If you asked a room full of Christians what they would most like to improve, a great many would say the same thing: their prayer life. Jesus knew that pull toward discouragement, and he met it head on. Luke tells us he “spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (). Two of his parables, one about a persistent widow and one about a friend who comes knocking at midnight, teach us how to come to God and why we can keep coming.
A Widow Who Would Not Quit
In the first parable a widow keeps coming to a judge who “feared not God, neither regarded man” (). She has no leverage and no friends in high places, only a request and the will to keep bringing it. In the end the judge grants her justice, not because he cares, but simply so she will stop wearing him out. Jesus is not comparing God to that judge; he is contrasting them. If even a hard, selfish man will finally answer a persistent plea, how much more will a loving Father hear his own children who “cry day and night unto him” (). That is why Paul could tell the church to “pray without ceasing” (). We are not persistent to wear God down. We are persistent because we know he hears.
A Friend at Midnight
The second parable pictures a man who goes to a friend’s house at midnight to ask for bread for an unexpected guest. The door is shut, the family is in bed, and still he asks. Jesus says the friend will get up and give him what he needs, if only because of the man’s boldness. The word behind that line carries the sense of a shameless, almost audacious confidence. Again the point is a contrast: if a reluctant neighbor will answer a bold request, our God will do far more. So Jesus draws the lesson out plainly: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (). Too often our trouble is the one James named: “ye have not, because ye ask not” (). We are invited to “come boldly unto the throne of grace” (), and we should.
How Jesus Says to Pray
A parable usually makes one point, so these two do not tell us everything about prayer. Scripture fills in the rest with a few conditions. We are to ask in faith, “nothing wavering” (), trusting that God both hears and acts. We are to ask according to his will, for “if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us” (); prayer is how we seek God’s will, not how we press him into ours. And our praying is meant to go alongside an obedient life: “whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments” (). None of these are hoops to jump through. They are simply what it looks like to trust the Father we are speaking to.
So Paul’s counsel makes perfect sense: “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” (). God is not the unjust judge, worn down against his will. He is not the sleepy neighbor, helping only to be left alone. He is a Father who wants to give. The question the two parables leave with us is not whether he will listen. It is whether we will ask, boldly and without giving up.