01.09. PRAYER AND PERSISTENCE

9. PRAYER AND PERSISTENCE Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. (Luke 18:1)

Once you have prayed to God for or about something, should you pray for it again? The prevailing opinion in some circles is that to repeatedly pray for something is indicative of a lack of faith. Proponents of this position say that if you truly believe that God has heard you or even granted your request when you prayed the first time, then you would not be praying for it again, at least not in the same way. Perhaps you may mention the topic again, but instead of speaking as you did the first time, you should at least change your speech from a form of petition to that of thanksgiving. Instead of asking God for the same thing again, you should thank him that he has already granted your request. At least on the surface, we may commend these people for their intention. They wish to pray in a way that demonstrate faith in God, and to take care not to insult him by speaking or behaving in a way that suggests doubt. However, although this approach to prayer appears to exhibit faith, is it a result of careful thinking and accurate exegesis, or is it the conclusion of false analogies and faulty interpretation? And if the process of formulation of this doctrine is very inferior, it casts doubt on the purity of their motives as well. I will not direct our attention to the issue of motive in this chapter, but I will show that the Bible does not teach that praying in faith prevents one from asking for the same things more than once, and in fact, the Bible teaches that if we were to pray in faith, we must persist in prayer by repeatedly asking for the same things. An analogy is sometimes used to illustrate why we should not pray for something more than once. Imagine a child asking his father for something again and again, when the father has already promised to give it to him after the first request. We would judge the child to be untrusting, and his behavior annoying. By repeatedly asking for the same thing when it has already been promised to him, the child insults his father’s integrity. Variations of this analogy may replace the father and son relationship with one that is between two friends, but the point remains the same; that is, it is an insult to repeat a petition when the item asked for has already been promised. The analogy appears to be reasonable as far as human relationships go, but it falls apart when we apply it to God. The analogy does not even fully support the position of those who use it. For example, those who say that we should not pray for something more than once nevertheless say that we may repeatedly thank God for granting us our request after the initial petition. But if the child in the analogy thanks his father over and over again after the initial petition, but before the item materializes, it would have the same irritating and insulting effect as if he repeatedly asks for the same thing. It would appear as if the child distrusts the father’s integrity or memory, and thus repeatedly reminds him of his promise. To be consistent, those who say that we should pray for something only once should also say that we should not thank God for granting what we have asked until the item materializes. The analogy fails because God is not a human father, and although there are similarities between the fatherhood of God and the fatherhood of man, the two are not similar at every point, and we must look to Scripture to determine at which points the two are similar, and at which points they are different. Analogies can be very misleading. Only if an analogy comes from Scripture is it authoritative, and illustrates a true similarity between the two. Even then, we must take care to use the analogy to illustrate only the point that it intends to get across, and not some other point that we wish to justify.

We must be careful when constructing analogies to illustrate our relationship with God, lest we forget that God is not human but divine, and therefore he is not like us in many ways. Some mistakenly think that since we call God our "Father," we may treat him almost exactly like how we would treat an ideal human father. But this is a false and dangerous inference. No matter how good an earthly father is, we do not worship him; a person who sings songs of praise to his earthly father to extol his greatness is probably insane. God is not a human being, so we should not treat him like one. Therefore, the analogy about the child making requests to his father fails to establish that we should not repeat our petitions to God.

However, the position that we are considering is not solely based on analogies. Its proponents do try to find biblical support, and here we will examine two representative passages:

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. (Mark 11:24) This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us ­ whatever we ask ­ we know that we have what we asked of him. (1 John 5:14-15) The argument is that these verses tell us that after we have prayed for something, we are to believe that we have already received what we prayed for, and then we are to talk and act in a way that is consistent with this belief. To talk and act like we have already received implies that we should not pray for what we have asked again. Therefore, we should not repeat our petitions to God; otherwise, it would indicate that we do not really believe that we have already received, which is a lack of faith. For the sake of argument, let us assume that the interpretation of these verses is correct, that is, they teach us that once we have prayed for something, we are supposed to believe that we have already received it. However, the verses do not explicitly tell us how we are supposed to act once we believe that we have received. It may be true that once I believe that my request toward another human being is granted, I should not mention the request to him again, but we have shown that analogies based on human relationships do not necessarily apply to our relationship with God, since God is not a human being. God is to be treated the way he demands to be treated. Therefore, even if their interpretation of some of these biblical passages is correct, those who say that we must not repeat our petitions to God make a jump in logic at this point, saying that if we are to believe that we have already received, then we should not repeat our petitions.

