Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

Romans 12:12

One quality of prayer that is misunderstood, in my opinion, is the faithfulness required of us when we commit a request to God. When we pray, do we fully hand that request over to God and trust him to faithfully respond to it? Or do we, in our ignorance and fear of disappointment, take back our requests and try to handle things by our own power. Indeed we ought to be persistent in prayer, even as we put our hand to a task, asking God to accomplish it.

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Luke 18:1-8

If a self-interested person can eventually come around to answering a prayer out of pure exhaustion, how much more will a loving Father grant the requests of his beloved children?

Ethan Kirl