And 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? Let's pray. Holy Spirit, I imagine that it would be safe to assume that there's not a Christian here tonight who wouldn't admit that his prayer life is not all that it should be, all that it could be, all that you intend it to be. If we are praying as we ought to, then we know it's only because of your grace in us. But Lord, most of us are in all likelihood not praying as we ought. We give up too easily. We grow weary so quickly. So please help us tonight to not just learn information about the importance of prayer, help us to gain motivation in sticking to the discipline of prayer. Speak to us and change us by your word. I pray in the name of Christ. Amen. You can be seated. We all love stories about perseverance. Stories about famous athletes who overcome great odds to become a gold medalist at the Olympics or break some world record. Stories about the human spirit overcoming setbacks and impossible challenges. Climbing the unclimbable mountain or surviving a plane crash, being lost at sea, captured by the enemy, tortured but not being broken. We love those kinds of stories. We love stories about faithful Christians who endure persecution and still keep the faith, who endure martyrdom and still bear witness to the sufficiency of God's grace. We love to hear about people who persevere, but we don't necessarily enjoy persevering. How many times have you heard folks say something like, oh, I wish I could run a marathon? Or, I wish I had learned how to play the piano. Or, I've always wanted to have a big garden. We say these things, but we don't always follow through with them because they take perseverance. We want the end result, but we don't necessarily want to pay the price to get to that end goal. Charles Spurgeon once said, by perseverance, the snail reached the ark. You know, it's probably a good thing that the survival of the snail species wasn't dependent on our perseverance. We don't tend to be a people who persevere. It's hard work. We admire perseverance in other people, but we're often lacking it in our own lives. Now, there are plenty of aspects in the Christian life that require perseverance. suffering for your faith, or witnessing to a hardened family member. How about just learning theology, learning the Word of God? It takes hard work. It takes a stick-to-itiveness to get it done. There's so much in Scripture, it would take a lifetime and more for us to plumb its depths. But of all the things that demand a steady, long-term commitment, of all the things in the Christian life that require perseverance, I think we'd have to put near the top of that list the discipline of prayer. I can't tell you how many times I've said, I wish I had a stronger prayer life, or how many times I've resolved to implement a new prayer regime in my daily schedule. Consistency in prayer is hard. It's like running a marathon, or mastering an instrument, or growing a big garden. It takes a sustained effort over a period of time with very little to show for it until the end, right? So how do we attain this kind of perseverance, this unshakable resolve to pray and keep praying and keep praying until the Lord answers? I believe the passage before us tonight answers that question. So let's take a look together at the parable of the unjust judge. Let's just see if it won't encourage us and even motivate us to persevere in prayer. First of all, there's something we need to learn about ourselves. And that something is revealed right at the very beginning of the parable. In fact, Luke tells us up front, this is the whole reason Jesus told the parable in the first place. Verse 1, Jesus told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. In other words, this parable exists so that we would know that we ought to pray and ought not to lose heart. A positive command and a negative command. Christians should pray. They should spend time daily communing with their Lord, presenting their requests to Him, their anxieties to Him, their gratitude and praise to Him. And then the opposite of this here in Luke 18 is to not lose heart. Don't become discouraged or paralyzed by fear. So we're commanded to do something, that's pray, and we're commanded to not do something, to not lose heart. Now, why do we need to hear this? You know, the Gospels only record 30 to 40 parables of Jesus. Several of those are duplicates. A lot of those have overlapping themes. And so there's really only about 25 to 30 distinct parables in the Gospels. Now, if you could only share 25 to 30 lessons about the Christian life with someone, would one of those lessons address the importance of persevering in prayer? Evidently, Jesus thought this was an important enough lesson to include. And I think the reason he thought so is because he knows that when it comes to prayer, we tend to quit. We tend to give up. We're prone to do the exact opposite of what this parable is instructing us to do. Rather than praying and not losing heart, we lose heart and don't pray. Have you noticed that over and over, the New Testament connects admonitions to pray with constancy, steadfastness, That's the character trait that's tied to admonitions to pray. Luke 21.36, stay awake at all times praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place. Romans 12.12, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Ephesians 6.18, praying at all times with the spirit, with all prayer and supplication to