James writes, "Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops" (James 5:17-18). He says this in the context of talking about the "prayer of faith" (James 5:15, KJV) and "the prayer of a righteous man" (James 5:16). Elijah was on a mission from God. "He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain." This came as judgment against the idolatrous nation. After a time, he challenged the false prophets to a supernatural duel, and won a decisive victory. The nation showed signs of turning back to God, and it was time for him to pray that it may rain again.

Since Elijah was doing all these things at God’s command (1 Kings 18:36), he was praying according to God’s will. Now, 1 John 5:14-15 says that when we pray according to God’s will, we can "know that we have what we asked of him." Therefore, at least according to those who say that we should not repeat our prayers, Elijah should have believed that God had granted his request upon his first prayer for rain. Indeed, we see something that indicates this in 1 Kings 18:41, where Elijah tells King Ahab, "There is the sound of a heavy rain," even before he made his first prayer. But then, why does Elijah even pray the first prayer, if he already "hears" the sound of rain? According to the assumptions of those who say that we should not repeat our prayers, Elijah should not have prayed the first prayer, since he already believed the promise of God to be as good as done even before he prayed. And certainly after the first prayer, he should not have prayed again. However, it turns out that Elijah not only prayed, but he prayed several times for the same thing:

Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees. "Go and look toward the sea," he told his servant. And he went up and looked. "There is nothing there," he said. Seven times Elijah said, "Go back." The seventh time the servant reported, "A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea." So Elijah said, "Go and tell Ahab, ’Hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.’" Meanwhile, the sky grew black with clouds, the wind rose, a heavy rain came on and Ahab rode off to Jezreel. (1 Kings 18:42-45) This suggests that believing the promises of God so strongly that we perceive it to be as good as done can accommodate not only the first prayer, but repeated prayers as well. That is, even when one believes that his request is already granted (1 Kings 18:41), even when he believes that he has already received, he may still pray ­ - not once, twice, or five times, but until the answer materializes. But according to those who say that we should not repeat our prayers, if we really believe that we have received, then we should not repeat our requests. In the light of this example from Elijah, this position is clearly unbiblical, but it is an unwarranted inference about our relationship with God from how human relationships usually work.

Whatever Paul’s "thorn in the flesh" was, he says, "Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me" (2 Corinthians 12:8), and it appears that he could have continued to repeat his petition if the answer had not come. But since God gave him a reply (2 Corinthians 12:9), he could stop praying. Then, in Luke 11:5-8, Jesus gives the following illustration:

Suppose one of you shall have a friend, and shall go to him at midnight, and say to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him"; and from inside he shall answer and say, "Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything." I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs. (NASB)65

Again, we must be careful to apply only the point intended by this illustration to our relationship with God, and not every possible aspect of the human relationship described. It would be absurd, for example, to take from this illustration that God is like a friend who sleeps, whom we must awaken to hear our petitions. This is not the point of the illustration. God is not a human being, and he never sleeps (Psalms 121:4). Rather, the purpose of the illustration is to encourage persistence ­ if a human friend will give you what you ask because of your persistence, how much more will God answer you if you have persistence! The crucial question is what it means to have faith when we pray. Indeed, James writes, "But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord" (James 1:6-7). So it is agreed that we must have faith, but those who say that we should not repeat our prayers jump without warrant from this premise, that we must have faith, to the conclusion that we must not repeat our prayers after the first petition.

We should let the Bible define faith, instead of letting extra-biblical analogies from human relationships or unwarranted inferences from biblical passages to define it. In Luke 18:1-43, Jesus gives a parable that will help us define faith in its relation to our current discussion on persistence:

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ’Grant me justice against my adversary.’ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ’Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’" (Luke 18:1-5)

It seems that the widow in this parable repeats her petition many times - ­ the judge says that she "keeps bothering" him. Again, we must be careful what conclusion we draw from this, so that we will not falsely infer something from this parable about a human relationship and apply it to our relationship with God. Luke 18:1 gives us the purpose of the passage, that Jesus tells this parable to his disciples "to show them that they should always pray and not give up" (Luke 18:1).

Therefore, the fact that the judge in this parable is reluctant to help the widow does not mean that God is likewise reluctant to grant our petitions. Jesus intends the judge to be a contrast against what God is like: "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly" (Luke 18:6-8). That is, if even a reluctant judge will grant a persistent widow her request, how much more will a willing Father grant a persistent believer his petition! The behavior of the widow is to illustrate the main point, that we should "always pray and not give up," that we should "cry out to him day and night." That the judge thinks that the widow "keeps bothering" him means that the type of behavior portrayed here includes constant repetition of the same request, over and over again. Thus Luke 18:1 ("pray and not give up"), Luke 18:5 ("keeps bothering"), and Luke 18:7 ("day and night") all indicate that we should repeat our prayers to God.

