The Persistent Prayer
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The Persistent Prayer

 (ID: 1565)

Despite Paul’s instruction that we should “pray without ceasing,” many Christians treat prayer as a last resort in the face of injustice. When Christ’s disciples neglected the discipline of prayer, He told them a parable about an unjust judge who was compelled to succumb to a widow’s incessant pleas. Alistair Begg guides us to the truth of the Lord’s story: because God hears the prayers of His children, we can pray to Him frequently and with great confidence.


The Parable of the Persistent Widow

1And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought ralways to pray and not slose heart. 2He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who tneither feared God nor respected man. 3And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, u‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” 6And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7And vwill not God give justice to whis elect, xwho cry to him day and night? yzWill he delay long over them? 8I tell you, he will give justice to them aspeedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, bwill he find faith on earth?”

Copyright © 2024, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

Alistair Begg
Alistair Begg is Senior Pastor at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Bible teacher on Truth For Life, which is heard on the radio and online around the world.