Title: God’s Love that Pushes Us into a World of Prayer
The prayer of faith is the key to opening the morning, and the padlock to lock the night. By the way, prayer cannot be done if you do not believe in God. Prayer is something that can only be done when there is a heart that believes in the word of God.
Prayer is to confess that I cannot do it with my own power and I entrust it to God. In other words, prayer is to let go of my way, my thoughts, and to grasp God’s way, His thoughts.
Rom 8:5-8 says that He who pursues the flesh thinks of the work of the flesh, and it explains that the thoughts of the flesh become enemies of God, and that he cannot work with God.
If we meditate on this, it can be understood that “God’s work does not happen through him who does not pray because he does not believe in God’s word, does not know God’s thoughts, and does not try to live according to God’s way.”
If the saints stop praying, then they have already met the spiritual Noah’s Flood. When a tsunami comes, can you control yourself? Likewise, meeting Noah’s flood means meeting God’s judgment eventually, but before that, it means we become unable to control ourselves.
As we look at 1 Sam 12:3, Prophet Samuel says that he did not commit the sin of stop praying. It’s a sin to rest your prayers and do not pray. In 1 Thess 5:17, Apostle Paul is telling us to pray all the time as if a person would never stop breathing. Therefore, those who do not pray have a name that they lived, but they become dead. Eph 6:18 tells us what we should pray at all time. In Psa 40:1, David says that he prayed and prayed, teaching us that our prayers should not end only once, but that we should pray several times until a response comes.
Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask, and I will give it to you.” He tells us that God’s help and response will come only when we pray. Luk 11:8 says, “Even though friends do not rise, he gives because of his strength.”
In today’s text (Luk 18), there is a widow who comes every day to tell the judge that her unjust resentment should be dealt with. This judge is a judge who does not care about justice, nor does he fear God. Only money matters to him. However, as she continues to annoy him, he finally changes his mind and decides to listen to her story and decided to resolve it tomorrow, yet the widow stopped coming.
Jesus began this parable to show that at all times, we ought to pray and it concluded it saying that when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? (Luk 18:1; Luk 18:8)
In the end, Jesus alludes in His parable that this widow could not resolve her injustice because she did not come to the judge until the end. So, why didn’t she come to the judge until the end? In other words, why do we stop praying?
Because there is no faith.
You may say, “Pastor, if we don’t have faith, will we pray? Don’t we pray because we believe in God?”
However, because Jesus clearly mentioned regarding to the parable, “Will He find faith when the Son of Man comes?” So, she is a symbol of a generation without faith.
Why is that?
This is because she had an attitude that if the judge helped her, she could win the case and her injustice could be resolved.
In other words, the true faith is, “the judge will surely listen to my story and release my injustice.” And if she had this, she would have faithfully come to the judge to the end.
However, by seeing that she didn’t come to the judge at the end, we can understand her attitude was like “There are many ways to resolve my injustice, one of them is to talk to the judge.”
This is a great shock to us. No faith doesn’t mean that we don’t start praying but it means that we regard the prayer as just one of options to resolve the problem.
To be honest, we pray when we have a problem. However, do we pray, thinking that prayer is the only solution? Or do we approach it with the thought that the prayer may not resolve my problem but no harm praying?
We have already prayed, but I hope we will pray with a new heart in 2023. I pray in the name of the Lord that all our prayers will be answered when we pray with the belief that “Father God will surely listen to our prayers” and more over, “There is no other way but to pray.”
In conclusion, then, why does God give us this difficulty and suffering?
The time when Daniel the Prophet was active and serving was when South Judah fell and the country disappeared. It was a time when all the people were dragged to other countries as servants. It was a time when all possessions were taken away, and freedom was taken away. Furthermore, the temple, the symbol of God’s presence, was also collapsed. How difficult it was, it says that it this has never happened before in Jerusalem (Dan 9:12).
Why did God give Daniel this unprecedented difficulty? The Bible says that it was to make Daniel decide to pray. Dan 9:2-3 says that when Daniel realizes the words recorded in the book of Jeremiah, he gave his intention to the Lord. KJV translated as he set his face unto the Lord. Korean Bible translated as he fixed his mind to pray.
To make a decision is to risk your own life.
Daniel put his life on the line of prayer. Let’s make a prayer decision in 2023. When it becomes me and you who pray for our lives, God’s will and plan will surely come true.
The Lord's Covenant Church Malaysia 