Persistent Prayer

Persistent Prayer

Monica prayed for her son Augustine for thirty-two years. He was brilliant, searching, dissolute, and resistant. She wept, she begged, she followed him across the Mediterranean. A bishop told her: 'The child of so many tears cannot be lost.' Augustine was thirty-three when he knelt in a garden in Milan and surrendered to Christ. He went on to become one of the most influential theologians in Christian history. Monica did not live long afterward — but she lived long enough to see the answer. Her persistent prayer is inseparable from his conversion in the historical record. Thirty-two years. The widow in the parable waited less.

The parable of the persistent widow in Luke 18 is introduced with the purpose already stated: to show that we should always pray and not give up. The widow's opponent is a corrupt judge who doesn't care about justice — the opposite of God. The point is from lesser to greater: if a bad judge eventually grants justice because of persistence, how much more will a good and loving God respond to His chosen people who cry out to Him? Jesus' question at the end is sobering: 'When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?' — by which he means the faith that keeps praying when results are delayed. Giving up on prayer is not a failure of strategy; it is a failure of faith. There is something in persistent prayer that expresses trust in God's character. It says: I believe You hear me, I believe You care, I believe You will act.