In March, Forbes came out with their 2018 list of the richest people in the world, and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, dethroned Bill Gates as the wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of 112 billion dollars.
Can you imagine what you would do with $112 billion? That’s a lot of money.
Now imagine that you bump into Jeff Bezos, and for whatever reason (maybe you returned a package to him that was delivered to your house instead of his), he promises you he will give you anything you ask for.
What would you ask for?
Would you ask for a sandwich? A pack of gum? $20? No way!
Why not? Because the guy is loaded. He has the ability to give you anything you ever wanted or needed without thinking twice about it.
In fact, Jeff makes so much money that in the time he spent writing you a check for a new car, he would make more than enough to pay himself back.
If someone like him were to offer you anything, you would take advantage of it! You’d be crazy not to.
You would ask for something, something incredible, something that no one else could give you.
You wouldn’t ask him for a cookie or a t-shirt. You’d ask for a new house, to pay off your credit card debt, or for a yacht.
You wouldn’t ask for something small when Jeff Bezos could easily give you something big.
So why then do we ask so little of God?
God has blessed us with this amazing gift of prayer. He has asked us to ask him for anything, and we neglect it. Are we crazy to not pray more?
What Is Prayer?
Prayer is simply talking to God.
But have you ever taken the time to think about how amazing that is?
We have God’s ear whenever we want.
At any time, any moment, any place, we can talk to the creator of the heavens and the earth, the king of all creation, the all-powerful Lord of the universe, the one who holds life and death, and space and time in his hands!
We can pray alone, with other people, out loud, or even silently in our heads. And God actually listens to every one of us and responds.
That’s amazing!
So why do we ask so little of God?
A lot of the time, we don’t pray at all, and when we do, we’re shocked when God answers.
Why Don’t We Pray More?
Why don’t we pray with the faith and expectation that God is who he says he is and will do what he has promised to do?
Why do we believe that God worked miracles in the Old Testament, like the parting of the Red Sea, and in the New Testament, like when Paul and Silas were praying in prison, and the earth shook and the jail cells opened, but we often don’t think God can help us?
Don’t we believe that God can work miracles in our lives too?
Maybe we do pray. But what do the majority of our prayers consist of?
- “God help me have a nice day.”
- “God help me to feel better.”
- “God, bless this double bacon cheeseburger, fries, and extra large Coke to my body” (which may be the biggest miracle you ask for all year).
Prayer is an unnatural activity. From birth, we’re taught to be self-reliant. Self-made. Self-sufficient.
The hero is the one who single-handedly stops all evil and saves the universe. In America, we glorify the entrepreneur—the man or woman who starts with nothing and builds wealth through their own hard work and ingenuity.
Prayer flies in the face of all our natural inclination. When we could be working—checking one more thing off our to-do list—we must stop. We must sit still and realize that we cannot do it on our own. We need help.
Asking for help doesn’t come easy for many of us, because we have to admit that we can’t handle it ourselves.
Prayer is one of the most powerful, life-changing spiritual disciplines at our fingertips. And nobody modeled it better for us than Jesus.
How Jesus Teaches Us to Pray
Just look at a few of the many examples of Jesus’ prayer life (Mark 1:32-35, Matt 14:23, Luke 5:15-16, Luke 6:12-1). As much as Jesus talked about prayer, he teaches us even more powerfully by how he lived a life of prayer.
Jesus could have easily made the same excuses we often make: “I’m too busy,” “I’m too tired,” or “God already knows what I need.” But Jesus continued to make time to pray.
Jesus taught his disciples (and us) a profound truth about prayer in Luke 18 that has the power to change your life:
And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1).
There are two things we can take from this verse:
1. Always pray.
It’s not just a before bed thing. It’s not just a before meals thing.
Throughout your day, you can pray.
Before the big meeting, you can pray. After you drop the kids off at school, you can pray.
They don’t have to be long, elaborate prayers. It may be as simple as “God, please help me make the right decision.” Don’t segment prayer into only one part of your day.
Pray through the day.
2. Don’t lose heart.
Don’t get discouraged. Don’t give up.
It is easy to feel sometimes that your prayers are just hitting the ceiling and falling back down—like they somehow aren’t getting to God, he isn’t listening, or he or doesn’t care.
It’s easy to get so overwhelmed by our circumstances that we think even God cannot help us.
Don’t quit. Don’t stop. Keep praying through it.
Jesus continues to illustrate these two principles with a story:
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. (Luke 18:3-8)
Think about the context here. This is a woman who lost her husband in the first century.
Widows had very few rights. They were lowly. Almost everything a woman was or had in the first century was tied to their husband. This was before any woman’s rights movement.
Without a husband, many women couldn’t work (because there were few jobs for women), many of them were poor, and many had to resort to prostitution or other forms of slavery to eat.
Regardless of the odds stacked against her, this woman didn’t take no for an answer. She kept coming before the judge.
The judge doesn’t care about the widow. He has heard thousands of cases from women similar to her and hasn’t batted an eye. But because she keeps “bothering” him, he gives her justice—not because he wants to help her, but to help himself by getting her off his back.
Now, if persistence can move an unrighteous judge, how much more a perfectly righteous God! Will God ignore his children who persistently cry out to him day after day after day?
Jesus says, “No way!” He will give them justice speedily. God will move.
But God Doesn’t Always Answer Our Prayers the Way We Want
We have to understand that God will give us “justice,” and justice isn’t always what we want.
God is not a genie in a bottle. Prayer is not a way to command God to answer our every wish. Prayer is a way to communicate our requests to the great judge.
God will judge our prayer. And if our request is just, and aligns with his plan, he will grant it to us.
So if you are praying that God will help you win the $150 million Powerball lottery, there is a good chance his answer will be no. That is purely selfish
However, if you are praying for something that aligns with God’s mission to bring glory to himself (1 Cor 10:31), and you are persistent, God will grant you justice.
Mark Batterson, in his book The Circle Maker, says it like this: “Most of our prayers have as their main objective personal comfort rather than God’s glory. If God answered those selfish prayers, they would actually short-circuit the purposes of God in our lives. We would fail to learn the lessons God is trying to teach us or cultivate the character God is trying to shape in us.”
Do You Have The Faith to Endure in Prayer?
So here’s my question for you: Like the widow before the judge, have you ever prayed so long and so often about something that you felt like you were bothering God?
This is what Jesus is telling us to do. It’s not like our prayers bother God. But Jesus is telling us to pray so frequently, intensely, and persistently as if we are trying to pester God.
But the problem we run into is in the final sentence of that last verse. Jesus says,
Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).
So God will answer your persistent prayers. But will anyone have the faith to do this?
Will anyone have the faith to pray persistently, day and night, and not lose heart?
How many Christians will Jesus find who have the faith to believe the impossible and pray tirelessly until God answers? And will you be among them?
Imagine what your life might look like if God answered your deepest, most desperate prayers.
Maybe it’s a deteriorating marriage that could be restored, a burden of bad financial decisions that could be corrected, a health situation that could be healed, or a wayward son or daughter who needs to come back home.
Whatever it is, do not waste the powerful gift of prayer.
Present your deepest, darkest desires and dilemma’s to God.
Prayer is not just a one-time request; It’s a long work of faith and endurance.
You may be just a prayer away from the miracle.