that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. Colossians 4.2, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. And 1 Thessalonians 5.17, pray without ceasing. I think the only conclusion we can draw from this often repeated theme in Scripture is that we must be prone to give up on prayer if we're having to be reminded over and over by the Holy Spirit in God's Word to be constant, to be steadfast, to be consistent in this spiritual discipline. If a citizen of the United States were told you can ask anything of the president, he'll answer. Or an employer, employee were told you can ask your boss for anything, he'll listen to you. Or a child to a father, you can ask your dad for anything at all. He wants to know, he will listen. There'd be a lot of asking going on, wouldn't there? Why then do we not petition God when we've been told by him, ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened. So let's just spend a little bit of time tonight and do some self-analysis. Why are Christians prone to quit when it comes to prayer? Several reasons come to mind. And perhaps the most obvious reason is impatience, just sheer impatience with the process. To some degree or another, we are impatient people. We want results. We want them now. I think this is a particularly American vice. It seems we have a very low tolerance for waiting. Having to wait for something to get done is tantamount to failure a lot of times in our mindset as Americans. And so something like prayer, A discipline that rarely yields immediate results can feel like a waste of time. We'd rather be doing something, and so we quickly give up on prayer in order to go and get busy. This is a symptom of an impatient spirit, and it's an enemy to an effective prayer life. John Calvin said that the actual facts don't always make it immediately evident that God graciously listens to our prayers. Sometimes we have to wait a really long time to have any actual confirmation that God is listening and responding to our prayers. Calvin said, so let us contend against our impatience so that the long delay may not induce us to discontinue our prayers. In other words, we've got to fight impatience if we're gonna be persistent in prayer. Another attitude that makes us susceptible to quitting when it comes to prayer is the notion that circumstances and events that can be seen, that are visible, observable, are the only ones that are real. Only what's visible and concrete is important. And so we tend to think of things like church growth in numerical terms or fiscal terms. We measure Christian discipleship by how many books we've read or how many people we've witnessed to. Another word for this sort of worldview is materialism. The material world, this visible, measurable world, is what really matters. Materialists pour all of their time and energy into houses and cars and food and clothing and recreations and jobs. And so when Christians, and we're not immune to this attitude, when Christians import this kind of worldview into the church, we're tempted to reduce ministry to programs, to programmatic busyness, because programs can be measured. We feel like we're accomplishing something. Busyness is observable. But the slow grind of something like prayer seems like such a waste of time. So we stop praying and we end up living like what one theologian called practical atheists. In evaluating why we tend to give up on prayer, I think there are also tendencies that are unique to different age groups. Um, young people, let me talk to you for just a little bit. You haven't lived very long. You haven't fully grasped the brevity of life, the briefness, how short life is. You've not fully grasped how vulnerable you are, how vulnerable your parents are. And your independence and fearlessness in life has not been tempered yet by life experience. So there's often a tendency, I think, in young people to be prayerless, just out of a sense of independence, self-sufficiency. I'm going to ace this test. I'm going to make the team. I'm going to get this job. I'm going to get accepted into this college. I'm going to make something of my life. And prayer doesn't always enter into the equation. But Jesus says, young people, you ought to pray and not lose heart. Elderly people, on the other hand, you have lived long and you more than anyone else understand the brevity of life. You understand your own vulnerability. I think the tendency among older Christians oftentimes is to be fearful and anxious, to be given over to panic rather than given over to prayer. And again, this is an indication of a prayerless heart. Paul said, be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. Well, the fact is whether you're young or old, we're all prone to quit when it comes to prayer. We need to be exhorted to pray and not lose heart. So to drive this lesson home, Jesus tells a story. He tells a parable with a point. The parable of an unjust judge and a persistent widow. Now, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time explaining the story. I think it's pretty self-evident. That's the point of a good illustration. It makes sense on its own. But let me just highlight a few important features. First of all, we meet this unjust judge, verse 2. In a certain city, there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. Now, judges are supposed to protect people. They're supposed to be just. They're supposed to be fair and unbiased. But this one doesn't fit the