10.04 The importunity of prayer

IV. THE IMPORTUNITY OF PRAYER

This, then, is the point of our Lord’s comparison the Divine Father of all will surely not come short of the grudging friend, nor the All-righteous One of the unjust judge. We pass to the main lesson which the two parables teach. It is given in the preface to that of the unjust judge, “that men ought always to pray and not to faint”; and in the conclusion to that of the friend at midnight, “I say unto you, Ask and it shall be given unto you; Seek and ye shall find; Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” It is the two-fold lesson that prayer must be patient and persistent and that such prayer is sure of its answer. In both parables, the stress is laid upon this importunity of prayer. It need scarcely be pointed out that the stress is not laid upon the reluctance with which the prayer is answered. God is always more ready to hear than we are to pray, more willing to give than we are to receive. The point of of our Lord’s appeal is simply that if importunity of prayer availed to overcome the reluctance of the grudging friend or of the unjust judge, how much more will it avail to secure the willing response of a loving and just Father? But, even so, is it not a hard saying that such a Father should, as it were, require this importunity of ’prayer before He answers? It is a natural question often asked. Well, consider the human analogy. Does a wise father shower gifts upon his child without waiting for some sign that the child really deserves them, is able to appreciate and use them? If he does he only spoils his child. And would not one sign of such desire and capacity be the urgency of the child’s entreaties? Thus importunity of prayer is the sign for which God’s loving wisdom waits of the sincerity of our desire for His gifts, and of the fitness of our character to receive them. It is the evidence of desire. If our prayer be formal, languid, intermittent, our desire cannot be real and deep. And urgency of prayer is the evidence of fitness of character to receive. As our Lord implies in His own comment on the parable of the unjust judge, it is a test of that co-operating faith which, is the condition of receiving His grace. He only will pray with persistence who really believes that God is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Above all, prayer is the test of our willing submission to God’s will. It is the acknowledgment of that dependence upon Him, the expression of that obedience, which is the essence of true freedom. It is the primary and indispensable act of sonship. For all prayer is based upon one prayer “Thy will be done.” It is in its deepest truth the effort, not chiefly to obtain our own desires, but to bring them into the Will of God and leave them there in perfect trust. Thus the importunity of prayer is a token of the resoluteness and strenuousness with which our will is set towards God’s. To him whose will is thus proved to be in line with God’s will, God can safely entrust His gifts. The lesson of the two parables is thus one aspect of that which is taught in the striking words “The Kingdom of Heaven suffered! violence, and the violent take it by force.” For that Kingdom, just because it is the Kingdom of God, is set on high, and the ascent to it is steep and narrow. To reach it is a task beyond the compass of a feeble, listless, timorous spirit. It can only be achieved by strenuousness, intensity, and courage. In this upward struggle, increasing difficulty must be met by increasing determination. If asking be not answered, then we must seek; if seeking be unavailing, then we must knock knock with the energy of one whose whole will is set on effecting an entrance. Archbishop Trench fitly quotes the great words of Dante:

“Fervent love And lively hope, with violence assail The kingdom of the heavens, and overcome The will of the Most High: not in such sort As man prevails o’er man; but conquers it Because ’tis willing to be conquered, still, Though conquered, by its mercy conquering.” The Law of Struggle is only the Law of Love as it is manifested on the steeps of the Hill of Life. There, Love would not be love unless it tested, braced, and quickened the free spirit of man gave him spurs for his ascent. On the summit, but not till then, we shall see the same guiding Love transform the Law of Struggle into the Law of Rest. It is not, therefore, the sternness but the Love of God, or rather it is His Love manifested in sternness, which requires from His children the importunity of prayer.

Such prayer, then, is assured of its answer. God hears it: its persistence, so to say, forces an entrance into His audiencechamber: and the more earnest the prayer, the nearer the spirit penetrates to God.

“He heareth us: and if we know that He heareth us, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of Him.” The answer is not always what we asked or expected. In the parable of the friend at midnight, the response was fuller than the request it was not three loaves only but as many as were needed. But it is not always so. There are often delays and surprises in the answer. But the one thing sure is that earnest prayer secures that answer which the absolute Love and Wisdom of God know to be the truest and best. The man of the world scoffs at this trust of the Christian: “If you get what you ask, you say it is an answer to your prayer: if you don’t, you still say your prayer is answered; what then is the use of praying at all?” But the philosophy of the kingdom of God is deeper than the logic of the world. The Christian knows that what he really wishes is only what God wills, that God chooses to wait for the evidence of free submission to that will before it is done: and that this evidence is given in prayer. Let us then have a heart of courage and confidence in our prayers. “Men ought always to pray and not to faint.” It is by the wings of prayer that life is lifted to God. If these wings are slack, the spirit will grow faint in its flight. If they are strong, and beat the air with a persistent force, then, through all the buffeting blasts of difficulty and perplexity, the spirit will keep its course in patience, impelled and sustained by the will of God, TAGS: [Parables]