This is part three of, God Wants To Answer Your Prayers.
Part 1 God Wants To Answer Your Prayers
Part 2, God Is Not The One Holding Up The Answer To Your Prayer.
Most of us have the idea that prayer is all about convincing God, to help us, to let go of the answer, to say "Yes," to our prayer, but the Bible teaches, Jesus taught, that we have a part to play. God can say yes to our prayer and we will still fail to receive the answer unless we do our part.
In previous episodes we looked at God's attitude toward prayer. What is God's attitude, at least
according to Jesus? Ask and it shall be given your, for every one that asketh receiveth. Here we look at Jesus's two parables about prayer so we can see what he says our attitude towards prayer should be. The two parables are:
The Parable of the friend with Chutzpah, and
The Parable of the Crazy Old Widow Lady.
Supplementary Resources
– Scriptures used: Matthew 7:7-11, James 1:4-5, Luke 11:5-8, Luke 18:1-8
Resources:
– Bob Lindsey on chutzpah as faith is from the book, Healing, by Francis Macnutt, Here's the quote:
"A few years ago I got an entirely new understanding of faith that has been most liberating. It came from the late Bob Lindsey, who had been pastor of the Narkiss Street Baptist Church, the largest English-speaking church in Jerusalem. Bob, a Southern Baptist, became involved in the healing ministry and himself had been cured of diabetes through prayer. Bob studied the gospels with a Jewish rabbi and really understood the Hebrew culture in which Jesus lived. So when Bob was visiting the States I thought he would be the perfect person to ask: "What is the meaning of 'faith,' as Jesus himself would have understood it?
" Without hesitation Bob said, "Chutzpah." Now, chutzpah is a Yiddish slang term meaning something like 'nerve' or 'brass,' 'extreme confidence in action.' In today's terms a person with chutzpah is someone who 'goes for it.' A classic Jewish story about chutzpah describes how a boy murdered his mother and father, and then threw himself at the mercy of the judge on the grounds that he was an orphan. Now that's chutzpah!"
– Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, By Frederick William Danker,
– Interlinear Greek New Testament so you can check out the Greek for yourself.
Luke 11
Luke 18