New Thoughts (03/28/10-04/10/10)
Were it not for the good doctor having pointed us to the sense of this particular parable, I would be inclined to find a much different point to it. However, Scripture being God breathed, I am made certain that Luke’s explanation of the parable’s purpose is correct. He spoke this lesson as a question of constant prayer that doesn’t give up. If I am honest about this, I must admit that part of the reason I see a different message in the parable is because I want to. I don’t want to consider the instruction to pray ceaselessly because I know I do no such thing. I do not pray ceaselessly. I do not pray all the time. I don’t say this by way of saying I have found a better way. How could I find a better way than God’s way? I say it simply because I need to be honest with myself and with my God.
Oh! How this poor man would prefer to quibble with Luke, to give him explanations of how he had missed the point. Divert the attention elsewhere! But, the clear truth is that Scripture repeatedly makes just such an admonition as regards prayer. If there is a hallmark of the Christian, this is it. Yes, there is our love for one another, which is promoted as the evidence of God in us. Shaky evidence, at times, but it is what we are commanded to pursue regardless. There are our varied rites and ceremonies, even for those of us who think our particular corner of the faith is free of them. Stuff and nonsense, that! No, whether ancient or relatively recent, we all have our order of worship, such as it is. We all have our ritualized habits.
However, this is the clear and unmistakable mark of a man of faith: he prays. He prays ceaselessly. What does that mean? Didn’t Jesus warn us against longwinded repetitions as if we supposed God to be deaf or sleeping? Yes, He did. Indeed, we can look back at the exploits of Elijah and find him making light of the false gods that plagued Israel thanks to the Canaanites, and see exactly that jibe made at the expense of the idolaters. Oh, do please keep shouting and carrying on. Perhaps your god is distracted with other matters. Perhaps he is asleep. But, the God of Israel, the God of the Christian, He is not so. He never slumbers nor sleeps. His eye is ever towards His elect, and His ear is ever open to their prayers.
So, it’s not that we are called to be longwinded. What then? Is it that we are called to be like this woman, and keep pestering God until He gets tired of hearing from us? Hey, God! You didn’t get this done for me yesterday, so let’s see it done today! Well, yes. After a fashion, this is what He is telling us. But, there is a certain caveat we ought to keep in mind. Note well that this woman was crying after justice. God will not act unjustly, however loud or long we pray for Him to do so. Indeed, before we go crying to Him for justice on our behalf, we would do well to consider whether we really want from Him what Justice alone requires. Far better we should cry out ceaselessly for mercy.
We must also be mindful that God is not required to heed such prayers as are counter to His purpose. We are not in a position to demand of God that He do as we please. He is not some genie that we can conjure upon. He is not some demon that we might hope to manage him by arcane means. He is God. He is the Power above all powers. He is the Authority. None commands Him, nor has He reason to seek any other’s permission to act as He sees fit. Who could instruct Him? Whose wisdom has He need of in counsel? There is no one.
So, ceaseless prayers of self-interest are not being condoned by this instruction. It’s not pray ceaselessly that we shall be free of all sickness, free of all unsatisfied desire. It’s not about health, wealth, and a highly polished exterior that we can show off as the meaning of, “Look what the Lord has done!” How can we have such a mindset? How can we look back across the landscape of Christian history and suppose this is what the ancient faith is all about? How can we read, “In this life, you will have tribulations” (Jn 16:33), and suppose that somehow that doesn’t apply to us? That was for the apostles, I guess, or maybe only for the early church.
Indeed, we live in an age when the leaders of the church in many cases seek to convince us that we oughtn’t to be so firm in our convictions. We should all be seeking to get along within the varied denominations, setting aside our differences and putting on the happy face. Whatever happened to the Truth? If God’s Truth is not worthy of our concern, what is the point of serving Him? If His Word doesn’t matter, why read it? If our differences within the ranks are of such little import, then why are we bothering with those other religions? If it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. Hey! At least they’re pursuing something they call god. That’s apparently good enough.