bill. He has no fear of God. He has no respect for man. Next, we meet a persistent widow in verse 3. There was a widow in that city. Now, this widow is the epitome of vulnerability. She's been treated unfairly, unjustly by some unnamed adversary. She evidently has no means of defending herself, so she's entirely at the mercy of this judge. And she comes to him repeatedly to make her case and beg for justice to be carried out. But the judge, the unjust judge, is not interested in justice. He ignores her for as long as he can. He doesn't want to get involved. So he just keeps sending her away. Finally, one day the widow goes to the judge and she does get justice. He grants her request because he's simply tired of being bothered by her. Her constant pleas are getting on his nerves and he says in verse five, because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice so that she will not beat me down, so that she will not wear me out by her continual coming. So this is the story that Jesus tells to convey the point that Christians, who are prone to quit when it comes to prayer, ought to pray and not lose heart. Let's move on to the summary that Jesus gives in verses six through eight. These verses teach us something about the nature of God by drawing a contrast between God and the unjust judge in the parable. Jesus introduces this contrast in verse six when he says, hear what the unrighteous judge says and will not God give justice? In other words, if an unjust judge will respond to the pleas of the helpless, how much more will a just God respond to the pleas of His own children? It's a contrast in the worst of man to the best of God. That's the comparison that Jesus is making in this parable in order to assure our hearts that God wants to answer our prayers. He wants to hear us pray. If our perseverance in prayer is going to increase and get stronger, then we need to reflect on the God to whom we pray. What is He like? How interested is He in our situation? How interested is He in giving justice to those who ask for it? So let's take a moment and learn something about God by thinking about the differences between the unjust judge's dealings with the widow and God's dealing with us. First, we notice a difference in God's character from that of the judge. The unjust judge was unjust. He was without righteousness. He was wicked. This vulnerable widow was making her appeal to a wicked man who had no business holding any civil office, and yet somehow she, in spite of the judge, received justice. This judge was unjust, but our God is just." So that's the first contrast we want to notice. Our God is a righteous judge who always rules with equity, with fairness, with justice. If the widow receives justice from an unjust judge, how much more confident should we be when we plead our case before God? So we should persevere in prayer because God is just. The one to whom we pray is just. Secondly, notice that the unjust judge was hostile to the widow. He had no interest in her, in her case, in her situation. He had no respect for her or for anyone for that matter. Have you ever gone into a government office and gotten the impression that they really don't care about what you're there for, the initials DMV come to my mind. This judge had no interest in this widow's pleas for justice. He really could care less about why she was there, and yet even he eventually grants her request. God is the exact opposite of a hostile judge. He invites us to come to His bench to make our case. He invites us to His throne. He sends His only Son to personally say to us, come to Me, all you who labor, and I will give you rest. Our God is not hostile. He's inviting to us. We should persevere in prayer because God invites us to come to Him. This parable makes a contrast not only between God's character compared to the judge's character, but also between God's relationship to us and this judge's relationship to the widow. The unjust judge and the widow were strangers, apparently, to one another. When she made her appeal, she was appealing to someone who didn't know her, who didn't care about her. But when we make our appeal to God, we stand before Him as His elect, His chosen ones. Look at verse 7. Will not God give justice to His elect? He cares. He has a vested interest in us because He's chosen us. And in choosing us, He has pursued and redeemed us and sanctified us and will glorify us and come get us one day so that we can be with Him for all eternity. Do you think that He will listen to the prayers of the ones He has chosen to be His own? Of course He will. So we ought to pray and not lose heart because God cares about the things that affect his elect. Another contrast is that the unjust judge was provoked by the widow's pleas. Verse five tells us he was bothered by her. She got on his nerves. He only granted her request in the end so she would quit wearing Him out. He was provoked by the widow. God, on the other hand, is pleased to run to our aid. He's pleased by our cries for help. Have you ever seen a mother responding to a genuine cry of her child? There is nothing that will stand in her way as she goes to the aid of her child. Her child needs her. Nothing can stop her from running to help. So it is with God in running to our aid. He's pleased to respond to our cries for help. So we ought to persevere in prayer because it pleases God to help us. I want you to notice one final contrast between the unjust judge and God. It