The Gift Of Holy Stubborness

Success, health, love, marriage, peace, abundance, freedom, testimony, fruitfulness, accomplishment, blessings, deliverance, promotion, recovery and satisfaction are just a few of the widows in Jesus’ parable. They represent the widow in each and every one of us as we pray for and demand a new life. They are not asking for much, they just want to be to us what God created them to be. The Scripture says all that God has created is good. The success that you do not have is that poor widow in your life crying for justice so it take its place in your life, the marriage that is not going well for you is asking for justice so that it can make you happy. The deliverance is complaining to the unjust judge to do the right thing so you can live a bondage-free life. The good things you have not been able to attain in life are the widows in your life crying for justice so they take their proper position in line with the plan of God for your life. We hope things will change. We seek something different for our lives; something other than what we have right now. Day after day it is the same, nothing changes. It appears the heaven has become brass and God has abandoned His people.

The unjust judge wears many disguises: prejudice, failure, instability, oppression, bondage, hatred, fear, diseases that won’t be healed, economic systems, death, grief, poverty, household wickedness, witchcraft, addiction. Regardless of the disguise the unjust judge neither fears God nor respects people.

Standing before the unjust judge, life seems big, powerful, and overwhelming. You feel small, powerless, abandoned and alone. No matter what you do or say, nothing changes, nothing works. You don’t know what else to do so, like the widow in Jesus’ parable. Day after day, you cry out. That is the widow’s story in today’s parable; in today’s world; sometimes even in our own life.

We stand daily before the unjust judge. If this terrible judge, who is so corrupt, will grant justice to this poor widow, how much more will God, who is perfectly just, listen to the pleas of his children who cry out?

What do we do when we stand before the unjust judge? We can choose to get angry and fight back by becoming as hardened and unjust as the judge himself, or we can rely solely on God by standing on His word. Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me. (Ps. 27:10)

Some will give up and believe what the unjust judge says; believing that is the final reality of life and it will never get better. Others will blame and accuse God of being the unjust judge. There are a few, however, who will discover and trust the widow’s faith.

Prayer does not mean giving God a to do list and then sitting back expecting God to magically fix everything like most of us like to believe. To pray means that we offering our cry to God and then we doing whatever we can to bring about the change we seek, trusting that God is already doing what He needs to do.

We make our case not just before God but with God as Dr. Kevin Belsby of The King’s Seminary always says “what are you doing to cooperate with God in what He is doing in your life.” The widow does not wait on God. She waits with God.