In Sunday’s passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said this:
When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matt 6:7-8)
He’s denouncing the way some people think they need to wear God down with their requests until he finally relents and gives them what they’re asking for, even though he really doesn’t want to do it.
But there’s a problem. In Luke 18, Jesus seems to be encouraging us to keep pestering God with our requests:
He told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:1-8)
So what’s the deal? Should you be like the widow and keep “bothering” God with your appeals until he gives you justice, or should you assume that “your Father knows what you need before you ask him” and just go one-and-done with your requests? Why does Jesus seem to be contradicting himself?
He’s not. In the parable in Luke, he isn’t saying that God is like the judge, he’s saying that God is infinitely better than the judge, so he doesn’t need to be badgered into doing something he doesn’t want to do. Unlike the judge, he can’t wait to give justice “speedily” to his people, especially when they show how utterly dependent they are on him through their ceaseless prayer.
In Matthew 6, Jesus was confronting people who see God as a big vending machine in the sky. They believe if they just keep kicking it the right way, they’ll eventually get the can of Coke (or house, or car, or spouse, or job, or whatever) they think they need. But in Luke 18, Jesus is talking about a different kind of prayer. In the introduction to the story, Luke says it was told “to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” Which means we need to ask, what does it mean to “lose heart?”
Just before this verse, Jesus is talking about God’s coming judgment. He says, “Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it” (Luke 17:32-33). Lot’s wife was judged because she looked back at Sodom as it was being destroyed. She didn’t want to leave behind her house, possessions, and friends in that evil city.
So the widow’s prayer isn’t an encouragement for us to keep pestering God to give us the things we think we need in life. It’s a forceful reminder that we should be continually praying for God to help us lose our lives. To lose our dependence on the things of this world that we rely on for identity, security, and comfort, and rely on God instead.
Jesus asks, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Will he find people who look to God for everything, or people who keep looking back at this world, like Lot’s wife? Will he find people who cry to him day and night, or people who are pridefully self-reliant?