The following sermon was delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on July 27, 1980. The title of the sermon is Pray Without Ceasing, and the scripture reference is Luke 11, verses 1 to 13. 

Two parables are recorded in Luke's Gospel that don't appear in any of the other three. They're somewhat similar to each other, and on the surface, at least, they're not particularly flattering to God. We heard the first of them this morning in our Gospel reading.

You might care to turn to it again, Luke chapter 11, the story of the importunate, isn't that a lovely word? Importunate friend. When's the last time you used that word?

The importunate friend in which Jesus compares our praying to the unwillingness of a man to take no for an answer. You remember the story. It's the middle of the night and suddenly a friend arrives.

Perhaps he's late, having been expected hours earlier, or perhaps it's a complete surprise to him, but in any event, he goes to the cupboard and finds that it's bare, like old Mother Hubbard. And so he goes next door to his neighbor and says, Look, I've got a fellow that's just arrived. He's hungry, and I've got nothing to serve him.

Could you give me some food? And the man says, Go away. It's the middle of the night.

It's 2 o'clock in the morning. I've got my kids in bed. I'm asleep.

I was having a very enjoyable dream. Go away. But the guy won't go away.

Keeps pounding on the door. Keeps hollering. And finally the man says, Okay, just to get rid of you, I'll give you what you ask.

Jesus says, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity, he will give him whatever he needs. Well, if you look up the word importunity or importunate in the dictionary, you'll find probably it says it's archaic. It's an old-fashioned word, but what it literally means, its dictionary definition is troublesome, annoying, persistent, demanding, making a pest of yourself.

Is that what Jesus is telling you you're to be like? Is that what you're praying is supposed to be like, that you're to make a pest of yourself before God? And more importantly, is that really what we're supposed to picture that God is like?

You know, though he won't do anything because you're his friend, if you persist long enough, if you nag him, if you cajole him, if you insist, if you bother him enough, he'll finally give you what you ask. It's not a particularly flattering picture of God, is it? Go away, I'll talk to you in the morning.

I wonder how you would reconcile that with the Sermon on the Mount. and lots of other passages for that matter, but in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, in praying, do not heap up empty phrases or think that you will be heard for your many words. Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.

He cares for you more than for the birds of the air or the lilies of the field, so don't be anxious. The implication is you don't need to go on pounding on the door. You don't need to go on complaining and persisting and being a general nuisance.

God knows what you need. He wants to give it to you. Don't be full of anxiety.

That's the way pagan people are. But how do you reconcile those two? In your praying, be like this.

Persist. Don't take no for an answer. And then on the other hand, don't heap up empty phrases.

Your Father knows what you need before you ask. Well, there's another parallel. If you want to hold your finger here and turn over a few chapters to the right, Luke 18, rather a similar story, beginning with verse 2.

Jesus said, In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man, and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, Vindicate me against my adversary. She had a case in court. She was in the right.

She had been wronged, but the judge was not ruling accordingly. For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, Though I neither fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming. That really is a fairly mild translation of what the original says.

It's not, she will wear me out by her continual coming. It's, if I don't give her what she asks, she's going to beat me up. This judge had no fear of God, had no regard for man, but he knew the wrath of a widow.

I better pay attention to what she's asking, he says. Is that what God is like? No regard for the truth, no regard for righteousness.

not interested in doing something because it's appropriate, it's just, not ready to act until we finally badger him into doing so. Is God like a reluctant friend on the one hand, or like some sort of an unrighteous judge on the other? Is that what Jesus is saying to us?

Well, of course the answer is overwhelmingly, resoundingly no. Nothing could be further from the truth. That doesn't square with anything else that we learn in the Scripture. That is clearly not Jesus' attitude.

And it will help us somewhat to understand the nature of parable, which is what Jesus is giving us in both instances. What is a parable? What is it like?

