Prayer is itself an end, and not just a means to an end, namely, getting answers or what we want. If we are constantly looking for answers to our prayers, the outcomes or works that we have beseeched God to bring and do, our obsession will naturally block all else out. We will miss that prayer is far more than just what it brings.
To understand prayer, and how we are to engage in a life defined by prayerfulness, we must stop focusing on getting answers to our petitions. Life is too varied and unpredictable, what is best or needed too unfathomable, and God’s working too mysterious, for our petitions to reliably align with what is truly good. Prayer is more truly our constant way of moving through each day by a divinely sourced trust in God, whatever the day brings, rather than asking for the day’s events to be different than they are.
Sometimes the circumstances we encounter may change, a situation might be altered apparently by the hand of God, and for that we are grateful. But most often prayer profoundly helps us engage faithfully what is coming to us. For this reason, the emphasis of our prayers needs to be for discernment, to see and understand what is happening, so that we may respond like Jesus teaches and shows us. Praying for insight, guidance, strength, patience, wisdom, and grace is what we need.
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. Luke 18:1
Luke tells us that the purpose of the parable about the widow is to encourage us to be persistent in prayer. But what type of prayers are we to persist in? We might typically think that Jesus is encouraging us to be unwavering in pressing for our specific desired answer or outcome, such as for the job we want, for a person to change, or for some situation to be different. However, if that is what Jesus meant, why did Paul only pray three times for his thorn in the flesh to be removed (2 Corinthians 12:7-8)? Did he not know to be persistent in prayer, as Jesus taught? Asking three times is hardly much sustained effort!
I believe that Paul did understand what Jesus meant, but he did not believe that he was supposed to be persistent about praying for his situation to change. Instead, he had to be persistent in praying that he might have, by the grace he was promised, the patience and strength to live with that thorn and not to be overcome by it. Paul’s prayer quickly ceased to be for his reality to be different, and continued, probably throughout his life, as a request for the strength to bear the cross.
We do need to be constantly in prayer because we face so many trials in life. We pray daily for the mercy needed to forgive that person who constantly offends. We ask God daily to help us see the good in others rather than to be disgusted by their faults. We will have to be as persistent as the widow in the parable because what we face each and every day is unassailable apart from God.
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