Jesus finishes the parable by saying, "However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). What kind of faith is he looking for in people? Precisely the kind of "faith" that the widow demonstrates in the parable! It is the faith that prays and does not give up; it is the faith that cries out to God day and night; it is the faith that persists in prayer to God. Contrary to those who say that faith excludes repeating our petitions to God, Jesus indicates that to have faith means that we repeat our petitions to God over and over again. This is how the Bible defines faith, and we are not to argue, or to subvert this biblical teaching using false analogies from human relationships or unwarranted inferences from biblical passages. To present our requests to God over and over again means that we continue to believe that he hears us and that it is meaningful to pray, no matter what our circumstances may look like. It is not unbelief to repeat our petitions, but it is unbelief to give up and stop praying.

God arranges our lives so that we must persist in prayer in order to further our spiritual growth and sanctification. This may involve a number of things, such as increasing in knowledge, understanding, and patience. One of the most valuable things that we must do is to affirm a more biblical set of priorities. The following passages show that patience, endurance, character, and such qualities are things that we must value and not despise: But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. (Job 23:10) Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. (Romans 5:3-4)

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything....Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy. (James 1:2-4; James 5:10-11)

We tend to cringe from hardships, since they rob us of our bodily comfort. However, the true believer must place his spiritual development above his natural convenience. Peter writes, "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith ­ - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire ­ - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed" (1 Peter 1:6-7). I may desire natural comfort, but my desire for knowing that my faith is genuine is much greater, since my faith is "of greater worth than gold." Genuine faith cannot be destroyed by testing, but is rather purified and refined.

What is disappointing is that many believers miss the purpose of the above passages by using them as nothing more than excuses for their failures, and for not struggling against their problems. But we are not trying to find excuses ­ - a true Christian really must consider the development of his character and maturity more important than the natural things that he desires.

Another misunderstanding about hardship and endurance is that the very experience of suffering, in and of itself, will further our sanctification. This is not true. Just as sensation and experience themselves cannot provide any intelligible information to the mind, but can only provide the occasions upon which God directly acts on the intellect and conveys to it intelligible information,66 neither can suffering in itself teach us anything or help our spiritual growth.

Rather, our experiences of suffering can at most provide the occasions upon which we recall, organize, assimilate, accept, and learn to obey the information already revealed to us from Scripture. Since no experience comes with its own interpretation, a proper reaction to experience ­ - that is, one that results in spiritual growth ­ can only come because we have an understanding of biblical revelation and the ability to relate it to our experience. Knowledge of the relevant biblical propositions can come either before or after the experience, but until one has such knowledge, the experience remains unintelligible, so that nothing can be learned from it.

Failing to understand this very important point, many people consider experience or suffering as inherently valuable as the means to teach us spiritual things, and verses such as Hebrews 5:8 may appear to support this: "Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered." But they forget that Jesus had thorough knowledge of Scripture, so that he knew about the progress of God’s redemptive plan, his place in this plan, and thus how to interpret his suffering. Experience itself does not bring its own interpretation, and another person could have just as easily developed spiritual rebellion instead of obedience as a result of suffering. In fact, many people do. Even Hebrews 5:8 itself comes to us as a biblical verse and not an experience. The idea that one can learn, in some sense, from his suffering or experience itself has no infallible foundation apart from propositional revelation. At most, experience stimulates us to think with and about the information that we have already learned through verbal communication, such as from the Bible. Perhaps we will even come to better resolutions about some topics than we have before, but not by any information conveyed by the experience itself, since none is conveyed, but by thinking with and about the biblical propositions that we already know or will learn. With that in mind, Douglas Kelly’s use of Jacob’s experience as an explanation on the necessity of persistence in prayer is helpful: The name Jacob, prophetically given at birth, means the Supplanter, and refers to the fact that he would cheat his older brother out of his birthright. But this same man won the name Israel, Prince with God, after wrestling successfully with the Lord. He was a completely changed man after that night.... But it was still a battle and it cost him something. It took him the whole night ­ he lost a night’s sleep. But more than that, in the struggle, the stranger touched his thigh (which was the way of making a personal binding covenant in the ancient world) ­ so that Jacob was partially lame for the rest of his life.