A lot of people don't understand this, and therefore they miss it. A parable, by definition, makes one point. that's in contrast to for instance an allegory which is another little story but an allegory is a story in which every single element of it all the characters, every comment, every attitude virtually every word has a symbolic meaning you can identify all of the constituent elements of an allegory and apply them you cannot do that with a parable you break the parable if you try to do that A parable makes one point, and if you try to see in it some other point in addition, you will probably stretch it to the point of breaking and literally miss the point.

Miss the point. It's sort of like exposing the facets of a diamond. You take one slice this way and you see one facet, and it catches the light from one angle.

But if you want to see another facet of the diamond, you've got to turn it a bit and see from another angle, catching the light in a slightly different way. Jesus is the master of the parable. And one after another, he spins out these little stories, each one of them giving you only one slice of the truth.

If you want to see the whole truth, you've got to take all of the parables and put them together. I just add a footnote to that in passing. It's interesting that one of the marks prophesied in the Old Testament of the Messiah is this.

It says in the book of Psalms, when he comes, he will open his mouth in parables. Interesting, isn't it? If you think through history, there are other people who have used parables.

Buddha used parables. Plato used parables. There are various other people.

But overwhelmingly, The person in all of history that we associate with teaching by parables is Jesus. And it's just one more little evidence of the fact of his being Messiah. He comes to fulfill all of the promises.

Paul says to the Corinthians, In him all the promises of God are yea and amen. Jesus came and taught in parables in a way that nobody else, Certainly nobody in the history of religion has ever done. So that is somewhat esoteric, but I think we need to be aware of that, and it will help us to deal with a parable like this one, or like these two.

They're not primarily designed to tell us about God. That's not their point. They're primarily designed to tell us something about ourselves.

If you have to deal with what they say about God, As a matter of fact, it's really more by way of contrast than it is by way of comparison. It's not that God is so much like the reluctant friend or so much like the unrighteous judge as it is he's so much unlike them. He's so much unlike them.

Okay? There are two ways of seeing truths, aren't there? One is by way of comparison, similarity.

The other is by way of contrast. Look at how different it is. Whereas this so-called friend needs to have his door virtually broken off the hinges before he's responsive.

Look at how ready God is. Jesus says, how much more is your heavenly Father interested in giving to those who would come and seek him? He talks about the unrighteous judge and he says, by way of contrast, and will God not vindicate his elect who cry to him day and night?

Will he delay long over them? No. I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Speedily.

It may seem to you like a very long time, but in the purposes of God, God is anxious to do that. God is the God of righteousness. It's not that he's like this judge who hems and haws and takes forever.

He'll do it speedily. That's the kind of God he is. But as I say, that is not the point.

That's not the point of either of these parables. It's not telling us what God is like so much as it is designed to tell us what we are like. And more particularly, what our praying is like.

Or what it should be like. That's the point of the parable. Let's step back from that just a little bit.

I'd like you to think about Jesus' example. The example of his own life. We're told that Jesus' practice was to arise many hours before dawn.

He'd get out of that bed, unlike the friend who wanted to stay there for a few more hours. He'd get out of bed, deprive himself of sleep, deprive himself of breakfast, and go off to some lonely place to seek his Father's face. to spend time in prayer, to meditate, to commune with his Father.

We're told that often it wouldn't be enough to get up before breakfast. He'd go all night praying and fasting, spending time with God. We're told that, in fact, most of his major decisions came out of such a night of prayer.

For instance, the choosing of his twelve apostles came after spending a night in prayer. We read that the very first thing after his baptism was to go off into the wilderness for 40 days and be alone with God. You remember that?

Think about it. Here he spent 30 years getting ready to go start his ministry. 30 years he's been a carpenter's apprentice, but his real mission has been studying the scriptures, getting to know the Father.

At age 12, he had already done that so well that he could confound the teachers at the temple. And yet he went on 18 more years of getting to know who he was, who the Father was, what his mission in life was. Now comes the great moment.

