Put Your Prayers on Repeat
COVID has exposed some ugly habits in my prayer life. The shutdown keeps going on and on, and with each passing month, it feels like I’m running out of steam to keep coming back with certain prayer requests. But, I want to pray more fervently. I want to pray more faithfully. Honestly, I want to be someone who simply prays more. But most recently, I have been growing in learning to pray for the long haul. I can often lose heart when I pray and nothing happens immediately. I am trying to grow in not giving up so quickly in prayer.
I want to be someone who can pray for something consistently for months, years, even decades. I sometimes hear stories of people who prayed for someone for twenty years, and then in that twenty-first year, God breaks through. But how do I get to the point of having that kind of prayer life? Well, for me the growing has begun by first understanding that God does actually call me to that kind of praying. When I read Luke 18:1–8 recently, I was reminded of how God calls us to put our prayers on repeat. Here is what Jesus says:
And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:1–8 ESV)
Jesus tells the purpose of the parable in verse 1—
“And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).
The parable, admittedly, may seem a bit strange, but we know what it is about—prayer. Specifically, Jesus cues us to pay attention to the widow not losing heart.
In the case before the judge, she knew her request was a righteous one so she kept asking. She didn’t lose heart when her request went unanswered the first, second, or third time. This woman kept going back and back and back to an unrighteous judge to have him grant her the request. Eventually, he does.
Jesus goes on to say if this is the case with an unrighteous judge, how much more will the righteous judge, God himself, respond favorably.
Jesus, in this parable, calls us to mimic this widow’s longevity—to have this longevity in our prayer life. He is calling us to put righteous prayer requests on repeat. In other words, don’t lose heart in what you are praying for. God doesn’t mind broken-record prayers. Rather, he’s inclined to answer them.
In short, prayer requests don’t have a shelf life. Keep asking until you can’t ask because God has answered it (with a yes or a no). Days, weeks, months, years, decades—whatever it takes, keep praying. We should not lose heart and assume God must not be listening when we have been praying for something for a couple of days. The problem is not that God is not listening. The problem is that we lose heart too quickly.
The truth captured in this short parable is that God is listening, and he is calling us to keep asking. We need to keep asking—even if we get tired of asking. We can take comfort in the fact that tired, worn-out prayers still make it to the throne of our God who never tires to hear our pleas. The incentive to pray for the long haul is that we are praying to a God who gladly answers the faithful prayers of those who keep coming back and asking.
As we enter yet another month of lockdown because of COVID, may we not lose heart in praying—even if we feel like we have prayed for months and nothing has happened! Keep coming to God in prayer. Don’t lose heart, or in Jesus’s own words, “[We] ought always to pray and not lose heart.” God wants us to put our prayers on repeat, and God is inclined to answer the righteous, repeated requests.