But, no! Whenever and wherever God’s people have stood up and proclaimed that His Truth is Truth, wherever men with the conviction of true faith have refused to compromise, there has been tribulation. Tribulation is far beyond minor inconveniences. It’s not that they were passed over for some promotion. It’s not that they didn’t get paid the same as some more favored group. It was life or death, and death by most painful means. For some, it is still so today. For us, though, well! If the neighbors don’t want us posting Christian broadsheets on their property, we consider that persecution. Hardly. We have not yet begun to stand up. And, unless and until we recover a deep and abiding concern for Truth, I rather doubt we ever shall.
What has this to do with persistent prayer? It has everything to do with it! It is the Truth of the Gospel that ought to direct our prayers. It is the true promise of God upon which we must found our certitude. It is the true plan of God to which we subject the content of our prayers. Thy will be done! Skip my petty desires, God. Forget about this brief nonsense of earthly life. Promotions? Fancy cars? Well, if You wish to bless me with it, I shall not refuse. But, it’s hardly the point. If there is a place for persistent prayer it is quite plainly that prayer which seeks God’s purposes.
Lord, even today! Even today, open my eyes to Your purpose. Open my ears to Your direction. Once again, my God and my King, I submit my will to Yours. Your will be done, in service, in home, in all things. I do indeed thank You for the pleasures You have given me in this life, but I shall thank You as well for the trials. How shall I do otherwise? You, O Lord, array my days as You see fit, and as You see fit is, by Your own declaration, for my best good. So, thank You, Lord. Thank You, though I know I grumble too often in the midst. Thank You, that You have so taken interest in me as to be concerned for my good. Thank You that You have chosen to display Your mercy in me, and may I, in turn, be found manifesting that same mercy towards others. Oh, I know this is a failing in me, but there is no failing in You. So, if it please You, my God, let Your ways be seen in me today.
So, once more I must ask why it is that I find it so difficult to accept that prayer is to be such a constant feature of my life. I tend to hold firm to that commandment against praying with endless repetition, but neglect the much more prominent counter-thread of ceaseless prayer. Why? Well, of course it’s uncomfortable. If I am going to pray vocally and earnestly at the same time, I am going to be exposed before those who hear me. That’s certainly uncomfortable. One doesn’t like to broadcast one’s weaknesses, even to oneself. Yet, this is what we are called to. If we acknowledge an utter dependence upon God for everything, it really shouldn’t bother us to admit to the specifics. But, somehow the more general case is easier to confess.
What sort of psychosis is this? Yes, I confess that I am wholly and completely dependent upon You, Lord, but I have this particular situation well in hand. I need you to so much as breath, but let me take care of this one. I can do it with out You. Oh, I know. Apart from You I can do nothing, but this is pretty close to nothing. I’m sure I can handle it alone, thanks. Honestly! We may not think it out in such explicitly contradictory ways, but this is what our behavior indicates. It’s not far different from those who insist that salvation is all about God alone, except you have to accept Him. It’s all about Him except. That just doesn’t fly. I’m sorry. It either is or it isn’t. It doesn’t fly in the case of salvation, and it doesn’t fly in the case of His Lordship. Neither does it apply in the matter of ability. In Him we live and move and have being (Ac 17:28). That doesn’t leave much else to consider. It doesn’t leave anything else to consider.
So, this One in Whom and by Whom I have life and breath, repeatedly instructs that I should pray constantly. Pray for the big things. Pray about the little things. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will straighten your paths (Pr 3:6). Here, God’s Word to the Nations gives us the translation, “pray all the time and never give up.” Never give up. We shall need to come back to that, but what an admonition in that! Never give up! I hear echoes of Winston Churchill exhorting the people of Great Britain in that. Never give up! The evil seems overwhelming, but never give up! The days grow darker, but never give up! That is a message the Christians in particular have needed to hear in every age. No, we are not alone in needing such encouragement, but we have it from a unique source, having heard it from the very Son of God.