He goes down to the riverside. John baptizes him. He hails him.

Here is he of whom I spoke. This is the Lamb of God. The Father speaks from heaven.

This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. The Holy Spirit comes down in bodily form and empowers Jesus. And you can just hear the angels and archangels saying, Go get him, Jesus!

And instead of that, he goes off for 40 days of prayer. Interesting, too, we've commented on this before, but it's interesting, isn't it, that that was the moment that Satan chose to make his attack against Jesus. Because if he could derail him at that point, break his fellowship with the Father, distract him from prayer, he's pretty much won the battle.

I can bear witness to that. You might think that in the time that you set aside to be alone with God, that's the last time that Satan wants to come around. but anybody who's ever tried to be alone with God will tell you differently.

That's the very time that Satan begins to take you seriously and will do anything he can to distract you. Phone will ring. You'll suddenly remember a letter that you've got to write.

You know, you haven't written it for three and a half months, but somehow you've got to write it today in the midst of your prayer time. Your stomach will begin growling, and you've just got to go down and raid the refrigerator or whatever it is. Anybody witness to that?

Jesus begins His ministry with prayer. And He ends it with prayer. The very last thing before betrayal and crucifixion.

How does He spend His last night here on earth? Alone in a garden. Praying.

Seeking the Father's face. One of his chosen twelve has already gone off and betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver. His three closest friends can't even stay awake to keep him company.

And Jesus agonizes in prayer, sweating great drops of blood, it says. He begins his ministry, he ends his ministry in prayer. All through his ministry, the fabric out of which it's woven is prayer, is spending time with God.

Now, who is it that we're talking about? We're talking about the one whom we confess Sunday after Sunday to be the only begotten Son of God. Very God of very God.

We're talking about the one who says of himself, my work is not my own, but it's his who sent me. He said my thoughts, my teaching, my purpose, my ministry, my perspective, my very being, my mission here on earth is one with the Father. Do you remember shortly before the end, Philip came to him and he said, Lord, if only you'd show us the Father, then we'd be content.

Just let us see the Father. And what does Jesus say? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

How can it be that you've spent three years with me, Philip, and you don't understand that? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. He says, before Abraham was, I am.

He says, I and the Father are one. Now let me ask you a question. If he needed to pray, how about you?

How about me? That's a serious question. This is a man who lived among us, who breathed, who bled, who died, just like you and I do, and yet not one of those breaths was taken apart from the communion, the fellowship of the Father.

He didn't begin when he was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary. He began from all eternity and had a oneness with God so that John the Beloved can write, He was in God. God was in him.

They were one and the same. And yet he needed to pray. And he made it a priority.

A top priority. What about us? How come somehow it gets such short shrift in most of our lives?

You've tried and you've tried. You've given a stab at it and somehow it just never came together. And you abandoned the effort.

And so your prayer ends up being just the corporate prayer here on Sunday morning. I wonder if the poverty, the spiritual poverty of our lives and of many of our churches can't be traced to a direct correlation to the fact that we haven't yet learned how to pray. We're not doing it.

We're not tapping into the resource, the power. you know you can buy the most beautiful refrigerator or freezer or stove or any other major appliance in the world bring it home put it in your kitchen you can stand there and look at it it doesn't do you one bit of good until you plug it in because it's not made except to operate on alien power and neither are we we don't have it in ourselves to be what we're supposed to be unless we're plugged into the source of power the question of importunity is not a matter of being disrespectful toward a holy God it's not a matter of thinking we can badger him into granting our wishes it's not a matter of heaping up empty phrases or thinking that vain repetition is going to get us anywhere that's not the point the point is simply how serious are you in this business of prayer. How serious are you?

This man was serious. He wasn't going to take no for an answer. How serious are you?

How do you pray? Do you pray? Do you pray?

Do you pray once and forget it? Or do you have a level of persistence, of commitment, of diligence, of taking it seriously, of expectancy, whereby you really, like Jacob, with the angel, do battle in prayer. You're going to wrestle through until you get the blessing.

