When you pray for something and God doesn’t answer, how do you respond? Do you resign yourself to this and accept the outcome? Do you assume that God doesn’t want to give you what you ask for? Do you lower your expectations of God to save yourself from the pain of disappointment? These are very common responses and in many cases people honestly think these are the right responses to prayers not being answered. Not according to the Scriptures. The Psalms demonstrate the very thing that Jesus is teaching here. When God did not answer the psalmists they did something very important, something that faith will always compel us to do: they complain. Rather than retreating they persist in prayer and they keep seeking, making appeals to God’s promises. This is the bold faith that Jesus always loved to see. Faith does not presume how God will answer or even when, but it will not give up on God until he answers in some way. The language of complaint, so common to the prayers of God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments, has unfortunately, and to our detriment, disappeared from our corporate spiritual language today. We have become far too polite. Jesus says that if we keep on asking we will receive, if we keep on seeking we will find and if we keep on knocking the door will be opened (11:9). He wants us to keep banging on that door until it opens. He knows what we want. He wants to see how much we really want it and how much we believe in God’s faithfulness.
Pray for a matter that you have prayed for before and that remains unanswered.
Read Luke 18:1-8