Don’t lose heart! This is not the only time we hear that admonition. Paul picked up the same cry, and applied it to those who had thought that surely the Kingdom’s full appearance must be right around the corner. Don’t lose heart! Yes, you are growing old, and He still has not returned. Yes, your body is decaying, going the way of all flesh. But, don’t lose heart! For, your inner man is being renewed daily (2Co 4:16). This isn’t like some endless cycle of déjà vu he is describing. He is describing progress. We ought to find the words more and more in there. Each day you are further renewed. Why? Because you have been following the exercise program of the Lord. You have been in His Word, allowing it to renew your mind. And, importantly, you have been in His presence, praying that He would inform you as to the right understanding of what your mind has read.
I heard a message from R. C. Sproul yesterday, and he was pointing out the interdependence of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection as concerns the efficacy of the Christ. The Crucifixion without the Resurrection is but the all too common experience of the criminal or enemy of the state under ancient law. It is devoid of any power to save. The Resurrection, were it not for the Crucifixion, would have been no more than a bit of necromancy. It would have imparted no least bit of benefit to any man alive then, let alone now. Lazarus, after all, was resurrected, was he not? Did his return to life have the power to save? No. For, he had not the atoning power of the Crucifixion to go before.
In a similar way, we must understand that being in the Word and being in prayer are both needful, else they are of little worth. If we study daily, but find no time to listen to God’s Holy Spirit explaining the matter to us, then we wander down the erroneous paths that so many have trod before us. Here lies the path to liberal theologies that make the church little more than a reflection of the latest social mores. If we are in prayer constantly but never in the Word seeking the God Who has revealed Himself in its pages, we know not to whom we are speaking and have no means of verifying the impressions laid upon our mind. We open ourselves, frankly, to every lying spirit and drift through our religious experience like a rudderless ship. We need both.
Forgive my return to nautical themes, but I have rather been soaking in them of late. But, consider: A ship with no rudder may raise all manner of sail to the wind, but it cannot determine its course. It is left to the wind to decide, and that ship can only sail as the wind blows. Yet, for all the soundness of the rudder, if there are no sails to raise up, then the power of that passing wind will not move the ship one inch. It’s like sitting behind the wheel of a car when you don’t have the keys. You can hold the wheel all you like, but you’re going nowhere. Study and prayer are like that. Apart from prayer I fear we should find the wind of the Spirit passing over and through us without imparting anything of power or drive to us. We may hold the tiller, but we’re left idling on the surface of the sea. Without study, should that wind hit us, we have no control of ourselves. We are at the mercy not of the Holy Spirit, but every passing zephyr from every passing spirit, for good or for ill. Oh, if I push this too hard, it shall surely fall apart like any other analogy, but I believe my point is made.
Elsewhere, we are told not to grow weary of doing good (2Th 3:13). Oh! What a chord that strikes in me! I come to that point where I really have to ask myself: am I doing good or just doing? Am I serving God or man? Am I seeking to display His kingdom in me, or am I just going along with the program? If the answers to these lie with the former, then don’t grow weary, oh my soul. But, if it’s the latter, then it’s time to lay aside those things that so thoroughly distract me from the course I ought to take. In many ways, it is those distractions, those things that seem good to a man yet are not the things God had in mind, that make us weary when it’s time to do what He has set before us. But, there is another key factor in all this, which draws me back around to the point I have been pursuing: Prayer is the battery that provides energy for our doing good, as well as direction.
Is it not for this reason that we are so often admonished to pray constantly? Consider the various cases that are set out for us in the parallel verses for this passage. Be alert at all times, praying for strength to escape what must come (Lk 21:36). Notice two factors there: Be alert. Pray for strength. In both behaviors, the call is to do so at all times. Don’t drop your guard. Don’t become foolishly convinced of your own strength. Remain constantly alert, and remain constantly praying for the strength needed in the next step. Not surprisingly, we find this attitude modeled in the very Lord Who thus commands us. Look back over those events we saw in His years of prime ministry. He was alert to the situation around Him, whether the people around Him were in earnest pursuit of the kingdom of God, or just looking for reasons to doubt; whether the issues in those people were physical maladies or spiritual or both. And, even as the events such as the feeding of thousands came to a close, He was off to pray, that He might have strength for the next mission.
