River Church NOLA
Wed Aug 12 Persistent Prayer
  • Good Good Father
  • Here I Am To Worship
  • I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever
  • What A Beautiful Name
  • Draw Me Close
  • Intro
    Let me start with a confession: I am not a patient person. If there's a slow car in front of me on the highway, I will pass it — and if I end up behind it again ten minutes later, it genuinely offends me.   I'll hit the gas station, the bathroom, and grab a snack all in one stop, just so I don't have to stop twice. I want to get where I'm going.
    I tell you that about myself because today we're talking about something that runs against every instinct people like me have.
    We're talking about persistence — specifically, persistence in prayer.
    Have you ever prayed for something so long that you started to wonder if God was even listening? You asked. You waited. You asked again. Silence. The need didn’t go away. The situation didn’t improve. And somewhere in the middle of that waiting, a quiet thought slipped in: “Maybe I should just stop asking.”
    Am I the only one? Anybody with me?
    Jesus knew that temptation would come. So He told a story specifically “to show them that they should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18:1 NLT).
    The second thing Scripture shows us about miracles is this: we need to be persistent. Not frantic. Not demanding. Persistent. The kind of faith that keeps showing up even when the answer is delayed.

    The Parable of the Persistent Widow

    Jesus paints a picture in Luke 18:2-5
    Luke 18:2–5 NLT
    2 “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. 3 A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ 4 The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, 5 but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’ ”
    This is the kind of judge you DON’T want to stand in front of. He was not a good man or a good judge. He is not moved by justice or compassion. He doesn’t care what others think about him. He is cold, self interested and unmoved.
    The widow in the culture of the day had no legal standing of her own. No husband, no advocate, often no resources of her own, no social power. She is the least like person to get a hearing much less justice from this judge.
    But she keeps coming back to the same judge and the same answer. She doesn't say, “Well, I asked once, he said no, I guess that's God's will for my life.” She keeps showing up. and eventually he says in Luke 18:4–5 “4 The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, 5 but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’ ””
    She was relentless. And this cold, godless judge finally caves — not because his heart changed, not because he suddenly cared about justice, but because her persistence outlasted his resistance.
    Next is where Jesus makes His point… Luke 18:7-8
    Luke 18:7–8 NLT
    7 Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?”
    Notice the contrast. The judge is unjust. God is not. The judge was annoyed. God is not. The judge finally acts to rid himself of a nuisance. God acts because He loves His children.
    In other words: if a corrupt, uncaring judge will eventually respond to persistence, how much more will your Father — who loves you, who is for you, who already cares about your cause — respond to yours?
    The widow had to overcome a judge's indifference. You don't have to. You're not wearing God down. You're not annoying Him into action. You're coming to Someone who already wants good for you.

    The persistence isn't to convince God to care. The persistence is what faith looks like while you wait on a God who already cares.

    That distinction matters, because I think a lot of us pray like we're the widow and God is the judge — like we have to overcome His reluctance. That's not the picture here.
    The picture is: keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, not because God needs convincing, but because that posture — that refusal to give up — is what it looks like to actually trust Him while the answer is still on its way.
    I have prayer requests of my own that I have been carrying for a long time. Maybe you do too. Some of you have been praying for a wayward son or daughter for years. Some of you are praying for a marriage. Some of you are praying for a body that isn't cooperating, or a job, or a breakthrough that keeps not showing up on schedule.
    Jesus' instruction to you today is simple and it is not complicated: keep praying. If you don't get an answer right away, keep praying.

    Destination People vs. Journey People

    Here's something I think about a lot, and it might help explain why the waiting exists in the first place. I mentioned it Sunday. I've come to believe there are two types of people in the world when it comes to how they travel.
    Destination people have a goal, and the goal is to arrive. I already told you — I'm a destination person. The trip itself is just an obstacle between me and where I'm going. I don't want to see the sights. I want to see the exit sign for home.
    Journey people are different. They enjoy the trip itself. They want to stop at the weird roadside attraction. They want to take the scenic route even when it's longer. They want to look around, shop, eat, take it slow, meet people along the way. For a journey person, the trip isn't wasted time before the destination — the trip is part of the point.
    Here's what I've come to believe:

    God is a journey person. He wants to do something in you on the way to the miracle.

    And that can be frustrating if you're wired like me, because it means He will absolutely get you to your destination — the healing, the breakthrough, the answer — but He's not going to teleport you there. He's going to walk you there. And He's going to teach you something on the way.
    Think about Israel. God could have taken them from Egypt to the Promised Land directly — it's not that far, geographically. Instead, they wandered for forty years. Not because God was lost, not because He forgot the destination, but because there was something He needed to do in them before He could safely do something through them. A slave mentality doesn't just disappear because you cross a border. It has to be dealt with along the way.
    That's often why God waits on us. Not because He doesn't care about the outcome you're asking for. But because He loves you too much to just hand you the miracle and skip the transformation. Paul said it like this in Rom 5:3-4
    Romans 5:3–4 NLT
    3 We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. 4 And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.
    The waiting isn't wasted. The waiting is where character gets built — and character is something you can't microwave.
    I'll be honest with you — this is the part most of us don't love. We wish God would just answer the prayer and skip straight to the miracle. We want the Promised Land without the wilderness. But if you look at nearly every major turnaround in Scripture, the pattern holds: God is doing a work on the inside of a person on the way to doing a miracle on the outside of their circumstances.
    Joseph in the pit and the prison before the palace.
    Moses was a shepherd in the desert 40 years before leading Israel out of Egypt.
    David anointed as king years before he ever sits on a throne.
    The waiting isn't the absence of God's activity. The waiting often is God's activity preparing us for the miracle.

