Prayer? Really?

We get bored with prayer.
Now that’s a bold statement right?  Now days we have so many other means to achieve what we need or want, that prayer seems to have dropped in its ranking of priorities.  Years ago prayer was always first.  Prayer was the path or road to grasping what one needed, today it is seems to be a time filler when we are really bored, or a segue in church world to move from one element to the next.

One of my good family friends was healed of cervical cancer this week.  It was amazing.  If you don’t believe in stuff like that – sorry you’re really missing out.  Her healing did not come about by a program or a new product or drug.  It appeared because God heard the prayers, and was moved by the prayers of His people.

So then to add to all that thought provoking mumbo-jumbo, I get up this morning and begin reading in Luke 18, where Jesus tells every one a story about a widow who would not stop badgering the king.  The king was godless, yet he honored her request because she continued to berate him with her request.  The king answered just to get her off his back.  So the moral of the story is:  How much more will our kind loving heavenly father meet our needs?

Okay so you knew all that already right?  Fine, I kinda did too.  But what made me smile is what happens at the end of the Luke 18.  At the beginning Jesus taught and told a story, and then at the end of the chapter he allows them to see a real life example of it, persistence in action.

The last few verses of Luke 18 is where the blind man finds out that Jesus is walking by and begins shouting, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”  The crowd told him to shut up.  The people, the followers of Jesus, who just heard the story about the persistent widow tell him to shut up.  Ah, we can learn so much from dumb, hardheaded people can’t we?  But the man never stops shouting, until Jesus comes over and says, “What can I do for you?”

Are you shouting loud enough?  Are you still persistently calling out to God, or have you turned to your own resources to find help?  Are you still trusting God to bring the answer, or is he just taking too long for your liking, so you’ve begun seeking your own answers?

When you are persistent and patient the answer from the king is always more amazing than any answer we could conjure up on our own.

Pray brings amazing results.
Digging through our box of resources and experiences, only yields us the same things we’ve always gotten before.

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