The Parable of The Judge and The Woman

Luke 18 says that he spoke a parable to them. Verse 1. To this end, that man ought always to pray and not to faint. Keep it up. Don’t get worried. Just keep it up. Saying there was an assiduous judge who feared not God didn’t regard man. I love this parable because this is a corrupt judge. I’m going to just break it down. I’m not going to read what I wrote. Let me just break it down quickly. Here’s a corrupt judge and a widow understood that she needed legal protection. She understood more about the law than what the judge did.

Now, okay, think about today. Just bear with me on this story. This woman went to the judge, quoted verse, chapter section, paragraph, sub-paragraph, all of the stuff about the law that she needed help with, and the judge says, I don’t. I don’t. I’m not going to deal with you. She didn’t give up. She went back again and again and again. And finally, this judge gets to the point where he says, I’ll avenge her because she’s continually coming to me and she’s wearing me out. I got to get rid of this woman. And the point is this.

If an unjust judge is going to do that for somebody he doesn’t like, period, what do you think God is going to do who loves you if you’re persistent in your prayer? We get this whole thing turned around. Prayer is the persistent struggle. Virginia Stam Owens wrote, this is not a cosmic teddy bear we are cuddling up to. C.S. Lewis said in one writing, the writings of his chronicles of Narnia, he is not a tame lion. Eloev is convinced that prayer for persons living in the technological age must be combat, and it’s not just combat with the evil one.

With one’s society, or even one’s divided self throughout, it is all of these. It’s a combat with God. He says we must struggle with him, just as Jacob did at Peniel, where he earned his name Israel, he who strives with God. That’s what Israel means. We too must be prepared to say, I will not let you go till you bless me. Consider Moses again and again intervening. Remember that we studied this in Leviticus numbers. Consider Moses again and again intervening between the Israelites and God’s wrath. How many times did he do that, if you call? Almost every chapter we went into, God was talking to Moses about what he needed to go do with people.

Consider Abraham praying for Sodom, or the widow demanding justice. That is combat. Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint. He paid in the combat. He went away laying. Whoever wrestles with God in prayer puts his whole life at stake. Owen says how tempting to up the stakes, making prayer merely another consumer product. How embarrassing to have to admit, not only that prayer may get you into a prison, as it did Jeremiah, but also that while you were moulding away in a miry pit, that you may have a long list of limitations and unanswered questions to present.

When we wrestle with God, there’s a price to pay. But there, that’s the essence of persistent prayer. I think we haven’t got to that point yet in understanding prayer. Now I love this story. Bedowulf used to tell about taking Heaven by the storm. He said, God honours heroic faith, and he tells this Greek thing. Okay, now this story is not true, but I’m going to use it for analogy here because it’s going to make my point. He says one day Hercules was out on a ship on the ocean, and the sun was oppressingly hot.

In fact, it was so hot that it was just unbearable, and the sun was scorching everything. Oh, think about this summer here. And Apollo, which was the sun god, and so Hercules finally got so mad at Apollo, he took out his bow at the sun to shoot the sun. Well, that seems like a really stupid thing to do. And Apollo thought that that was so interesting, and Apollo said he is actually crazy heroic. But he was so taken, according to the legend, that he actually was overwhelmed with the heroics of Hercules, who would attempt to take an arrow and shoot out the sun, that he pacified the heat, granted to Hercules all that he needed, got the ship going, and set him on his journey.

Now, I think there’s a lot of sense in which Betterwolf says, you’ve got to storm heaven. Continuing prayer with strong endurance and perseverance. That was Paul. He prayed. He bowed his knee, and he prayed. He prayed about spiritual things, and he went busting right into God’s presence. He didn’t pussyfoot around, because he knew God was a loving father, who was just waiting for him to come and embrace him when he arrived. How many of you start your prayer with, God, I just need this little thing. Just give me a drop of grace, and give me a drop of mercy, and I’ll be fine.

God, don’t use too much on this. No, that is not what Scripture says. It says go boldly to God, and ask God for all he’s got. Think about that. And as I read this verse 14 again today, where it says, I bow my knees unto the Father, I thought, well, I wonder why he did that. We talked about positions of prayer. It doesn’t tell us that always when he prayed about his knees. That’s not the only posture for prayer, as we had a discussion on that in our prayer subject matter every week.

The Scripture talks about a lot of different ways to pray. It says, and I’m not going to go through all of this stuff. The only thing I want to say is, you know that Moses prayed standing up. You know that Abraham stood before the Lord. You know that David sat down. You know, Christ was prostrate or prone position, laid out flat on the ground, facedown with his hands out. There’s and humbleness of your heart. Whatever position works for you to achieve those two results as you go boldly to God, okay? Because that’s what you have got to do.

You’ve got to say, I’m coming to you with the humblest position, okay? With having my heart yield to you. But I’m going to come boldly because I’ve done that. Because that’s what your Scripture says. So the concept of kneeling was tied to a king of honor. This is why Paul did this. When you went before a king, you knelt. And so you see that in terms of a prayer that is directed at the majesty of God. And I think it’s a sense perhaps Paul had this in his heart, as he bowed his knees because of the concept of the majestic power of God, the grander, the magnificence, the glory of God.

And he uses the word glory twice in the brief message. So I think that’s the position he took to justify humbling himself to the king. Now there’s a second thing here. We see in the Bible the bowing of the knee in a time of real intense passion and emotion. Well let’s go to Ezra chapter 9. Ezra chapter 9. You don’t need to turn. I’ll just share it with you in a moment. Ezra is coming to God to confess sin. And he is a broken man. He has a contrite and broken heart, as the I rose up from my heaviness, having torn my garment and my mantle.

I fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord, my God, and said, Oh, my God, I am ashamed. I blush to lift up my face to thee, my God. You see, this is confession, contrition, overwhelming inequity. The man couldn’t stand up under the weight of sin. Whatever humbleness you need to pray for, the position of that should be in a manner that you know that God’s going to hear your confession of prayer. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, but I can tell you I have.

I’ve been under, sometimes I’ve been under so much weight, I can go back and give you many, many experiences of my life where that happened. But when you get under that weight, you need to get as comfortable as you can, and you need to cry out to God for him to assist you in whatever it is you need is. And we see in Daniel also not the confession of a sin, but prayer in the midst of a dire circumstance. That was part of my issue once, and it seems that the passion of his heart in this circumstance may have contributed to his kneeling.

That made a decree in Daniel 6 that everybody who worshipped any other god would be thrown into the lion’s den. Remember, this is the story of the lion’s den with Daniel. When Daniel knew the writing was signed, he knew how serious it was. He knew the consequences. He went right to his room, threw his window open, and got on his knees three times a day. I think it tells me about a man who really had a compassionate heart, who really bowed before the Lord, and this in the circumstance must have heightened the intensity.

And we get another illustration many, many times throughout the Bible, but I just want you to get to see the fact that prayer is a means to starting your engine. And so Paul emphasizes the family-father idea, because that gives him the boldness. He comes in and he says, all of us are named for you. I’m coming because I’m named for you. I’m Paul, the son of the living God, just like every other child of God. I’m named for you. I come into your presence. That’s my right to enter your presence.

You told me that’s my right, so I’m going to enter it in. I’m not going to whisper it around. I’m going to declare I’m in your presence. So he comes to pray. He bows his knee because he sees the majestic majesty of God, and he bows his knee, I believe, because of the passion of his heart. And he prays not for the physical things, but as always for the spiritual things. And he sees God as a loving Father to accept him. And because he sees God as a loving Father who gives the best things to his family, he asks with an amazing boldness.

Look at verse 16. That is amazing. He says, God, I’m asking that you would grant according to the riches of your glory. Now what I’m going to ask God, I want a full load of it. I don’t want a partial. I don’t want to drop. I want it all, is what he’s saying. You know, sometimes a Christian might be a little reluctant, all right? We go and we do this little thing about drops. I just want, I just need this, Lord. We don’t understand that he’s given us everything he has, and there’s more where that came from.

So if we don’t go get it, somebody else is going to get it. So in your spiritual life, when you pray, you pray with boldness, conviction, declaration, supporting by the Scriptures. Well, listen, folks, you better start storming the gates a little. When the Apostle Paul arrives there, because he knows the magnet, magnumite, or the magnificence of the Father that he has, who has blessed the saints living and dead, who are in the family, he doesn’t fiddle around with with puny requests. He says, I want God to grant you that you would receive according to the riches of his glory.

That means all of his glory, not piecemeal. Now you remember our discussion in verse 1 of chapter 7. I mean chapter verse 1, sorry, I’m reading about, I’m reading this backwards. Verse 7 of chapter 1, according to the riches of his grace. Well, here is according to his riches of his glory. That’s different. That okay, then out of okay, remember out of and according to. Alright, let’s let’s go through this again. If you went to a rich man, man with a lot of money, and you’re on the street, and he knows you, and you’ve got your family with you, no place to go, no place to stay, no food to eat, whatever.

And you go to this rich man, and you lay out your claim that all you need is a little help. And the first man says, sure. And he gives you a check for $25. That’s out of his riches. But now you go to the second rich man. You give him the same story. We’re on the street, have no money, no place to stay, have no food. It’s been this way for three days. We don’t get any food. We’re going to start to get sick die. And this guy asks you, how much do you need? And you say 5,000 would get us through this this hurdle, I think.

And so he whips out his checkbook and gives you a check for $25,000. That’s not out of his riches. That’s according to his blessing. Guys, think about this in your tights and your offerings. He’s blessing a member of the family based upon their need, not according to what he wants to give you out of. So you see, there’s the essence of boldness in prayer. And Paul is praying here an incredible prayer. He is praying that ultimately we would see a full manifestation of divine power in us, that we would be filled with all the fullness of God.

And that he’s going right in the presence of God saying, I want it all for their behalf. Don’t piecemeal it. I want it all. That’s a tremendous thought, guys, of how to pray. Accordingly to all that you are God. So God, hear this prayer. With the specific things that he prays for, become the key to the Christian getting the ignition key turned on and the power plant running. And we’ll see what those are in the next several weeks and how this works out. So as an introduction to the last part of chapter 3, we just learned that at the center of your life is the communication with God and how you need to communicate with God.

You can select whatever position you think is most comfortable to you, as long as your heart is what is humble to God. But when you speak, you don’t speak timidly to the Almighty God. He wants you to come boldly to me. And he wants you to ask for your need, which he’s going to give you abundantly, because he’s going to give you not out of, but according to his form. Which means that you’re going to get more than what you want. But you can’t go timidly into this process. I’m just asking for your crumbs.

That’s not his will. Do you think he gave his will to his son just in crumbs? Oh my gosh, no. Not even. And the son turned right around and gave it to us. So we need to go boldly to the throne of God in every prayer that we do. And remember, this physical life experience is trivial. Your physical life can’t be healed unless your spiritual life is healed to begin with. So you need to make sure that in your prayers seeking for spiritual alignment, spiritual healing, spiritual forgiveness, and the rest will take care of itself.

You might pray for healing of a broken leg or cancer or whatever, but you can’t pray for that alone. You got to pray for the spiritual well-being to make sure that the physical healing that you’re requesting is going to have an impact on the spiritual side. He doesn’t hold the key. He’s giving you the power plant. And he says, when are you going to turn the power plant on? Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the parable about the judge and the woman. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world.

To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].