. Take a minute, shoot me an email at bo@leavenedlives.org, and let’s see where that takes us.