has to do with God's timing. Notice that the judge only gave justice when he had no other choice. He had no other option. But verse 7 asks the question, will God delay long over His elect? And the answer in verse 8, I tell you, He will give justice to them speedily. God is quick to give justice to His children. Now, does this mean that there's never a delay between our request and God's response? No, it doesn't mean that at all. The whole point of this passage is to encourage us not to quit just because prayer doesn't seem to work immediately. So, this implies that delay is a normal part of prayer. What we need to be assured of, though, is that any delay we experience will never be any longer than the gracious purposes of God require. Let me say that again. Any delay we experience will never be any longer than the gracious purposes of God require. It's not as if God has determined to ignore us, but can't because we won't leave Him alone. So he begrudgingly answers our prayer. That's not what's going on at all. If there's any delay to our prayer being answered, it's because God, who sees the bigger picture, knows the ideal and exact time to act for our good. When the time is right, nothing will stop his speedy answer. You know, we probably have a hard time accepting this because we're not like that. Even as a father, there are plenty of times when I give my children what they want just so they'll leave me alone. Sure, go watch another video. It'll turn your brain to mush. I don't care. Just leave me alone for a few more minutes. We're more like the unjust judge than God, right? But everything God does by way of intervention in our lives, including his answers to our prayer, is done with purpose. A purpose that has our best interest in mind at all times. I mean, isn't that what Romans 8 28 is saying? God is working all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Even delays to our prayers have a gracious purpose behind them. Once that purpose is met, God's answer will come speedily. So keep praying for your lost child. Keep praying for victory over that besetting sin. Keep praying for reformation in the church and for the tide in our culture to change. God is listening and when His answer comes, it will come quickly. The last sentence of this passage contains an admonition. that seems a little bit cryptic, a little bit out of place. It's the end of verse 8. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? Jesus has just told a story to His followers and to us to assure us that God hears and answers prayer, so don't quit praying. But then He follows it up with this question, this odd question. When I return at the end of history, will I find faith on earth, or will everyone have stopped persevering and given up? What kind of a question is that? What's He saying? Is this Jesus being cynical to His followers? Is He saying, yeah, you shouldn't give up on prayer, but you probably will anyway? Is that what's going on? No, Jesus isn't being cynical. He's not being pessimistic about the future of Christianity. What I believe He's doing in this last statement is giving us a warning and an admonition. A warning and an admonition. Let's look at this just for a moment and see if we can unravel the latter part of verse 8. When verse 8 says, Will he find faith on earth? That's the ESV translation. It actually leaves out a word that appears in the original Greek manuscript, and it's the definite article right before the word faith, the word the or that. So in Greek, it would read, will he find the faith or will he find that faith on earth? Now, there's a long technical explanation about why the article is usually dropped in the translation. But I think in this passage, it would be helpful to include it in the translation by including the article We realize that Jesus is not asking about faith in general. Of course, there will be faith when Christ returns. But here, He's asking about a specific kind of faith. That faith. In other words, the kind of faith the widow in the parable possessed. Will there be Christians who have not lost heart and given up on persistent, persevering prayer? By asking this question, Jesus accomplishes a couple of things. First of all, He lets us know that the Christian life between His first coming and His second coming, and Doug defined that for us this morning as the last days, the Christian life during the last days will be hard. So hard, in fact, that we will be tempted to quit praying and lose heart. His closing question implies that there will be a time in which consistency in prayer will be very difficult. Folks, that time is now. Our culture, our world, our time in history is no friend to prayer. We're surrounded by disincentives to pray. Don't just sit there, do something, says the world. And sometimes the church says the same thing. But Jesus says, pray. Pray persistently. Pray with constancy, even when it gets difficult to do so. Don't fall into the trap of believing that Christianity is some kind of cakewalk. It's hard work. At times it's discouraging, but don't quit. The Son of Man will return, so persevere in prayer until He does. Secondly, I think this final statement is intended to be a kind of rhetorical question that we need to ask ourselves. Do you want Jesus Christ to return to a prayerless church? Absolutely not. Then don't lose heart. Be like the persistent widow who would not back down, be discouraged, give up, quit, or stop pursuing justice. Jesus is