Paul also links prayer and the power to go through. Rejoice in the certainty of your hope, he says, and persevere amidst the tribulations that will surely come. How, Paul? How can we attain to such an attitude? Well, the key is simple: Be devoted to prayer (Ro 12:12). But, how are we to pray? If it is not to be simply a matter of constant chatter, if the repetitive mantras so common to idolatry are not to be found among us, how are we to pray? Well, without ceasing, of course (1Th 5:17), and certainly in the Spirit (Eph 6:18). Oh, but what does that mean? Let me look at that just a moment. “Pray in all times in the Spirit, to this purpose: Be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for the saints.”
In my mind, I do not see that this is a call to speak in tongues all day long. For one thing, it seems pretty clear that the time for such ‘prayer language’ as we call it is when we don’t know what to pray, the time for expressing things that are beyond our capacity for words. But, here we are not beyond our capacity. We have a specific matter given our consideration: the needs of the saints. Now, isn’t that interesting? Notice where that call to prayer is focused. It is entirely outside ourselves. It is a prayer for the saints, for our brothers in the faith. We might suppose that the focus is on those saints whose situation is more dire than our own. We are not unaware, certainly, that persecutions as severe as those known in Rome of the early centuries continue in some regions of the world.
In the West, we get all worked up over liberal incursions into the faith, and corruption in the pulpit – and rightfully so. But, these issues pale in comparison to those who face death and worse for their confession of faith. Why, we think that our inability to post banners wherever we would, or to spend our work hours preaching for conversion is persecution! Nothing of the kind! That has more to do with the fact that we treat our disobedience to law and custom as some sort of badge of super Christianity. It is nothing of the sort. It is simply offensive disregard for what is right and proper. No, the persecution is to be found elsewhere, where belief is seen as grounds for torment, torture, murder and all manner of lawlessness perpetrated against the believer.
Listen, to be sure there is nothing wrong with praying that God would cleanse the pulpits that are yet held in His name, however little those in the pulpit may regard Him. But, there are bigger things to pray about. Pray for your brothers and sisters who need all that the Spirit can imbue them with to persevere. Pray that they will find the strength to hold fast to their confession whatever may come. Pray that we might likewise hold fast, if it should come to such straits with us.
Pray in the Spirit. This speaks to me of being in accord with His promptings far more than any charismatic display. Be alert! We can’t do that if we are following the commonly spoken admonition to turn our minds off and let God. Indeed, I find absolutely nothing in Scripture to sanction such nonsense. Be alert! Engage! Renew your mind, yes! Absolutely! The Word must teach us how to think more clearly, how to shed the nonsense of the ages in favor of the wisdom of the Ancient of Days. But, disengage it? Never! Be alert! Pay attention! Analyze and assess what is happening around you with the input of the Spirit, and let Him direct you to those things for which you should be praying just now.
Indeed, devote yourselves to prayer (Col 4:2). And, notice what follows in that passage: two major, major keys to valuable prayer: Be alert in your prayer, and do it with a thankful attitude. Wow! Let me repeat that as we find it elsewhere in Paul’s contribution. “Be anxious for nothing. Rather, in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Prayer and supplication. We need to learn that prayer is more than giving God our laundry list of wants and desires. That may be in our supplications, but it’s interesting, isn’t it, that Paul separates the two here. Prayer and supplication; and both of these with thanksgiving. If prayer isn’t thoroughly drenched with thankfulness, it isn’t prayer. It is the mindless repetition of the idolater. It is the dull duty of the coerced slave. Yes, I know. I must repeat the Lord’s Prayer. OK, let’s get it over with. Nothing will ever be accomplished by that sort of praying! Neither ought we to expect much if the only thought we take from the Lord’s Prayer, is the “give us this day our daily bread” thought. No! The most powerful theme from that prayer is, “Thy will be done on earth as in heaven,” and let us always take that as meaning, “in me as in Your highest angel – instant and complete in obedience to Your direction.” See, if we will hold that point foremost in our prayer, then He will surely be faithful to direct the course of whatever follows.
