Always Pray and Do Not Lose Heart

This week I got to call home and have a nice long conversation with my brother Luis. We talked about everything thats been going on here with me in Kenya and whats been going on with him back in Miami. Towards the ending of our conversation I had asked him to pray that the Lord would provide a job so that I'll be able to work when I get back. And Lou, being Luo, started saying how we ought not to worry about the future but to focus on today. He mentioned how we ought to pray. To pray and ask for our daily bread. To pray without a shadow of a doubt. To pray radically. That as radical as our prayers may seem, God is more than able to answer them and it will always bring Him glory at the end.

I started thinking about what the Lord has been teaching me this week (and it seems that He is constantly bring this up) is the daily.

"If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me."-Luke 9:25.

"Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each [this] day our daily bread and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted us. And lead us not into temptation." -Luke 11:2-4.

"Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer." -Romans 12:12.

"...they ought always [daily, all the time] to pray and not lose heart." -Luke 18:1.

Its a daily thing to walk with Christ. To self-deny oneself daily. To pray for our daily bread/need. To pray daily/everyday/all the time. Always. To seek Him daily. To read His Word daily. To love Him daily. To trust Him day by day. To surrender daily. To be a Christian (Christ follower) daily, not just on the weekends ("SundayChristians"). To cling/rely on Him daily. Today I will have to fight my flesh/kill sin. Today I will have to put off the old self and put on the new self, created in the likeness of Christ in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:22-24). I even have to face to the fact that today I am single, and thats okay. Today I want to bring glory to His name. Today I want to love on my kids at the Children's Home and school...etc.

I got to read (wish I could say hear) John Piper's sermon called Always Pray and Do Not Lose Heart based on Luke 18:1-8. I encourage you to check it out:

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/always-pray-and-do-not-lose-heart


"I think a natural question the disciples would ask (and which we should ask) is: How can we endure to the end? How can we make sure that we don't become like Lot's wife, too much in love with this world to go all the way with Christ? How can we resist the relentless temptations of Sodom to be desensitized to God's kingdom by the ordinary pressures of daily life? Did you notice back in verse 28 that Jesus doesn't mention sodomy in the list of what characterized Sodom just before its destruction? In fact, he doesn't mention anything in itself sinful: "they ate, drank, bought, sold, planted, built." Judgment didn't come upon Sodom merely because it had practicing homosexuals in it, but also because all the good, ordinary activities of life were godless. The good things in life can make us just as insensitive to the reality of God as the gross things in life can. So the disciples of Jesus are left in a tremendous battle, which most people don't even know is going on: the battle to maintain radical, heartfelt, self-denying faith in Christ not only in the threat of persecution (21:12–19) and sinful temptations, but also in the threat of ordinary home life and business life which can blunt all our sensitivity to God's eternal kingdom.




Pray! Pray! Pray!

So Jesus tells a parable to give the answer. And it is one of the few parables which he interprets for us lest we miss the point. Luke 18:1 tells us the point of the parable: "And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart." Jesus' answer to the question how to endure to the end is, Pray! Pray! Pray! And don't grow weary of praying.

The parable goes like this (18:2–5): "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, 'Vindicate me against my adversary.' For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming.'" We must not be offended that Jesus compares God to an unjust judge. It's the same as when Jesus' own coming is compared to the coming of a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:2). The point of comparison is not that Jesus is a thief but that his coming is sudden and unexpected. So here the point of comparison is not that God is an unjust judge but that he responds with help to those who cry to him day and night. In verse 7 Jesus draws out the lesson which he intends: "Always pray and don't lose heart." If you cry to God day and night, if you always pray and don't lose heart, you will not be like Lot's wife: you will not be left in judgment; you will endure in faith and love, and God will vindicate you when the Son of man comes. Therefore, always pray and don't lose heart.

Here I should make plain the concern that drives me this morning. This is the end of a week of concerted prayer. Some of us have prayed over 20 hours this week; we prayed in the morning; we fasted and prayed at noon; we prayed all night Friday. But now what? The word from Jesus to us this morning is: don't stop praying; don't peter out; don't be fickle; but "always pray and don't lose heart." And this word increases in urgency as we see the end of the age drawing near. As Peter says (1 Peter 4:7), "The end of all things is at hand; therefore, keep sane and sober for your prayers." The pressures of worldliness will become greater as the end draws near, therefore, all the more must we watch and be sober unto prayer, and not lose heart." -Piper