    Why Persistence is Important

    I think about a woman I know of who dealt with endometriosis for years. Multiple doctors told her, in no uncertain terms, that she would never be able to get pregnant. That's not a small thing to hear. That's a door that medical science had closed and locked.
    She didn't accept that as the final word. She committed to praying about it for twenty-one straight days — not as a magic formula, but as an act of persistence, a refusal to let go of what she believed God had for her. She now has a baby. And after that — twins. God didn't just answer the prayer. He answered it in a way that made the “impossible” diagnosis look small by comparison.
    I want to bring us back to Luke's Gospel, because just one chapter after the parable of the persistent widow, Luke gives us a living illustration of the same principle — a man who refused to be quiet. We looked at this Sunday.
    Luke 18:35–43. Jesus is approaching Jericho, and there's a blind man sitting by the road, begging. He hears the crowd and asks what's happening. They tell him Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. And he starts shouting — “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
    The people in front of him — the crowd, the ones who had front-row access — told him to be quiet. Essentially: know your place, don't make a scene, you're being inconvenient. And what does he do? Luke says he shouted louder. He got more persistent, not less, in the face of people telling him to stop.
    Jesus stops. He has this man brought to Him. And then Jesus asks him a question that I think is one of the most important questions in all of Scripture: “What do you want me to do for you?”
    Now think about that for a second. Jesus is the Son of God. He already knows this man is blind. He doesn't need the information. He's not asking because He's uncertain what to do. He's asking because He wants the man to say it — to name it, to own his need, to bring his specific request instead of a vague hope that something good might happen.
    And the man says, “Lord, I want to see.”
    And he receives his sight immediately.
    Here's what I want you to carry from this: Jesus wasn't just after the healing. If He were only after the healing, He could have healed the man without the conversation. He's after the man. The persistence, the shouting over the crowd, the naming of the need, the faith it took to keep calling out when everyone around him said to stop — all of that mattered to Jesus just as much as the outcome. He's not just after your miracle. He's after you.

    Our persistence reveals what we believe about God.

    Do we believe He is good even when the answer is slow? Do we believe He hears us when heaven seems silent?

    Our persistence develops our spiritual muscle.

    Faith that never has to wait remains thin and fragile. Faith that keeps praying through the silence grows strong.

    Our persistence aligns us with His will.

    Sometimes the delay is not about God withholding the answer. Sometimes it is about God changing the asker. He is forming patience, humility, trust, and dependence.

    Our persistence keeps us in relationship with God

    Prayer is not a transaction. It’s communion. The persistent widow kept coming because she needed justice. We keep coming because we need Him.

    Our Challenge

    So let's bring this together. Three pictures, one lesson. A widow who wouldn't stop asking a judge who owed her nothing. A woman who wanted a baby and went all in. A blind man who shouted louder the more people told him to be quiet.
    None of them got their answer instantly. All of them got their answer eventually. And in every case, something happened in them on the way to the miracle — not just to them.

    Don't stop praying just because the answer hasn't come yet. Keep showing up.

    Keep showing up — not once, not for a week, but as long as it takes. Trust that God is doing something in you on the way to doing something for you; the waiting is not empty space, it's workshop time. Be persistent —
    like the widow who wore down a judge,
    like the mother who prayed for twenty-one days and got a baby and then twins,
    like Naaman who kept dipping past the point of feeling foolish,
    like the blind man who shouted louder when the crowd told him to be quiet.
    Whatever you've been praying for and haven't seen yet — I want to encourage you, don't let go of it today. Keep knocking. Keep asking. Keep seeking.
    And when Jesus asks you, “What do you want me to do for you?” — don't answer vaguely. Tell Him. Name it. Bring Him your specific, honest request, and then keep bringing it, trusting that the God who is not like that unjust judge is already moving on your behalf, even in the silence.
    For the next few minutes… we will have the altar open. You can pray in your chairs… walk around… or come to the altar. You can pick up these prayer requests and pray for others.
    Altar Prayer time 10 - 15 minutes
    Closing Prayer
    Father, thank You that You are not distant, not indifferent, and not reluctant to hear us. Thank You that You already care about the things we've been carrying — the healing we're waiting on, the breakthrough we're hoping for, the person we haven't stopped praying for. Teach us to be persistent, not because we doubt You, but because we trust You enough to keep showing up. Do the work You want to do in us on the way to doing the work we're asking for. And give us the courage, like the blind man, to name exactly what we need and keep calling out until we see it. In Jesus' name, amen.

      • Luke 18:2–5NLT

      • Luke 18:7–8NLT

      • Romans 5:3–4NLT

River Church NOLA
robert@riverchurchnola.com
504-578-8317
https://riverchurchnola.com
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