That is praying in the Spirit! Praying with eyes only for what God Himself would have prayed at this time. All our little agendas set aside, and only His before us. Here is the foundation for ceaseless prayer!
What is it, Lord, that You would have me praying about in this moment? What is it, Lord, that You would hear heaven petitioned for this morning? Where is the need, Lord? I thank You for allowing me this role in Your plan, and I thank You for the deep and abiding comfort of knowing that You have provided for me, and that, right perfectly! I thank You, Lord, that I can rest in You, knowing that You abide in me. I thank You that You have not yet abandoned this temple, nor shall You. No! I speak that with no false pride. I speak that with the certainty of Your own promise that by Your own right arm, You will do it. Oh God! Forgive me for the many ways by which I have defiled the premises, and train me up more swiftly, my Liege, that I might keep clean that which You have washed in me. Strengthen, o Lord, that I might stand against the temptations of this day, and remind me, even as the day progresses, to seek Thee the more as trials increase. Lord, prepare me, for I am Thy sanctuary. And, in whatever form, let Your praises be found in me today. Let Your presence within be seen without, to the glory of Your name. Amen.
It is striking that Jesus chooses to say as He does in drawing His point from this parable. God, he says, will surely bring about justice for His elect, who cry to Him day and night. It’s not just that they are persistent in prayer that leads God to answer. It is because those who are praying are His elect. As I was turning my attention over to this piece of the message, I was inclined to suppose that one could pray properly and persistently to the true God of heaven and yet, were that one not counted among the elect, it would be of no value. That may even be the case, but I think there is another perspective that we ought to have on this, and that is that it is only the elect of God who would pray in this fashion. To put it differently, His elect, and those who cry to Him day and night are one and the same. It is not that one is a subset of the other. They are both describing the same body of persons.
If there is a sense in which one is a subset of the other, I would have to suppose that those earnest prayers were a subset of the elect, and not the other way about. But, it is the elect of God, those He has chosen, who will be found in such an attitude of prayer. It is the elect of God who will be found in His household when His kingdom is fully come upon the earth.
What does it mean to be elect? We should certainly gain a sense of its significance by considering our own political system, wherein we elect, or choose, the candidate we wish to have representing us. He is called an elected official because he cannot simply lay claim to the office he holds, nor can he be appointed to it by some acquaintance who happens to have power. He must be chosen for the role. In the case of our political system, he must be chosen by a majority of those invested with the right to choose. In the case of heaven, there is but one invested with that right, and it is His choice alone that marks us out as His adopted sons.
Listen! This has got to be understood. We did not choose Him. He chose us. We did not, in all fairness, accept some offer that He made to us by way of having first right of refusal. It’s not like that business with Ruth, where the nearest kin could take her or leave her as he determined. It’s really more like the stuff we saw in ‘The Godfather’. It’s an offer we can’t refuse. We may not like to hear it. We may think that somehow ‘reduces us to no more than automatons’. But, we would be wrong to suppose so, and, even were that the case, we ought still to be thankful. Better an automaton with a future than a free being freely pursuing his unavoidable doom! Honestly, the same automaton argument can be levied against the sinner. You can pretend that you are happily choosing to pursue your sins, but the truth is that you are a slave to sin, and have no choice in the matter. So, too, your righteousness. God says He purchased you out of sin’s slavery to enter into slavery to righteousness (Ro 7:17-18).
