01.D 06. Tightening The Grip

VI TIGHTENING THE GRIP “And he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me.” — Genesis 32:1-32.

“Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” — Luke 11:1-54. The last word about “How to Pray” has not yet been said. All that has been said might be true, and yet the answer sometime slips from us because we failed at the last ditch, so to speak. Some one has said, “Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire.”

It is, and if it is, the heart will not faint at a slight delay or at what may seem the indisposition of God to answer. Many pray well up to this point and then utterly fail, and failing, lose all. Too many fail to “pray through.” If the request is not granted at the first or second asking, they cease praying and say, “Perhaps it isn’t God’s will,” and this they call Submission. Dr. Torrey calls it “spiritual laziness,” and the Word implies as much quite as emphatically.

Let us give our minds now for a while to what is known to us all at least by name as Importunity. No phase of prayer is more emphasized in New Testament teaching than this. In both the Gospels and the Epistles it stands out in clear relief. Our study would not be complete if this important factor in prayer were omitted, and our own prayer life wiH never be what it ought to be until we appreciate as fully as possible God’s thought in the exceptional emphasis He has placed on this quality in prayer. This emphasis reveals itself in two ways.

(1) In Illustration. (2) In a skillful choice of richly expressive words and phrases. These words will form a brief and interesting study in the following chapter. Let us examine the illustrations now.

They are in the form of Parables. Both are furnished by Luke. Luke is the one who tells us most about the prayer habit of Jesus. The first illustration is that of the Midnight Appeal (Luke 11:5-13). A supperless friend has arrived. Not to have placed something before him would have been an unpardonable breach of oriental courtesy. And now a most mortifying situation presents itself in the utter absence of all provision from the house. He hastens to his neighbor, makes known his need, and doubtless, to his own surprise, is gruffly repulsed. Although it was evidently a case of misplaced confidence, a repulse was not what he came for, and finally, because of his Importunity (literally, impudence; shamefacedness) his lazy, ungenerous neighbor got up and granted him what he wanted.

Notice, this neighbor was the most unlikely man to represent God. He was selfish, ungenerous and heartless. To do what he did is justly to incur the contempt of all good people. The thing that moved him to grant the request was his own selfishness. It looks as if, had Jesus done His best, He could not have presented the case any more disadvantageously for God than He did. But He outdoes the parable in this respect by another. This time it is the parable of the “Unjust Judge” (Luke 18:1-8). A widow, whose trying position in those days is well known, came to a judge, asking him to avenge her or to do her justice in a claim against her adversary. The word “came” in the original means “kept coming.” This judge, the parable says, “neither feared God nor regarded man,” and he boasted about it too (Luke 18:4). He had neither piety nor pity. He was a selfish, hardhearted, unprincipled man. As a public functionary he was unjust; as a man he was unkind and cruel, and in his selfish concern for his own comfort he said, “I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she wear me out” (literally, beat my face black and blue). The immediate point of each parable is that Importunity has a power of annoyance that can gain its object in the face of the greatest obstacle. Jesus is supposing the case. Men sometimes have thought unkindly of God because of what seemed His indifference to their needs, and these characters chosen are not pictures of what God is or of what Jesus would have us believe God to be, but of what even pious people have sometimes thought Him to be. Read the experience of Job and Psalms 77:1-20. *’Very well,” said Jesus, in substance, “suppose God to be as heartless and as ungenerous as you seem to fancy Him to be; pray on and you shall succeed, for I have shown you what importunity will do even under such circumstances. “ But Jesus did not leave the illustration here. He gave us something vastly better than that. He is really teaching by contrast, and that contrast is this: If an ungenerous, indifferent neighbor, for whom a little fleshly repose outweighs a friend’s dire distress, could be induced to grant a sorely needed favor by sheer persistence that would not brook a denial, how much more will God, whose love is so intense and whose chief delight it is to give, be moved by faithful, persistent entreaty to grant His children what they ask. If a defenseless widow’s persistent appeal can wring from a hard-hearted, unscrupulous judge her heart’s desire, how much more will our petitions, if likewise faithful, secure the thing we ask from God, who in character is the very opposite of this Godless judge and whose own dearest interests are involved in ours. That this is the real point in each of these parables there can be no reasonable doubt, and consequently when any one asks, as people often do, “Why is it that I must go so repeatedly to God and so persist in the request I would make, as if ’His mercy were clean gone forever’ and He were loath to give,” the plain teaching of these parables must be that the difficulty is not with God but with ourselves. If importunity in praying to God presents to your mind a diflSculty, in justice to the character of God it can be resolved in no other way. Hence Jesus hastens in either case to speak of the real character of God. He says in one instance, “If an evil, earthly parent knows how to give good gifts to his children, how much more will the Father in heaven give good things to His children who ask of Him,” and in the second instance, “And shall not God avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him, and He is longsuffering in their behalf.’* That is, “If an unrighteous judge, how much more a God such as the elect have.”

Importunity is not a test of God, but a test of you and me. The difficulty lies with us; and what is it? What other can it be but our own unfitness to receive what we ask and what He longs to give? Importunity is one of the instructors in God’s training school for Christian culture. “There are secrets of love and wisdom in the workings of the *Delayed Blessings Department’ which are little dreamt of,” but asking and seeking and knocking patiently and persistently not only secures the blessing, but discovers to us the “secrets” of that “love and wisdom” in the undoubting faith and unfaltering trust, the enlarged consciousness of our utter helplessness apart from Him, the heart searching and the surrender of all that seemed to be in the way, the close fellowship with God — in a word, the strengthened and ennobled character that always comes from the refining fires of difficulty and trial. Don’t read the parables so hastily and you’ll see it all written there.

“Shall not God avenge his own elect... though He is long-suffering over them?” Why should scholars be puzzled here? The English revised version reads, “and He is,” etc, but this with what goes before makes an unwieldy sentence. The American revised version is better, “and yet He is,” etc. This leaves the construction practically as in the authorized version, *’ although He is longsuffering over them.” Over whom? the wicked? No. Over the elect; over us who are the children of God. Literally it is “in their behalf.”

Now look at James 5:7. “Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, being longsuffering over it till it receive the early and the later rain.” This shows us what longsuffering means; that it is for a purpose. Some one has said, “Men would pluck their mercies green, when the Lord would have them ripe.” We are so like children, but the Husbandman knows what proper development needs. It needs time; it needs culture; it needs training. He is therefore patient, longsuffering, until all these elements have poured their influence upon the soul and made it ripe to receive and keep and properly use what He has long planned to give them. “Longsuffering in our behalf” — that exactly this may be true of you and me. This is the meaning of importunity.

’’Unanswered yet? The prayer your lips have pleaded In agony of heart these many years? Does faith begin to fail; is hope departing, And think you all in vain those falling tears?

Say not the Father hath not heard your prayer;

You shall have your desire sometime, somewhere.

’’Unanswered yet? Though when you first presented This petition at the Father’s throne.

It seemed you could not wait the time of asking. So urgent was your heart to make it known.

Though years have passed since then, do not despair; The Lord will answer you sometime, somewhere.

Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say ungranted;

Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done. The work began when first your prayer was uttered, And God will finish what he has begun.

If you will keep the incense burning there, His glory you shall see sometime, somewhere.

“ Unanswered yet? Faith can not be unanswered. Her feet were firmly planted on the Rock;

Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted. Nor quails before the loudest thunder shock.

She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer. And cries, ’It shall be done,’ sometime, somewhere.”