Jesus says to the woman at the well, He says, God is looking, He's searching for those who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. It's not enough just to have the right words. How's your spirit doing?

Are you worshiping Him in spirit? Do you have a spirit of prayer, an attitude of seeking the Father's face, of seeking His will, of seeking to know Him, like unto that of the Lord Jesus Himself. Paul writes to Timothy, he says, As a matter of first importance, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men.

A matter of first importance. Nothing is more important than that. He says, I desire that in every place men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.

To the Thessalonians, he said simply, pray without ceasing. Notice, you might enjoy taking a look at this yourself in your own homework this next week. Notice how many of Paul's letters begin with a reference to prayer.

He says to the Romans, without ceasing, I mention you always in my prayers. To the Corinthians, I give thanks to God always for you. To the Ephesians, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

To the Philippians, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you. To the Colossians, from the day we heard of your faith. See, he hadn't visited them.

He's praying for people he doesn't even know. From the day we heard of your faith, we have not ceased to pray for you. To the Thessalonians, we give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers.

To Timothy, I remember you constantly in my prayers. To Philemon, I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers. You begin to see a pattern here.

I'm reminded of C.S. Lewis. If you ever read any of the letters that he wrote to various people, he talks about, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I pray for you.

You are constantly in my prayers. I'm rebuked by that. I don't know about you.

We had a little discussion between the services about going to Jerusalem. And Thornton Burnett said, That just never appealed to me. And Marge Liedelmeyer said, well, of course it hasn't, because you haven't been there.

And I said, that's a real catch-22, isn't it? You can't know the value of prayer until you begin to pray. There is no way that I can teach you to pray except that you begin to pray.

I remember coming to a point several years ago where I believed in prayer because the scripture said so but I didn't know anything about it experientially and I decided to make a little experiment I decided that for one month I would write down every single thing that I prayed for and just keep track of it and see what happened and that ended up being quite a significant journal. And at the end of the month, I looked back and I began to read some of those requests, some of those petitions, some of those intercessions that I had offered up so casually. You know how you do and then you don't even think about it afterward?

I began to be absolutely astonished at the number of them that God had answered. As a matter of fact, out of several hundred specific things that I had written down, there were two for which the evidence had not come in yet. There was one that was clearly denied.

The answer was no, and I discovered why. And all of the rest, God answered. Now, I just share that with you as a word of testimony.

I don't make any case for it. I simply share it but I notice in it that I was surprised because I didn't even remember half of the things that I had prayed I didn't take them as seriously as God took them I wonder if any of you can identify with that we offer up a little prayer in an emergency situation God blesses it God protects us God expresses his love and his mercy and we don't even notice it remember Jesus talked about the ten men who were healed and only one of them came back to say thank you I found myself in that parable too God blesses and answers our prayer and we don't even notice it let alone stop to say thank you maybe I'm just preaching to myself this morning look at the context in which this first parable is given in Luke 11. The situation is that Jesus himself was praying.

As we've seen was so often the case. He was praying in a certain place. And when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray.

We don't know how to pray. We see you praying. We see that you spend all these hours and days and weeks in prayer.

And we don't know how to pray. Teach us to pray. John taught his disciples to pray.

You teach us to pray. And Jesus gave an answer that had two parts. The first part, he gave them what we have come to call the Lord's Prayer.

A form, a model of prayer. We've studied that here at some length. As if to say, this is the sort of thing you ought to pray for.

When you pray in this way, God wants to hear and answer and bless. I don't believe that he intended that we use this slavishly or think that there's a value in mere repetition of the words, but that we understand the format of it. Pray in this fashion.

This is the content of prayer. That's the first half of the answer. In the second half, he addresses himself to the attitude of prayer.

The content and the attitude. Do you remember? Pray in spirit and in truth.

