Persistent Prayer (Luke 11:1-13)
Reflections on Prayer and the Jesus life.
noahmiller
8/11/20266 min read
The gospel of Luke is written to teach people how to live the Jesus life.
“Luke particularly stresses how this salvation is for all who are poor and needy and the total impact of the gospel is to show the wideness in God’s mercy... (these people) are called to a strenuous life of self denial and perseverance…” (NIGTC - Introduction)
The message is to show us our great need and give us the template of living a life that is worthy of the call and mercy we have received. [Philippians 1:27]
Luke 11:2-4 gives us the classic Lord’s prayer, however it is noticeably shorter than Matthew’s more famous version. The simplicity does not mean that it is less significant, but rather points to the specific points that Luke is trying to draw our attention to.
God is our Father
God gives us what we need
God forgives us
God helps us forgive others and avoid future evils
These will be helpful things to remember as we dissect the parable that follows and try to better understand what bold prayer looks like and how the Spirit of God empowers us to pray in such a way. The parable that follows tells of a man who approaches a friend’s house in the middle of the night for some bread to feed another friend who has recently arrived from a journey. People traveled in the late hours of the evening to avoid the heat of the day. And what to us would seem like a frustrating request, would have been reasonable given the cultural context. The friend is asleep and does not want to get up because it is inconvenient for him. The door is already locked, his family was asleep. Immediately the original audience would hear the theme of hospitality echoing through this story. One commentator wrote “it would be unthinkable not to provide him with hospitality.” It was baked into their understanding of what it meant to live in community and to have relationships with others. Jesus knew this and pointed out that even though hospitality was the expectation, the reason why the friend would actually get up to give the man the bread was because of his boldness.
“Yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs.” (Luke 11:8)
The greek word here is ἀναίδεια - better translated as shamelessness. Contextually the petition of this man is considered shameless because of the following reasons:
The attitude of the one asking
The bold rudeness of coming at such an hour with his request
Maybe there was a certain tone in his voice or the way that he asked that was off-putting. But more than likely it was the fact that he came at an inconvenient time and the very act of doing so showed the desires of the man to show hospitality to his traveling friend. Regardless of the hour, he was willing to make himself look like a fool to provide for someone in need.
What does this teach us about prayer?
I particularly noticed the importance of this parable being placed right after Jesus’ teaching of the Lord’s prayer in Luke 11:1-4. The implication is that the Lord’s prayer is a bold request, shameless in what it asks for, because it is — by definition — contrary to what we would normally ask for out of our own strength…
Jesus teaches us to pray to God as father, which puts us in a form of submission to his will as children.
Jesus teaches us to ask for daily bread, out of the trust that God will give us what we need.
Jesus teaches us to ask God to forgive us of our sin, acknowledging that only through divine mercy is forgiveness possible.
Finally he teaches us to ask for God’s strength to help us forgive others and avoid future evils/temptations.
All this models boldness in our petition, because it is only God that can provide any of these things. A commentator wrote that we pray because we are assured “that God answers prayers… because God responds graciously to the needs of his children… (and that) persistent prayer is the point.” (462-463). The parable that follows is a reminder to keep praying regardless of results or outcomes. It’s often described as an “incentive to prayer” because it comes with the assurance of God’s willingness to answer—the incentive being that God will answer regardless of our perception of an appropriate timeline of his response. Even if we do not get an immediate answer, the very act of praying to God as Father comes with the assurance of his presence and faithfulness over the course of our whole lives.
So far we have explored how prayer should be bold, but how does that happen — practically?
Fortunately, after teaching the disciples how to pray (11:1-4) and then following that up with a parable to encourage them to keep doing so regardless of outcomes (11:5-8) he gives them a bold contrast [Lesser-to-Greater Logic:] of comparing a father’s willingness to give his children good gifts to God’s even better will to grant the petitions of his children (11:11-13).
“If then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13)
The addition of the Holy Spirit in the context of prayer is vital. I believe it answers the question of what boldness in prayer looks like practically and how the children of God can actually achieve it in a reverent way. When we pray the Lord’s prayer, we are asking for strength in the Spirit. Indeed, only if the Spirit is in us can we actually pray such words. So our prayers might come across as bold of shameless, but we do so in pure faith because the words we ask come only by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. What does this boldness look like in action? Jesus gives us examples of this in a few verses that follow…
“But if I drive out demons by the finger of God…” (v.20)
“He who is not with me is against me and he who does not gather with me, scatters.” (v.23)
“Blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (v.28)
Only the life filled by the Spirit of God can live in such a bold way. Only in the Spirit are we united with Christ, otherwise we would scatter. Only because the Spirit dwells in us are we able to hear and obey the word of God to the fullest extent. Again we are reminded that the point of Luke’s gospel is to encourage people to live the Jesus life — which by definition is the life of bold faith and petition, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Some final reflections on the beauty of prayer:
Multiple times over this portion of scripture is the theme of much & more repeated. In verse 8 the man is provided with “as much as he needs”. In verse 9 Jesus encourages us that “we will receive”. In verse 13 he says “how much more will your Father in heaven give…”. Clearly Jesus wants us to hear the idea of abundance.
One commentator notes that the inclusion of ‘as much as he needs’ is meant to “express the generosity of the householder” (465).
The parable itself is used as a contrast of God’s willingness to answer requests.
The beauty we find in this concept of more is that God is willing to answer. God is willing to answer our petitions, big or small. God is willing to hear us — the thought of that alone should radically change how we live. We should be further emboldened that Jesus encourages us to pray with ἀναίδεια - shamelessness. This means that we can come before God at any time. He is never too busy sleeping or too lazy to rise up and unlock his door to let us in. God does not consider us rude when we bring him requests at a time that might be considered by our friends as “inconvenient”. There is no such thing as an inconvenient prayer to God. God is a generous householder, willing to hear us at any moment and give graciously, because we are his children. The Holy Spirit is the necessary requirement of our prayers, because it enables us to prayer within the will of God.
This parable also serves as an encouragement to keep on praying. Even though the parable never uses the term “persistent” the story clearly illustrates the importance of persistence in prayer. Luke 18:1-8 is a parallel passage which of course Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow and the judge. The importance of this story being sandwiched between the Lord’s prayer and Jesus’ promise of the Holy Spirit is that it is an encouragement to keep praying despite of not receiving an immediate answer. This is a case for prolonged prayer — what I will define as a lifestyle of prayer. This form of prayer stands in contrast to what one might call “faith healing prayer” which is the idea that a prayer of true faith will result in immediate healing or an immediate answer from God. Sometimes prayers must be repeated before they will be answered and other times prayers may not be answered at all. The point of the parable is to encourage us to pray boldly and to not cease from doing so. Persistent prayer is a significant part of living the Jesus life.
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In summary, the Lord’s prayer is bold and comes with the confident expectation of God’s response to our bold petition. We shamelessly ask, because we know if it aligns with God’s will… he will provide. The beauty of prayer to God is that we can come expectantly at any hour, that God is generous to give and will never sleep on us. Only by the Holy Spirit can we make bold requests that are in alignment with the will of the generous Father who answers his children.
