Keep Praying
“And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.”
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And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
A Parable About Persistence
In Luke 18:1-8, Jesus tells the disciples a parable about a widow who found justice through persistence. Although the judge seemed unwilling to help her, he relented because she simply would not stop. Jesus doesn’t always explain his parables in the New Testament, but here he tells us outright that the story's purpose was to motivate the disciples to pray and not lose heart.
In matters of justice and deliverance, persistence is key. We do not know when the dam will break or when the door will open, we only know how to pray and how to seek.
It reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew 7 and Luke 11. He told his listeners to ask, seek, and knock—to persist in leaning into the kingdom of God and reaching out for answers. It came with a promise: “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:8 ESV).
There’s no promise that God will give us whatever we want, but that doesn’t stop Jesus from extending the invitation. If we only fixate on the outcomes of asking, seeking, and knocking, we might miss that Jesus is first inviting us to a posture of anticipation. God is a giving God, so positioning our hearts in a place of asking with expectation helps us to align with his will.
The widow in Jesus’s parable faced a judge who “neither feared God nor respected man” (Luke 18:2). She needed justice, but arguments, reason, and evidence were not on her side. Jesus elevated the persistent widow because her behavior modeled something Jesus wanted his disciples to get: those who stand in the truth have the freedom to be persistent.
One of the enemy’s main attacks against prayer is discouragement and hopelessness. Jesus teaches us that no opposition should keep us from pressing into the truth. We may have a vision in our minds for how God will answer us, but God’s answer is often better and more creative than ours. When we live asking and expecting, we have eyes to notice and celebrate all the ways God is responding.
Reflect
What holds you back from prayer? Where have you allowed discouragement and resistance to keep you from seeking God?
Take a moment and pray for something you stopped praying for, pushing past the voice of opposition.
