The Payoff of Persistent Prayer
by Philip Yancey
Jesus’ story about village neighbors must have provoked smiles and chuckles in his first-century audience. A man opens his door to an unexpected guest late one night—not uncommon in a desert climate that encourages travel after sunset—only to find his pantry bare. In a region renowned for hospitality, no decent person would turn away a weary traveler or put him to bed without nourishment, so the host strikes out to a friend’s house to ask for bread.

Kenneth Bailey, a Presbyterian missionary who lived in Lebanon forty years, illuminates some of the cultural nuances behind the story. Palestinians use bread as Westerners use silverware: they break off bite-sized pieces, dip into a common dish of meat and vegetables, and eat the entire sop. The man with empty cupboards was likely asking his friend for a main course as well as loaves of bread, and even that was typical. Villagers frequently borrowed from each other in hospitality emergencies. Bailey recalls one instance: “While living in primitive Middle Eastern villages, we discovered to our amazement that this custom of rounding up from the neighbors something adequate for the guest extended even to us when we were the guests. We would accept an invitation to a meal clear across the village, and arrive to eat from our own dishes which the villagers had borrowed quietly from our cook.”

In Jesus’ story, though, the neighbor stubbornly refuses the request (see Luke 11). He has already gone to bed, stretched out with his family on a mat in the one-room house—and, besides, the door is bolted shut. “Don’t bother me,” he calls to his neighbor outside. “I can’t get up and give you anything.”

A Middle Eastern audience would have laughed out loud at this lame excuse. Can you imagine such a neighbor? Jesus was asking. "Certainly not! No one in my village would act so rudely. If he did, the entire village would know about it by morning!"

Then Jesus delivers the punch line: “I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness [his persistence, his shamelessness] he will get up and give him as much as he needs.” The application to prayer follows immediately: “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

Luke positions this story right after Jesus’ teaching on the Lord’s Prayer, drawing a sharp contrast between the reluctant neighbor and God the Father. If a cranky neighbor who has turned in for the night, who wishes more than anything you would go away, who does his best to ignore you—if such a neighbor eventually rouses to give what you want, how much more will God respond to your bold persistence in prayer! After all, what earthly father would sneak a snake under his son’s pillow when he asks for a fish, or drop a scorpion on his daughter’s breakfast plate instead of an egg?

The Lord’s Prayer, often reduced to a mumbled ritual, an incantation, takes on new light in this story abutting it. We should pray like a salesman with his foot wedged in the door opening, like a wrestler who has his opponent in a headlock and won’t let go.

The God “who watches over you will not slumber,” promises a psalm of comfort. Even so, sometimes when we pray it feels as if God has indeed nodded off. Raise your voice, Jesus’ story implies. Strive on, like the shameless neighbor in the middle of the night. Keep pounding the door.

Author Jerry Sittser sees persistence through the eyes of a parent. “My kids have asked me for many things over the years—a CD player, bicycle, boat, car, house, exotic vacations ... You name it, they have asked it. I ignore them most of the time. I am as hard-hearted as they come, a parent made of granite. My ears perk up, however, when they persist, because persistence usually means they are serious about something.”

Unlike a human parent, God knows my true motive, whether pure or impure, noble or selfish, from the moment of the original request. As I ponder Jesus’ stories, I cannot help wondering why God places such a premium on persistence. If I find it tedious to repeat the same requests over and over, surely God tires of hearing them. Why must I pound on the door or elbow my way into the courtroom? Why won’t a single sincere request suffice?

In search of clues, I turn first to the account of Jesus’ life, and in several scenes I can see the value of persistence. After Lazarus died, his two sisters, the industrious Martha and meditative Mary, both accused Jesus: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” They vented their accumulated grief and frustration, so much so that Jesus, too, sank into sorrow—before granting their deepest wish in one of his greatest miracles.

In another scene, a Canaanite woman pestered Jesus about her afflicted daughter. “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us,” urged the disciples, reminiscent of the hard-hearted villains in Jesus’ parables. Even Jesus brushed her off, first ignoring her request and then challenging her right to make it. The foreign woman persisted and Jesus, impressed, granted her wish and then held her up as a model of faith.

Beside a well in Samaria, Jesus parried with a woman about her lifestyle and her religious beliefs. On the way to Jerusalem, he engaged a rich young man in a discussion on the dangers of wealth. The woman persisted and found her life transformed; the rich man gave up and turned away sad.

