Constant

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF LUKE

CONSTANT

Luke 18:1-8

18:1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' 4 "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!'"  6 And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" 

NIV

Is there any real need to explore this parable when Jesus states the meaning of it before he tells it? But he also concludes with a “However”. This is the answer to whether we should continue to pray for a need until we get an answer. But with the concluding “However” there a slightly different slant to this meaning. This is not so much that we should pray the same repetitive prayer day in and day out, praying for the same exact need, until it is answered, although he does not say we should not do that either, but the meaning here also has more. We should always be in a constant state of prayer, which according to the Greek meaning implies that we should turn our attention to, turn our mind to a person or thing, to bring near. Prayer is a form of communication between man and God, we turn our attention toward him, to both talk and listen. It makes so much sense that he would have a far more important things to say then we would, so listening would be the best way we could turn our mind toward him. Jesus did tell us here, that we should not give up, especially in those times when life gets a little rough. The adversary is going to try his hardest to make us give up, to lose our faith in God, to start to depend on ourselves for everything instead of God. Certainly the disciples would be faced with far more difficultly in life then we will ever face, many of them having been martyred for their faith in Jesus. Nevertheless we face hardships from time to time and in those times as well as the good times we should always be found in the state of prayer, always being attentive to his voice. Our adversary would like nothing more than to distract us from listening to the voice of God, being in prayer. When Jesus concludes the parable he tells them or rather asks if when he returns will he find us having faith? Will life itself deplete our faith? Will the adversary win the battle for our hearts and minds and thus our soul? Sometimes, depending on his strategy he will not do harm to us, but rather bring about such good times we lose sight of our need for God and our constant state of prayer goes by the wayside. We get so involved in doing life, accumulating some form of wealth, we forget to be attentive to the voice of God. But there are also some who endure hardships, one after another at the hand of our adversary. He hopes that we fold under the pressure of those hardships paying more attention to them, then to the voice of God. We can become so focused on our difficulties that we lose our focus on God. We could become discouraged in our trust and faith in him, turning into our hardships and looking for our own human efforts to relieve us from the pain and suffering. This is why Jesus asks if he will find faith on earth when he returns. We need to always remain attentive toward God, constant in our faith.