Prayer

⁶ Then the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge said. ⁷ And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? ⁸ I tell you that He will avenge them speedily.

Luke 18.6-8

So, let’s go back to what it says in Luke chapter 18.

Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart,

Luke 18.1

The first point which I want to make this morning is the importance of praying and not losing heart, of continuing in the faith.

The purpose of this Parable is to encourage us to carry on with prayer and faith. Men ought always pray, not lose heart. The word ‘always’ is important.

For example, prayer can be just a one-off activity which we do perhaps once we accept Jesus a Saviour, and we think we’ve done it. Or perhaps we pray to God when we’re in trouble and we need a bit of help.

Prayer should be something which is continually part of our life but in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 17 Paul says,

pray without ceasing,

1 Thessalonians 5.17

It doesn’t mean to say you have to spend your whole day in prayer, but that your whole day should be surrounded with prayer. You should have time to set aside before you set off on your day to pray to the Lord, remember the Lord during the day. And you can pray wherever you are, you can pray as you’re walking down the street, you can pray when you’re at work, you can pray as you’re riding on a bus, you can pray when you’re in church, and you can pray when you’re in your own home.

The scripture says,

For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Romans 10:13

whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved

God will hear you. So, we have to pray to God.

And it also says,

And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Matthew 6:7

There are some people who do have specific prayer times. If you’re Jewish, you should pray three times a day. If you’re a Muslim, you should pray five times a day. And they should pray certain prayers and pray the words over and over again.

I used to work as a teacher, and I worked for a while at the Hasmonean School for boys which is an Orthodox Jewish school. At lunch time, I used to have to take the register and during the register, the boys would say they’re Minchah prayers which are the afternoon prayers.

They would say the same thing over and over again. It’d be a kind of competition to see who could say the prayers fastest and get to the end quickest. It was kind of amusing but I thought, if I was a father and my son came to me and every day and he said the same words over and over again, and he tried to get it through it as quickly as he could just to ensure he was saying all the words, I wouldn’t be terribly pleased. I’d rather he talk to me, told me what is on his heart and told me how I could communicate with him.

That’s what God wants from us. He wants his prayer to be part of a communication and we can bring – we just sang the hymn “Have you trials and temptations? Take it to the Lord in prayer” – we can take our needs and bring them to the Lord in prayer.

It’s a personal communication with our loving, heavenly Father who cares for us.