So, let’s start there. We were chosen out of the slave pits. We were selected as being the ones our Lord would purchase for Himself. But, there is really a much less clinical sense to the matter. After all, if we left it there, we might still suppose there was something in us that recommended us to Him, and there is no such trait we might put forth to explain the case. Yet, He has, in choosing us, declared us select, like select fruit. He has marked us out as His favorites. Wow! Can you even imagine that? God says I am counted among His favorites. I don’t even need to put that in the singular or superlative. It’s enough to consider just as it is. Never mind that He looks upon the likes of me and declares that I am excellent, prime meat, if you will. He declares me one of His favorites.
Why, Lord? What could You possibly see in me that would lead You to favor me so? Even now, after these many years with You, I would look askance at such a choice as me. There is nothing in me that should elicit such a response from You. I can’t even keep the doorway of this temple clean, and yet, You continue to abide in it! How can this be, except that Your choice has nothing to do with anything but Your choice? I can only thank You for holding me in such regard. Yes, and I can thank You that I can be assured that You will, on Your schedule, so renew this poor man as to make me one day worthy of such regard. Thank You, Holy God of all, that You are indeed indwelling me, transforming me, creating in me that very worth that You have declared, for indeed, Your Word does not go forth without accomplishing all that You have purposed. Glory be to Your name! Glory be to You in all ways, in all things, and at all times!
[04/10/10] Before leaving these verses, I do want to touch briefly on that last question Jesus poses. Will He find faith on the earth? My immediate reaction to that is to say that He surely will for He is the author of faith. That salvation is by faith we understand. But, when we read Ephesians 2:8-9, what do we suppose it to be saying? “You have been saved by faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast.” The question is which of these does he mean is not of ourselves, the salvation or the faith? Perhaps both? If faith is of myself, then it is indeed something I can work up, but then if salvation is by faith it is by me and not Him, and the whole of the point fails, for salvation has become a matter of works after all. For Paul’s statement to stand, which it must, I have to take it that he means faith is not of myself, but the gift of God.
It is not this verse alone that fails if this is not the case. So much depends on this aspect of faith. If this is not the case, then Jesus cannot be accurate in saying that none come to Him except the Father draws them. Election fails. In fact, the whole of Scripture fails, if faith is something I have worked up in myself and not, as Paul says, the gift of God to me.
And again, if this is the case, I have to suppose that Jesus is quite assured of finding faith when He comes. How could it be otherwise? If that is the case, it strikes me that perhaps I am misapprehending the question, for it is not like Jesus to ask a question to no great purpose. If His focus is on prayer in this parable, then to shift to faith at the end is poor form for the Teacher. He is distracting the students from His real point. Again, that’s not the Jesus I see throughout, so I am once more forced to suppose the question is misunderstood if we take it in such a basic sense.
The Message provides a possible interpretation of the question, which is at least somewhat more in tune with the setting: “How much of that kind of persistent faith will the Son of Man find?” Such an understanding certainly keeps that matter of persistence in the foreground. His point, Luke has told us, was that we should pray constantly and without losing hope of an answer, however long things might seem to be taking as we measure it. To pray with such constancy and confidence surely requires a strong foundation of faith and belief, and that gives reason to Jesus including faith in a lesson on prayer.
James also links faith and effective prayer, noting that it is the prayer offered in faith that will restore the sick (Jas 5:15), and obtain forgiveness of sins – note this – in another. Pardon a bit of a sidetrack, but I’ve not noticed that before. We are authorized to seek the forgiveness of another’s sins, not just our own. This could well tie back to the matter of binding and loosing, which is, after all, a legal matter. We are authorized to do this! That’s just awesome. The power we are granted by God is simply astounding. By and large, I am almost scandalized to think that He would place such power into hands like mine. What is He thinking? But, then I am brought back to the reality that He is not binding Himself to honor such prayers as I might offer up in contradistinction to His own purposes. He is God, not a madman.
