Good morning brothers and sisters, I wish to share from the passage in Luke 18: 1-8. Jesus tells a parable of a widow who has a rival who mistreated her. She brings her case before an unjust judge. The unjust judge is too wicked to even consider her case and just ignore her plead. This widow will come day after day to bring her case to ask the judge to take up her case. The unjust judge says, even though I do not fear God nor care about men, but just to keep my peace and stop her from pestering me, I will do what she wants me to do. We can see that this unjust judge is willing to finally grant the widow her request is all for his selfish reasons.
Jesus wants to highlight the contrast between our loving heavenly Father and the unjust judge. Our Heavenly Father will not delay even one day more than necessary but will quickly answer our prayer.
We can learn the following lessons from this passage:
1) TURN TO GOD AND GOD ONLY
The widow is helpless. She does not have anyone to fight her case. Her only hope is that the unjust judge will take up her case. She does not have a plan B.
Sometimes Christians have plans ABCD, and God is their last resort only if all the other attempts fail. We must learn to turn to God and God alone. Like the widow, there is no plan but and trust that God will show up for us. There is the kind of desperate prayer that drives us on our knees. That is the reason why some believers can pray for one hour, and beyond. They can fast for an extended period. God is the only hope they have. If you are so busy using your own strength, resources and connection. You will be too busy running around to be able to pray like the widow in the parable of Jesus. He wants us to learn this precious lesson.
2) TURN TO GOD WITH EMPTY HANDS
The widow in the parable is a poor widow. She doesn’t have money, nor does she have position, connections or anything that she can offer to the unjust judge to grant her audience.
She come to him empty handed day and night pleading for help.
This is applicable to us as well. we must come to God and recognize that we do not have anything to offer to him to ask him to help us.
In Heb 4:16 16Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
God is our Heavenly Father who loves his children. He will answer our prayers out of His love. It is not based on what we can do for him, how righteous we are, or how much good work have we done.
The only condition for us to come to him is with empty hands. Without Christ and what He has done for us, our good works are as valuable as filthy rags to God. So we must adopt the posture of humility when we approach God’s throne of Grace and the promise in Hebrews tells us that we will receive His grace to help us in our time of need.
3) TURN TO GOD AND NEVER GIVE UP
In this passage, Jesus did not explain why sometimes there is a delay in the answer to our prayer. But this is a reality that some prayers are answered in a relatively shorter time than others. We have all experienced some form of delayed answered prayers.
In verse one, Luke tells us that the reason for Jesus telling this parable is to encourage us to keep on praying and do not give up.
It is interesting that Jesus made a statement at the end of this parable.
“Will the Son of Man find faith on earth when he returns?” (v.8) He consider persevering faith and enduring faith to be type of faith that is necessary for the end times. He says that when he comes back to earth will there be people with persevering faith and enduring faith. People who will hold to God’s faithfulness and trust in God’s promises despite of delay. In spite of the fact, seemingly nothing is happening as far as the human eye can see. They will continue to trust that God is in control, he has heard our prayer and in his own timing , he will answer our prayer. Even if it means that we believe that God can answer our prayer within our life time or after our life time.
God wants us to learn to be people who will continue to pray and trust in Him and never give up praying.
Let us pray.
