Push Frog

PUSH FROG!

Sunday, May 23, 2010 – AM

By Pastor James May

There are a lot of people in the church today who are facing some hard times and some hard decisions. Every day seems to bring more questions and fewer answers. There are times when troubles just seem to pile up on other troubles and we wonder, “Oh Lord, how long will you wait before bringing me the answers I need?” Sometimes it seems that we can pray and the heaven’s are brass. That’s the time when we need to learn to hang on keep bombarding heaven’s Throne with our prayer. If we really believe that God answers prayer then it is those times when we feel like just giving up, that we need to pray even more.

In Luke’s gospel Jesus teaches us a powerful lesson on prayer; one that will help us to realize that continuation in prayer is not a futile attempt, but actually moves the heart and hand of God. One of my favorite verses of the Bible can be found in Luke 11:9 And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

I know that most of you have experienced the tenacity of a child, or a teenager asking you for something that they really wanted. They just don’t know, or won’t accept the meaning of the word “NO”. They have figured out how the system works. “If I ask long enough, and keep bothering mom or dad long enough, they will get tired of me asking and something will happen. They will either say, “Okay, do whatever you want, just leave me alone”; or I’ll get sent to my room for the night. A 50% chance is all they ever see. The chance of getting what they want is too great to just let the request slide after the first no.

That’s the same idea that is pictured in my mind when I read these scriptures that Jesus gave us concerning prayer. First, we are to ask for whatever it is that we need or want. It’s not that God doesn’t already know what we are praying about, it’s that he desires to hear us learn to communicate with him.

I’ve heard people say that they have prayed for a long time for the answer to a certain prayer and the answer still has not come. It can get discouraging when prayer goes unanswered for a long time, but we should not quit praying anyway. We need to have the tenacity of a teenager who wants to use the car to go riding around on Friday night. They never give up; and we should never give up praying for our answer from God either.

The parable is given of a man who is sleeping in his bed in the middle of the night while his neighbor is entertaining guests from out of town. At midnight the neighbor runs out of bread and drinks so he comes knocking at the door of his friend. Now if you are like me, you certainly don’t want to get up to answer the door in the middle of the night. In our time, this isn’t a good thing. All kinds of thoughts run through your mind. Is it a robber, is someone sick or is it the police bringing bad news? First of all, your heart rate jumps, you get nervous, throw on a robe and go to the door. I’m probably already upset that my neighbor’s party has kept me awake late, and now he’s standing at my door wanting to borrow some bread. If you’re like me you would probably want to give him something alright, but it may not be bread!

Because he wouldn’t quit beating on the door, I would give him whatever he wanted just to get him quiet and get back to bed.

The idea that Jesus is trying to instill within us is that we must continue in prayer, keep on knocking on the gates of Heaven; continue to ask our Father in Heaven for whatever we need or desire; and keep on expecting to receive the answer from him.

Now God never sleeps; he doesn’t grow weary with our constant prayer; and he’s always ready to bless his people and answer our prayers. So why doesn’t he just give us the answer quickly and be done with it? We have to understand that God is always in teaching mode; trying to teach us to draw closer to him; to know him and to love him.

Quite often the answer to prayer is forthcoming simply because God desires us to learn to trust him for the answer even though it hasn’t come. He also wants us to continue to pray, not so that he can hear us repeat the same prayer over and over, but that we might grow a little more in faith, each time we ask.