From these scenes I learn about God’s interest in the process I go through. Always respectful of human freedom, God does not twist arms. God views my persistence as a sign of genuine desire for change, the one prerequisite for spiritual growth. When I really want something, I strive and persist. Whether it’s climbing Colorado’s mountains, chasing the woodpeckers away from my roof, or getting a high-speed Internet connection for my home, I’ll do whatever it takes. Do I show the same spirit in prayer?

God wants us to bring our requests boldly and without reservation. By failing to do so I will likely miss out on some delightful surprises. What if the ten with leprosy by the side of the road had not shouted out to Jesus for healing or if the Canaanite woman had shyly abandoned the request for her daughter?

Persistent prayer keeps bringing God and me together, with several important benefits. As I pour out my soul to God, I get it off my chest, so to speak, unloading some of my burden to One who can handle it better. Little by little, as I get to know God I learn that God has nothing in common with an unjust judge or a stingy neighbor, though at times it may seem so. What I learn from spending time with God then better equips me to discern what God wants to do on earth, as well as my role in that plan.

Cicero gave a blunt assessment of the purpose of pagan prayer: “We do not pray to Jupiter to make us good, but to give us material benefits.” For the Christian, something like the reverse applies. We may approach God with some material benefit in mind, and sometimes, blessedly, we receive it. But in the very act of praying we also open up a channel that God can use in transforming us, in making us good. Persistent prayer changes me by helping me see the world, and my life, through God’s eyes. As the relationship progresses I realize that God has a clearer picture of what I need than I do.

When I persistently pursue another person, I am usually trying to persuade that person to adopt my point of view. I want the car salesman to match my price, the neighbor to vote for my candidate. I may, especially in the early stages of prayer, approach God the same way, but inevitably I find that God is the wise and senior partner in the relationship. I find, in fact, that God has been asking, seeking, knocking too, in the subtle ways I so easily ignore.

“A God that should fail to hear, receive, attend to one single prayer, the feeblest or worst, I cannot believe in; but a God that would grant every request of every man or every company of men, would be an evil God — that is no God, but a demon,” said George MacDonald. Prayer is not a monologue but a true dialogue in which both parties accommodate to the other.

Although I bring my honest concerns to God, over time I may come away with an entirely different set of concerns. When Peter went on a roof to pray (Acts 10), he was mainly thinking about food. Little did he know that he would descend from the roof convicted of racism and legalism. In persistent prayer, my own desires and plans gradually harmonize with God’s.

A person prays, said Augustine, “that he himself may be constructed, not that God may be instructed.” I examine my own erratic prayer life and see it as a time when God has indeed worked to lop off the protuberances and smooth the rough edges. I see defeats and victories both. Like a child who quits badgering a parent, I have sometimes found that I get an answer to my persistent request after I have learned to do without it. The answer then comes as a surprise, an unexpected gift of grace. I seek the gift, find instead the Giver, and eventually come away with the gift I no longer seek.

Luke’s version of the parable of the crotchety neighbor ends with these words: “If you 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!” Matthew repeats the same saying, with one change: “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

In prayer we present requests, sometimes repeatedly, and then put ourselves in a state to receive the result. We pray for what God wants to give us, which may turn out to be good gifts or it may be the Holy Spirit. (From God’s viewpoint there is no better response to persistent prayer than the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s own self.) Like Peter, we may pray for food and get a lesson in racism; like Paul we may pray for healing and get humility. We may ask for relief from trials and instead get patience to bear them. We may pray for release from prison and instead get strength to redeem the time while there. Asking, seeking, and knocking does have an effect on God, as Jesus insists, but it also has a lasting effect on the asker-seeker-knocker.

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,” Paul wrote the Ephesians. Workmanship conveys rather clumsily the meaning of the Greek word poiema, origin of the English word poem. We are God’s work of art, Paul is saying. Of all people, Paul with his history of beatings, prison, shipwreck, and riots, knew the travail involved in the fashioning of that art—and the role that prayer played. Prayer offers an opportunity for God to remodel us, to chisel marble like a sculptor, touch up colors like an artist, edit words like a writer. The work continues until death, never perfected in this life.

From Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? by Philip Yancey