For Those Moments When Prayer Leaves Us Faint
How to Pray So That You KNOW You'll Get Your Answer, Chapter 17
Chapter 17: For Those Moments When Prayer Leaves Us Faint
“And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” (Luke 18:1 ESV)
Persistence is so critical to prayer that Jesus won’t leave the lesson alone. He teaches this concept again and again to ensure His disciples do not give up.
The Gospel of Luke records another time that Jesus on persistence, this time only a few months before His death on the Cross. Before telling the story, Luke tells us the point, ensuring we don’t miss it: “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.”
That last phrase — “and not lose heart” — captures the essence of this message. It comes from the Greek word ἐνκακεῖν, meaning “to be utterly spiritless, to be wearied out, exhausted.” This is not a physical exhaustion, as you’d experience in running a marathon. Rather, this is emotional, mental, and spiritual exhaustion — so weary from praying without an answer that you give up.
Jesus knows how often good prayers have died from discouragement. He targets these weary hearts and again breathes life into them:
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.’ ” (Luke 18:1-5 ESV)
This widow received her answer.
Not because she felt like she would.
Not because she had a glowing sense of faith.
Not because she earned it through good deeds.
She received her answer only because she kept persisting in asking — whether she felt like it or not.
Every day, without fail, she got up and went to the judge. It didn’t matter how many times he said “no,” or how discouraged she felt. She kept going. No matter what she felt, she chose to get up and ask again.
And because she didn’t quit, she received her answer.
Jesus continued:
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 ESV)
The unrighteous judge felt no compassion to the widow, nor any responsibility to be just. He was evil — entirely selfish in all his thoughts.
And yet.
The widow’s persistence was so powerful that it made a corrupt, selfish, evil judge give her justice.
Persistence is not a feeling.
Persistence is a choice, the decision to keep going no matter what.
Discouragement only wins if you let it. No matter how weary or discouraged you feel, if you choose to keep going, you will get your answer.
Or to say it another way: discouragement is not a battle of emotion, but a battle for truth.
Far too many of us try to combat these feelings emotionally. When we feel discouraged or weary, we try to make ourselves feel happy. We try to stir up good emotions to push out the bad emotions.
It’s not terribly effective. The bad emotions always seem to come back.
That’s because these are not battles of emotion, but battles of truth.
King David of Israel knew this well. He wrote in one of his songs:
I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13 NKJV).
How did David avoid succumbing to discouragement and weariness? Not by stirring up other feelings, but by reminding himself of the truth: God is good, and David will see God’s goodness if he persists.
This truth anchored David’s soul, enabling him to keep going, regardless of the circumstances around him.
Or to say it another way: truth won the battle of emotion. Truth dispelled discouragement. Truth brought hope.
Knowing this, Jesus taught the parable of the widow’s persistence to give us truth. Jesus knew we need anchors for our souls. Jesus gave us truth to dispel discouragement. Jesus gave us truth to stoke hope in our hearts, hope that will grow brighter the more we believe, hope that will keep us from ever losing heart.
And that truth is this: if persistence can get a corrupt judge to give a widow her answer, how much more will our persistence get an answer from our Father in Heaven? He loves us. He’s listening. He’s answering. We have only to persist until we see our answer manifest. We persist because, like David, we know we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
This reveals a startling side of persistence: true persistence builds our encouragement. It does not wear us down.
True persistence encourages us because it is based on truth, and that truth continues to sustain us.
True persistence builds us up, strengthening us the more we pray, because we keep our eyes on the God who is good.
The Scriptures expound on this, saying:
Those who wait upon the LORD will renew their strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31 ESV).
This is a beautiful promise. And yet, even with all of these promises, it still feels backwards.
Asking for the same thing over and over should be exhausting. It should be wearying to go over and over in prayer, repeating the same words, without seeing a change, day after day. Everything we know about life says that should be tiring.
And it would be, if not for God.
Day by day, we’re not simply repeating the same words. We’re going to the lap of our Father and enjoying His embrace.
It’s not the act of asking that renews us. We can ask for things all day and get worn down because the people we ask reject the requests, or lie about them, or ignore them, or half-heartedly answer them. Asking, by itself, doesn’t renew us.
Even prayer, by itself, doesn’t renew us. Why? Because we can pray in the wrong way. We can put our need in the center of our hearts instead of God, and get worn out because all we see every day is the need.
None of these things renew us.
So what does?
We are renewed when we wait upon the Lord.
Those who wait on the Lord — those who persist in their prayers to the Lord, waiting on Him to respond, continuing to persist as they wait — they will rise up with wings like eagles. They will not grow weary, but will run. They will not faint.
Why?
Because they are going to God, and being renewed in His presence.
God is the One who renews us. The most famous Psalm in all Scripture states it directly:
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul. (Psalm 23:1-3, ESV)
We go to God daily, being restored and refreshed in His presence. While we are there, we make our requests. We pray persistently — in the embrace of our Father who loves us.
We are sustained not by emotion, but by truth — that the God we pray to is good.
And this is where Jesus goes next.
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