Luke 18:1-8: Never give in!(please click for todays passage)

Walter Wink said that ‘history belongs to the intercessors’. It truly does, and I think that is why the devil hates prayer so much. He knows full well the damage it will do to him and his kingdom, so he trains his big guns on it. ‘When we go to God by prayer, the devil knows we go to fetch strength against him, and therefore he opposeth us all he can.’ Richard Sibbes. That, for me, is the main reason why so many church prayer meetings are more than half empty.

Does your life line up with the teaching of Jesus in this wonderfully encouraging story? 

‘Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.’ (1).

‘Jesus told them a story showing that it was necessary for them to pray consistently and never quit.’ (The Message).

Are you cultivating a heart which prays without ceasing? Have you given up praying for anyone or anything?

‘But how much of that persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?’ (The Message).

Prayer is one of Luke’s big themes. We have already seem something similar about praying in a wonderful passage (11:1-13). It’s been said that you can take all the teaching of Jesus about prayer and boil it down to one word: persistence (or perseverance).

Notice the widow ‘kept coming to him’ (3). The judge said she ‘keeps bothering me’… (5). God wants us to be like the widow in our praying, and to know that He is not like the unjust judge. As someone said, prayer is laying hold of God’s willingness, not overcoming His reluctance.

It is said that Winston Churchill stood before his old school and delivered the shortest message of his political career. He just said, ‘Never give in, never give in, never give in!’ Let such a spirit fuel your prayers, and don’t allow Satan to mug you.

Prayer: Lord, I want to pray exactly in the way you say I should. Help me to keep going. I don’t want the devil to fulfill his prayer-preventing agenda in me.