It was indeed costly for Jacob, but he won the eternal gain. His name was changed that night from Jacob, a constant reminder of his somewhat dishonest character, to Israel, Prince with God....Though we experience real pain, we can take courage as we become aware that it is in His love and mercy that He is determined to turn us from a Jacob into an Israel....Not only in Jacob’s experience, but also in ours, it takes hard wrestling with ourselves and with the Lord to be turned from self-centered manipulators into princes with God.67

If you have the wrong priorities ­ - if you do not think that faith tested and refined is "of greater worth than gold" ­ - then you will not understand what God is doing. You may think that he is reluctant, and that he is not answering your prayers. But if you are a Christian, your true desire is for your faith to be tested and refined, so that it may be approved and vindicated. A better understanding of what Scripture says on the subject and the continual work of sanctification that God is effecting in us will bring this true desire to the surface, allowing it to direct and control our behavior and response to circumstances.

Experience itself will not teach you any of this - ­ two people going through the same situation often have opposite interpretations of what is happening, and only the Bible can tell us the truth. In fact, God can use the same incident to punish the wicked and edify the righteous, so that there is no inherent meaning in any experience. This very chapter about persistence you are reading is a theological exposition, and not a non-verbal experience. To say it again, only theology ­ - a systematic understanding of biblical revelation ­ can make sense of prayer and experience, or any aspect of the Christian life. For our suffering and our experience to have any meaning at all, we must be Christians who study and obey the Scripture.

PRAYER AND THE INNER LIFE The inner life, or the life of the mind, is foundational to the whole of human existence. Even the moral life must be recognized as first a part of the inner life before we can consider the actions that flow out of it. Jesus says, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander" (Matthew 15:19). One first sins in his mind ­ - in his immoral plans, intentions, desires, habits, and reasonings ­ - before he exhibits his sinful determinations and dispositions through the body.

Just as sinfulness begins in one’s thoughts, righteousness also has its foundation in the mind. Paul says that the believer’s "new self" is "created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24), but the parallel verse in Colossians 3:10 says that it is "in knowledge" that this "new self" is being "renewed...in the image of its Creator." Accordingly, Romans 12:2 says that it is by the "renewing of your mind" that you will be "transformed," and gain the ability to discern the will of God, which is good, pleasing, and perfect.68 This means that if you want to improve your moral life, you must first work on your mind by restructuring it according to biblical precepts. This is the plain teaching of Scripture, but once I put it in such intellectualistic terms, many people may find it strange and unacceptable. However, this is not because there is anything false in what I say, but it is because what I am saying ­ - that is, what the Scripture teaches ­ - is contrary to the anti-intellectualistic tendency of our culture, and our church culture as well. Indeed, it is not I who chooses to put the teaching of Scripture in such terms, but it is the Scripture itself that does this, and I am merely yielding to it in my exposition.

Once you are able to abandon the anti-intellectual attitude imposed upon you by the culture and accept the way things are as Scripture describes it, then you will find that the Scripture provides clear guidance for directing your spiritual life; it gives you explicit instructions on what to do. Indeed, many believers place great emphasis on the "spiritual life," but the way they use the term either conveys no definite meaning, or even when it does, it appears that they mean a mystical life that removes the proper Christian emphasis on the actual content of Scripture. Then, even those who appear to emphasize the actual content of Scripture denies that it is grasped by the intellect, but rather some non-rational (and really non-existent) part of man that they falsely call the "spirit." The truth is that the spirit of man is his rational soul or mind, made in the image of God, and by it we grasp and assimilate the content of Scripture.69 The same principle that we have just applied to the believer’s moral development also applies to all other aspects of the Christian life, including the prayer life. Just as a strong and meaningful moral life is founded upon an accurate understanding of Scripture, a prayer life that is acceptable in practice and rich in content must have theological understanding as its foundation. Just as moral improvement begins with scriptural instructions, any enhancement of the prayer life begins with an enrichment of the inner life.

We find in Scripture examples of the prayer lives of great men. Jesus could meaningfully pray to his Father all night, and in the letters of Paul are prayers that are rich in inspired theological thinking. If your prayer life is weak, and your prayers are shallow in content, it would help very little to try to remedy the situation by praying even more. In fact, you will probably produce and reinforce bad habits and false theology with such an approach to prayer. Rather, we must improve the prayer life by constructing a better foundation, that is, by building an inner life structured according to biblical precepts. The first chapter in this section urges you to dethrone experience as a source of information for constructing your spiritual life in general, and your prayer life in particular, since experience can teach us nothing. Then, the next chapter proceeds to outline some elementary directions for building the inner life on the infallible foundation of biblical revelation.