calling His hearers to self-examination, to ask ourselves, are you pursuing this kind of stick-to-it faith in your prayer life? So this parable is an exhortation to pray and not lose heart. If we're going to heed this call, perhaps it'll be helpful as we close tonight just to answer some basic questions that come up when we read this, questions that'll help us in our pursuit of persistency in prayer. The first question that I want us to wrestle with is just why does God delay at all in answering prayer? Couldn't He have set things up in His providence in such a way that anything we ask of Him would immediately be granted? I suppose He could have done that. He's all-powerful. But the fact that He didn't must mean there is providential purpose, there is wisdom in delayed answers to prayer. I think we could look through Scripture and discover several of those purposes. Let me share a few that I've come across. reasons why God delays in answering prayer. First, God delays in order to teach us virtue, in order to teach us things like patience and faith. James 1 tells us to rejoice in trial. And I think delayed answer to prayer certainly qualifies as a trial. Rejoice in trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. So sometimes God's delays are intended to build character, build virtue in us. Another reason God delays, I think, is in order to increase our thanksgiving when we finally do receive the blessing. Do you tend to be more grateful for what comes easy or for what comes at great cost and effort? I think we tend to be more grateful, more thankful for the things that come hard. God knows in the way He answers our prayer, exactly how to maximize our gratitude. And this is a good thing. Sometimes God's delays occur in order to prepare for us a greater blessing. God delays the answer to prepare for us something better, a greater blessing. The way God brought my wife, Laura, into my life comes to mind. Laura is the perfect spouse for Eugene Oldham. And I'm not flattering just because she's in here and we're in a public setting. It could not have been a better fit. Her personality fits with my personality. Our interests line up. She's the perfect, fit for me. God knew exactly what he was doing when he paired us together. But what you may not know is that a few months before I met Laura, I was pretty serious about another girl. So serious, in fact, that I was certain this was God's plan for me. And when that prayer was answered with the resounding no, I was devastated. I even had a friend come up to me and say, well, that just means God has something better for you. I don't want to hear that at that point. I was I was devastated. You see, at that point, from my limited perspective, with my tunnel vision, I couldn't see God's bigger purposes. I couldn't see the future. I couldn't see God's plan. He shut the door over here because He had something far better for me. If I had been able to see that end result at that moment, I wouldn't have been devastated at all. I can say that in retrospect. Sometimes God delays intervening or granting our request precisely because He has something better in store. I think a biblical example of this sort of thing is found in the story of Jesus and Lazarus. You know, Christ's delay in coming to the aid of Lazarus resulted in Lazarus' death. But it also resulted in a much greater miracle. Instead of healing a sick man, Christ was able to raise a dead man because of a divine delay. Sometimes these delays, their purpose is to give a greater blessing. One last reason why God delays that I wanna mention is that sometimes God's purposes simply lie outside the sphere of human experience and knowledge. Sometimes He delays for reasons we just can't know. Y'all, He's sovereign, He's in charge, and sometimes He doesn't share His larger purposes with us. We have to be okay with that. Job is the prime example here. From Job's vantage point, his suffering, his pain, his grief was a waste. It was useless. It was arbitrary. It was pointless. But there were spiritual ramifications going on behind the scenes that Job and his friends could not possibly have known. Sometimes God's delay is without explanation for reasons known only to God. That's His prerogative. But even in those situations, we can trust that He is just and He is good. So pray even then and don't lose heart. Another question that I think it'd be helpful for us to answer is this, what does always mean when Christ says, pray always, men ought always to pray? What does that mean? How much is that? How often does that mean? I mean, that command itself could cause us to lose heart if we don't understand what it means. So here's some thoughts. First of all, always cannot mean continuously on your knees without a break, like a monk in a monastery somewhere who does nothing but spend all of his waking hours in prayer and meditation. You know, if you think about it, we wouldn't be able to obey a lot of other commands in Scripture if all we did was pray 24-7. When would we love our wives as Christ loved the church? When would we raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? When would we serve and preach and work and witness and do all the other things commanded in Scripture if all we're doing is spending our time on our knees praying. So Jesus isn't telling us to do nothing else but pray. Maybe He means by men ought always to pray. Maybe He means that they're to remain continuously in a prayerful attitude. I've