Dear BPCWA worshipper, As announced, this year’s church theme is on prayer. While we say that there is power in prayer, we also know that not every prayer immediately receives the answer prayed for. Why do we not receive some answers to our prayers even if what we asked for is in line with God’s preceptive will? For example, it can be because it is not God’s timing. But it could also be that God expects us to be importunate. This is taught in Matthew 15:22–28 (describing a mother whose daughter was vexed with a devil), Luke 11:5-10 (where a person requests 3 loaves of bread from a friend who has turned in to bed) and 18:1-8 (where a widow troubles an unjust judge to avenge her). Sometimes we think that as long as our requests are not sinful and out of need, God will surely answer quickly. However, this is not always so, as we may also have experienced it for ourselves. It is important to learn about importunate prayers.

What are importunate prayers? In Luke 11:8, Christ uses the analogy of a friend who rises from bed because of the importunity of his friend. Importunity here describes the person who is persistent and unrelenting in his entreaties.  The wish is so strong that it overwhelms the person to the point he may not be deterred by the potential embarrassment of facing negative reactions. 

What does importunate prayer reveal about us to God, and hence the attitudes we need to have in prayer?  When we make importunate prayers to God, it makes evident certain things about us to God and to ourselves. 1) Our earnestness. In Luke 11:8, the friend is moved “because of his importunity”. It demonstrates how genuinely and desperately we want what we are asking for. When our omniscient God hears our prayers, whether it be in our closets or at church, do we bear that earnestness in our requests that we bring before Him? Or do we just rattle off a list of things that we think we “should ask” and do so coldly? When there is no fervency, it is often because there is no great concern since in the back of our minds we don’t think we really need God’s help. Deep inside, we feel that we can depend on our own strength and resources to get it for ourselves even if God doesn’t “answer my prayer”. When we join in congregational prayer during worship, do we listen with attentive oneness or is the Amen we lisp just a closing formality to end the prayer? 2) Our humility.  The importunate person’s request is not for a confectionary, but for bread, a simple basic pantry staple. To beg requires humility. To beg for something that basic requires even greater humility. To beg is to confess that we are helpless. The importunate mother begs Christ to cast the devil out of her daughter – never mind if she must humble herself to be compared to a dog to have her request granted. Christ was not despising her at all, but rather testing her. This led to a wonderful object lesson of importunity that we all can learn today. Let us consider our attitudes in our prayer. Do we come thinking that God must do such and such for us simply because we have a need and right to it? While God condescends to hear our prayer, we must remember that we have no rights and are not even worthy to ask daily bread of Him. We must remember how much we already owe Him, and that we can never repay His gracious and abundant goodness which He has already shown to us by personally paying our infinite debt of sin and saving us. Why does God desire importunity? Well, ask yourself – would you give your children or anyone what they ask for if they approach you with a proud heart of self-entitlement and as if they deserved anything they expected of you and so must get it from you? Then how dare we expect our Sovereign God and Heavenly Father to do so! 3) Our persistence.  The widow pesters the unjust judge continually to act, however long it took before and until the unjust judge responded. Let us not be weary even though we bring many of the same needed prayers to God week after week, month after month, at our prayer meetings. Let us be persistent in pleading for God to send the right fulltime preacher of His choice and calling to serve in our church. 4) Our urgency. The fact that even though it is late at night, the friend knocks on the door asking for bread because it is urgently needed. The combination of need and urgency does not keep tabs on the lateness of the hour. If you are hungry, you don’t wait to say you’ll eat tomorrow or next week. The hunger gnaws at you. Perhaps we do not pray with the fervency that we ought to because we don’t feel a gnawing need. Hence, we keep putting prayer off and only pray when it is convenient or when we remember. Let us learn to pray, pray, and pray again day and night with urgency – even though we have prayed for the same items earlier in the day during our closet prayers.

Why would God answer importunate prayers? If even an unjust judge would relent, how much more readily would a just and loving God not answer when we display such an attitude in asking for something that is in accordance with His will?  Importunity is a test of my faith – that He is God and I truly believe no one else can help except Him alone. Hence, I do not stop going back to God. Christ’s commendation to the mother was, “O woman, great is thy faith” (Matt 15:28). Such faith, evidenced in importunity, glorifies and pleases God. Besides, God choosing not to answer our prayers immediately causes us to go again to Him in prayer. Presenting our requests before Him time and again will cause us to increase our earnestness and fosters in us greater humility knowing that only He can provide the answer. It increases our persistence and urgency for Him to work. After bringing to Him repeatedly the requests, when He chooses to answer in His timing, God gets all the glory for His work.

Why doesn’t God answer straight away? We may not realise how important and how good something is until we have had to go by without that thing. Don’t we take for granted the water that comes out of our taps and the electricity that keeps our fridges running until there is an outage? God withholding even what is needed teaches us that even the “regular” (and the not-so-regular) isn’t “automatic” but are upheld and provided by Him. The prolonged period will also help us to realise with greater conviction and clarity that when we receive what we need, it is God who has given it in answer to prayer, rather than something coincidental that just occurred. As absence makes the heart grow fonder, so the absence of what we pray for with earnestness will make us long for it even more. When God answers, we treasure the answer more than how we would have appreciated it had we received it when we first began to pray for it. For instance, a brother shared how being jobless for a year, when God answered his prayer, it not only made things so much clearer that the job was from God alone but made him treasure the answer so much more. As a result, he would not allow the job, being clearly from God, to affect his service, obedience, and giving to God.  God’s delay in answering is His wisdom. He knows our hearts and He knows the best time for us to have even what is needed. When He answers in His timing after we have been bringing to Him the requests repeatedly, God gets all the glory for what He provides, and man grows best spiritually. 

Having understood all this, if we have genuine needs that are in tandem with God’s preceptive will, plans and purposes, let us not fail in our personal responsibility to pray importunately. Just imagine the loss – what if the mother had turned back after Christ did not answer her first request to cast the devil out of her daughter? When we falter in our prayer, we must remember Christ’s commendation of her humble persistence – “O woman, great is thy faith” (Matt 15:28). Let us not forget Christ’s words, from which even we all today are greatly encouraged, following the account of the friend seeking bread at midnight “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Luke 11:9). As for those who live obedient to His Word, do His work and His will but are often sorely mocked and abused in this world, how great that comfort that God promises for us “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?” (Luke 18:7). Who would you have on your side? Seek God to be on your side – He hears and answers the importunate prayers of His children.

Yours in our Lord’s service,
Pastor