Content, truth, attitude, spirit. And here he tells us, God is interested in your importunity, in your seriousness, in your persistence, in your diligence, in your seeking his face, in your meaning business. He's ready to bless.

How ready are you to receive? sometimes people say to me well how long should you pray how many times should you pray the same thing over and over without it becoming vain repetition I believe the biblical response to that is that we ought to pray until we get an answer that we ought to pray until we get an answer now the answer might be that God gives you what you're asking for, in which case you thank Him. It might be that He gives you the gift of faith to believe Him for that thing, even though you don't see the evidence of it right away.

I don't know if you've ever had that experience where you've been asking God for something, and suddenly in the very midst of your prayers, there comes an assurance in your heart that God is going to do that. It might not be this minute. It might be at some point in the future.

But your prayer is no longer please. It's thank you. before I see it with my eyes thank you that I know you're going to give it that's an answer or it might be that you pray until God says no and tells you why Paul said I prayed three times that a certain thorn might be taken out of my flesh now we don't know what that was might have been an illness it might have been some harassing person who dogged his footsteps, tried to undermine his ministry.

But he said, I prayed that God would take it away. And I was persistent. I didn't just pray once.

I prayed again, and I prayed again. And then came the answer. And the answer was, no, I'm not going to take it away, but my grace is sufficient for you.

I'm going to use this thorn in your flesh, Paul, to make you stronger and more vibrant, more sensitive, more able to minister, I'm going to turn this curse into blessing. That's the answer. It's no, but here's why.

I can't quote you one single verse, but I think that the total framework of Scripture bears witness to what I've just said. that God would have us pray until we get an answer. Either yes or no, and here's why.

I need us to notice one more thing. Matthew records almost identical words in the Sermon on the Mount to the ones we find here in Luke's Gospel about ask, seek, and knock. In the Sermon on the Mount, they come unqualified.

It simply says, whoever asks receives because your Father in heaven gives good things to those who ask him. Here, it's much more specific. Here it says, what father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a serpent, or an egg will give him a scorpion?

If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit? Not just good things. How much more will the Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?

Let's just press that point a little bit. Because there's an awful lot of people who have said, well, I asked God for the Spirit and nothing happened. how serious were you?

the context of what I read here is that when you really get serious about the Holy Spirit you better duck that God is waiting for you and me to get really serious to mean business to settle for nothing less than his best at which point he wants to pour out his spirit upon us in fullness, in power, in blessing, in anointing, in gifting, in equipping. If I could put it this way, I believe that the greatest desire of God's heart is to find some people who will settle for nothing less than his very best. But he's not about to be casual with his very best.

He's not interested in a Christian trip. He's interested in those who really mean business with him. If you come to the point of hungering and thirsting for more of God, where you'd be willing, not that it's required, but your attitude is that you'd be willing to stand there in the middle of the night pounding on the door, making a fool of yourself, in order to receive God's best.

Is that where you are? When you get there, you better duck. Ask and keep on asking.

That's the sense of the verb in the Greek. Seek and keep on seeking. Knock and keep on knocking.

He is serious about it. How serious are you? Let's bow our heads together.

Lord, teach us to pray. Some of us have tried repeatedly and we've gotten nowhere with it. Lord, we would recognize right now that just as Satan came and attacked Jesus in the wilderness, so when we set aside time to pray and seek Your face, we're engaging in spiritual warfare.

We need Your equipment. We need Your armor. We need Your help.

But Lord, we need Your instruction as well. We need to come to you expectantly. And that's our desire just now.

As we would renew our commitment. Last week we talked about Bible study. This week we would look at the other side of the coin.

Prayer and spending time with you one on one. Lord, as we would renew our desire and commitment to do that this morning. We confess that we need your help.

We need your guidance. We need your instruction. And we dare to ask you that you would take our feeble efforts and turn them into an adventure of getting to know you and discovering the power that you've entrusted to us in prayer.

For we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.