heard people explain it in these terms. To be honest, I'm not really sure what that means. If it just means that we maintain a sense of our dependence on God, then yes, we are constantly and utterly dependent on the Lord for everything. And we should seek to be as conscious of that as we can. But is that awareness, that consciousness of our dependence on God, is that prayer? Prayer in Scripture is never describing a state of consciousness. a mental posture that we try to maintain. Prayer is an action. Prayer is something we do. Now, Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5.17, we're to pray without ceasing. What's he talking about? I would say the same thing about that command that I would say about Christ's command for us to pray always. It's not a command to achieve some mental state of prayerfulness all the time. Rather, it's a command to do the work of prayer regularly, habitually, repeatedly, without giving up. It's interesting, Paul uses the same word, without ceasing. He uses that same word earlier in his letter to the Thessalonians when he said, we thank God without ceasing that you receive the Word of God. Does this mean that Paul was incessantly droning out the same prayer? Thank you that they received the Word. Thank you that they received the Word. Thank you. Is that what it means without ceasing? No, that would be absurd. Does it mean that he remained in some state of conscious awareness that there were people in Thessalonica who had responded in faith to the Gospel, so much so that he thought of nothing else? I don't think that's what it means either. That, again, seems absurd. What it does mean is that he regularly or habitually gave thanks to God for his work among the Thessalonians. That's how we're supposed to pray. To do something without ceasing, in the sense that Paul and Christ tell us to pray, means to do it regularly. To make it a habit in your life. It means to keep doing it even when, and especially when, it's difficult to do. So don't think that praying always means keeping yourself or your consciousness in some posture of prayerfulness. It means to pray regularly. The widow in the parable illustrates this. She was not perpetually at the judge's bench begging for a hearing. It says she kept coming. She was regular. In context, it means at the very least day and night. Look at verse 7. Will not God give justice to His elect who cry to Him day and night? Prayer is to be a daily habit, a daily discipline for the Christian. And then the last question I want us to think about is, where's the gospel in all of this? Is this passage nothing more than an admonition to try harder, to work harder, to not quit? Well, it is that, but it's not only that. We're not merely commanded to pray. We're also given motivation to obey the command. And I think that's where the Gospel becomes evident in this passage. Our motivation to pray comes from the fact that the one to whom we pray is a just judge who loves us as His own. The Gospel is contained in the word elect. To be elect means you're forgiven even of prayerlessness. To be elect means you have access to God through Jesus, your High Priest. To be elect means God wants to commune with you. To be elect means God will ultimately avenge all wrongdoing against you. And these realities ought to make us not only pray, they ought to make us want to pray and not lose heart. So I hope the time that we've spent looking at this parable tonight will renew our commitment to the hard work of prayer. But I hope that renewed commitment comes from a heart that sees God as a generous and just father who delights to give good things to his children when they ask him. Let's pray. Father, you are just and generous. well beyond what we deserve. You treat us as your children, your own. You call us your chosen ones. We've been accepted by you in Christ. And because of that, we have access to your riches, your wealth, all the benefits that you give to your own. And Lord, we thank you for that. But God, we confess that our prayer life doesn't reflect an awareness of that. All too often, I know in my own prayer life, it's weak and fledgling and Lord, it's a distracted prayer life that doesn't recognize that when I come to you, I'm coming to a just judge who wants me to beg for mercies and blessings and grace and who delights to shower that grace on me and on my family and on my church and on my culture. Lord, I pray that I would avail myself, that we would avail ourselves of this great means of grace. May we be a praying people. Lord, I know that there's going to be a tendency for some of us to go from this place with these thoughts in mind, and our response is going to be to go and try harder, to work harder. Lord, we probably do need to work harder, but I pray that that labor That commitment will not be devoid of biblical motivation to pray. You've given us not just the command to pray, but the motivation to pray, and that motivation is that you care about us, you love us. You invite us to come and cast our cares on you because of your great care for us. So I pray that we would go, not just with a fleshly commitment to obey some command, but we would go with the gracious motivation in our hearts as well, and that we truly would be a praying people, even though it may take to the end of the age, before we see answers to our prayers. You are the great God who hears, and we thank you for that. And it's in Jesus name, we approach your throne. Amen.