“Suppose you have a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”
—Luke 11:5–10 (ESV)
A Note at the Bottom of the Page
I was reading in Luke early this morning, coffee hot like I like it, half-studying and half just sitting there with my Bible open trying to absorb the passage when a little study note at the bottom of the page stopped me cold.
It was tucked under the parable of the friend at midnight, and it said something I’ve heard my whole life but never really let land: persistence in prayer changes us, not God.
I read it again a few more times and then set the Bible down and just sat with it for a while.
Because if you know me, you know my face does a lot of my talking, and I’m sure I was making a face right about then!
For most of my life, I read this parable one way.
Keep knocking, and eventually you’ll wear God down. God is like the sleepy neighbor. Prayer is the pounding on the door. If I just ask enough time or ask the right way or ask with enough intensity…He’ll finally get up and hand me the “bread.”
But that’s not what the story is doing at all.
It works by contrast, not comparison. If even a grumpy, half-asleep neighbor will eventually get up because someone won’t quit knocking, how much more will a Father who already loves you? The whole point is that God is not the reluctant one. He already knows. He already cares. He is already leaning toward good things for His children before you ever say a word.
Which honestly pulled the floor right out from under the way I’ve been praying.
Because if prayer isn’t about persuading God, if it isn’t leverage, if the answer doesn’t depend on how hard I push, then all my repeated asking has to be doing something else.
And that something else is the whole point.
It’s changing me.
I’ve come to believe that persistent prayer is one of the few things in my life that forces me to stay with a longing long enough to find out if it’s even true. Most of what I want is shallow. It shows up, feels urgent, and it’s gone by the next day. But the thing I keep bringing back to God…the same ache, week after week, sometimes year after year…that one is telling me something.
Sometimes the returning purifies the request. I start out asking God to change my circumstances, and I end up asking Him to change me right in the middle of them.
And sometimes the returning exposes the request. I keep asking, and somewhere around the fortieth time I finally admit I’ve been asking God to bless something I already knew, deep down, He wasn’t going to bless.
The praying is how I found out. I never would have gotten there in one tidy prayer, said once and filed away.
There’s an honesty that only comes from repetition, too.
The first time I name a fear out loud before God, I say the clean version. You know, the one I can stand to hear myself say. It takes the fifth time, or the fiftieth, before the real thing works its way up to the surface.
Persistence doesn’t wear down God’s defenses. It wears down mine.
It’s me still standing at that midnight door until I’m finally willing to say what I actually came to say.
And then there’s the part that convicts me most, because it hits so close to home.
Persistence helps us recognize God’s work.
I couldn’t help but think about Martha, the sister who couldn’t stop doing long enough to sit at the feet of the One who had come to her house. I see myself in her constantly. I am a person who produces. I plan the service, prepare the parts, run the rehearsal, and I can get so busy making the moment happen that I nearly miss the Presence I was making it for.
Martha almost missed Jesus in her own living room because she was so busy in the kitchen doing genuinely good things.
Persistent prayer is the opposite posture. It keeps me facing the door long enough to notice when it finally opens. If I pray once and hurry off, I miss the answer when it comes…or worse, I chalk it up to luck, to timing, to coincidence. But staying there, still knocking, still watching, is what lets me see providence instead of accident.
Prayer that keeps returning is prayer that’s still paying attention when God moves.
So here’s the question I’ve been carrying ever since I set that Bible down this morning. And maybe it’s one for you too:
Is there something you stopped bringing to God because it started to feel like nagging when the returning was the point all along?
I don’t picture God up at midnight, annoyed, wishing you’d finally let it go. I picture the Father who was never reluctant in the first place, waiting not so much to be convinced as to be with you while He does the slow, patient work of changing you.
The knocking was never really for His sake.
It was always, mercifully, for ours.
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