This brings me back around to an aspect of faith that I feel needs addressing. We have, many of us, this idea that faith is some sort of power we wield. Perhaps it is in some sense. But, our muddled fleshly thinking tends to make of it something like a magical power. Why, by the way we exercise our faith, we have the power to keep God from doing as He would! Or so we imagine. We look at that verse where it is noted that Jesus could not heal many because of the lack of faith in that town, and we think, see? It’s up to us! If things aren’t falling our way, it’s because our faith is too weak. But, don’t you see? That’s falling back into the lie that faith is ours and not His gift to us. We are right back to that ‘our faith’ thing, and that’s nothing less than trying to take the reins of power back into our own hands.
But, faith is not a power, particularly as we are seeing it applied in this current parable. Faith is a mindset, a conviction as to the truth of the matter. In the context of the Bible and of the Christianity it propounds faith is a conviction as to the Truth of our relationship to God and, more importantly, of His abiding love for us. How often I find myself wondering that this God I see described in Scripture – perfect in Holiness, all wise, all powerful, unwilling to so much as tolerate even the presence of sin – is yet able to dwell in me. Oh, I have no doubt that there is more than sufficient presence of sin yet in me to warrant His wrath upon me. And yet, this is not what I find to be the case. I find that in spite of my wayward habit, He does indwell. I find that however often I stray off course, He is faithful to draw me back. I find that He will never abandon me nor forsake me, even as He has said. I find, then, cause for confident conviction as to those other things He has said in the pages of Scripture. I find cause to believe that as I pray in accord with His sovereign will, I have every reason to expect that He will answer. I also find cause to qualify all my prayers with the qualification Jesus Himself saw fit to issue, “Nevertheless, Thy will be done.”
If, then, I am praying that effective prayer James bespeaks, it is because I have assured myself that what I seek in prayer is in full accord with God’s purposes. There is no leprous stain of selfishness upon my requests, no favoritism or injustice sought. My prayers are seeking only that His kingdom be established and expanded. My prayers are seeking only that His ways might be made straight and level, that His purposes might proceed unhindered, even knowing that any such hindrance is futile anyway.
You see, when I recognize my faith as a conviction beyond matters of feeling and emotion, I recognize a powerful certainty. This is the sort of faith that believes even when things seem all wrong. This is the stuff that sustained Job through all his trials. This is the stuff that Paul lay hold of even as he faced imprisonment and death. This is the stuff that has upheld the true believer throughout the ages. It’s not some magical power, and it’s not some sort of ecstatic emotion we’ve worked up. It’s confidently knowing that God is Who He says He is, that He does what He says He does, and that the Scriptures are entirely trustworthy in how they have described Him to us. He does work all for the good of His children.
Joseph lived to see it, even though he lived through an awful lot that did not seem good at the time. You see in Joseph the very picture of that faith Jesus is asking after. That his faith was built upon certainty is clear. There’s no faltering in him. There’s no hint of blowing God off because he wasn’t riding in prosperity day in and day out. Whether in prison or in royal robes, the faith of Joseph remained the same because the God in Whom he has believed remains the same. That is the sort of faith which doesn’t falter. That is the sort of faith that will not cease crying out to God just because things have become difficult.
This, in the end, is where I think Jesus is tuned with that question. Go back to the explanation Luke gave us at the start. The lesson was to pray constantly, yes. But, the lesson was also not to lose heart. When does one lose heart? Is it simply because some desired blessing is slow in arriving? No. We’re capable of maintaining a pleasant anticipation. But, when the road ahead is hard and dangerous, when we feel ourselves to be traveling in that valley of death David spoke about, what then? When the threat of violence is upon us for our confession of faith in Christ, what then? When death is a certainty except we renounce the God of heaven, what then? Will He find faith of this nature when He comes? Again, I have to say yes, He will. Will He find it in me, should He come in my lifespan? By His grace I can be confident that the answer remains yes, even though in my flesh I find it doubtful. But, I do not function by emotions. I function by faith, and that not of myself. Therefore I have confidence to believe that He shall do in me what I find most improbable in myself.
