Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.

Luke 18:1

Pray always and do not lose heart, Jesus tells us today. Why? Because Jesus knows that this world will break our hearts in a thousand ways. And Jesus also knows what is even worse than a broken heart. And that is a heart that is lost. 

Jesus tells us a parable today with a clearly defined purpose: It is told about our need to pray always and not to lose heart. 

Jesus knew that we would need to hear this. That we would be tempted to give up on prayer. That we would get dangerously close to losing heart. So he told us this parable. 

It is a rather strange little story, isn’t it? About a judge who neither fears God nor has any respect for people, and a widowed woman who is desperate for justice. She pesters this judge so much that the judge finally relents. “And will not God,” Jesus concludes, “grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” 

Indeed. God is no unjust judge. Our God loves this world too much to judge it. Our God loves this world so much that he gave his only son, who came to not judge the world but to save it.

But this parable raises an obvious question: Why did Jesus tell it to his disciples? Were they losing heart? Were they struggling to keep up their prayers? Apparently so. You don’t tell someone to get more exercise if they are already exercising daily. You don’t tell someone to pray always if they are already doing so. You don’t tell someone not to lose heart if they are not already growing discouraged. So Jesus told this parable to encourage them, and to encourage us. 

And what I want to do this morning is to reflect on what it means not to lose heart, and then think about the connection this has to prayer. 

Don’t Lose Heart

First, let’s think about what Jesus means by not losing heart. 

The heart is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible. It usually refers not to the physical organ, but to the innermost part of us. Scripture teaches us that our hearts can become unclean and sinful. David prays in Psalm 51 for God to create in him a clean heart. Our hearts can break. David assures us in Psalm 34 that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted. The Lord heals the brokenhearted, Psalm 147 tells us. Our hearts can be full of joy. We can rejoice in the Lord with all our heart. We can trust in the Lord with all our heart. 

I can find only two ways in Scripture that can cause our hearts to be separated from God: When we lose heart. And when we let our hearts grow hardened. 

When we are hardhearted, we have become so fed up with ourselves or our world or God himself that we build a wall around our heart to protect it. Sometimes this is necessary. But when this wall stays up too long, we begin to lose connection with our loving God, and even with ourselves and those around us. A broken heart can be healed. But a hard heart doesn’t want healing. And so it can separate us from God. 

And then, when we lose heart, we can become separated from God, because we lose our ability to see God’s love being poured into our hearts, as it is every day. Paul tells us in Romans 5 that even when we are dealing with afflictions and suffering, we still dare to hope because God’s love is being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. 

So our heart is a kind of container for God’s love. Yes, it can get beat up and broken by the trials of this world, but unless it is completely lost or hardened, it can still receive God’s love, which is a steadily flowing stream that heals and binds our broken hearts. 

All we have to do is not lose our heart, and not let it grow hardened. God will do the rest. That is what Jesus is telling us today when he tells a parable about our need to pray always and not lose heart. 

Pray Always?

So, what about praying always? And how does that help us not lose heart? Jesus tells us that these are connected, and I suppose the reason is obvious. As people of faith, when we give up on prayer, we inevitably lose heart. And when we lose heart, we often give up on prayer. 

Giving up on prayer is what I think Jesus is talking about here. I don’t think he’s asking us to pray every second of every day, but instead he is asking us not to give up on prayer. Don’t give up on God; don’t give up on prayer. No matter how discouraging our life gets, keep praying. No matter how long it seems to take for God to answer our prayers, keep praying. Pray always. So you don’t lose heart. 

Why Don’t We Pray Always? 

But, truthfully, we all have times when we do not pray as we know we should. Why is that? I can think of three reasons. 

First, we all have times in our life when we just give up on prayer. Our prayers go unanswered, and we just quit. Instead of getting angry with God, we just turn away. I think there are many times in Jesus’ ministry when he comes across someone like this, and his first response to them is always compassion. Jesus understands these struggles, and has compassion on us. 

But another reason why we don’t pray as we should is that we simply fall out of the habit of prayer. Why is that? Often it is because we do not prioritize prayer; doing something about whatever we are dealing with often seems like a better idea than praying about it. And life keeps us so busy, who has time for prayer? And when we try to quiet ourselves for prayer, life comes at us with everything it has to try and distract us. 

We have all been there, I suspect. Intending to spend time in prayer, but as soon as we quiet ourselves, all of these distractions come up. Our minds become very noisy. Every little sound interrupts us; and when there are no sounds, the silence is just as disruptive. And when we quiet down, we immediately think of ten other things that we almost forgot about, that are really, really important. So, we put off our prayers, and eventually fall out of the habit of prayer. 

But there is one more reason why we don’t pray that I want to mention today. Sometimes we fall out of the habit of prayer because there are no consequences to our not praying. We get in trouble if we don’t show up at work or school, or if we don’t pay our bills, or if we don’t show up for jury duty. But pray? Nothing bad happens when we don’t do it, right? So it becomes tempting to give it up. 

Life is so busy these days! We are all looking for ways to make it a little easier, or to just get through the day. And giving up doing something that no one even knows about is very tempting. Put “prayer” on your to-do list, and when do you do it? After doing the laundry, and paying the bills, and after everything else that is squeaking louder. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as the old saying goes, and prayer is usually not a very squeaky wheel. 

What Happens When We Don’t Pray?

But Jesus is reminding us today that our souls need prayer, they need connection and communion with God. Without this, they shrivel up. Call it our heart or call it our soul, but that innermost part of us that connects us with God needs prayer as much as our bodies need food, water, and air. And when we fall out of the habit of prayer, we lose heart, we lose our very souls.

Thomas Moore wrote about this back in the early 1990s, and put it this way: 

“The great malady of the twentieth century, implicated in all of our troubles and affecting us individually and socially, is ‘loss of soul.’ When soul is neglected, it doesn’t just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning. Our temptation is to isolate these symptoms or to try to eradicate them one by one; but the root problem is that we have lost our wisdom about the soul, even our interest in it.”

The great malady of our time is still “loss of soul.” Our souls need care. And the best way to care for our souls is to spend intentional time with God. Otherwise, we lose heart, we get discouraged, life becomes too great a burden to bear. Prayer is how we remind ourselves that God is with us, involved in our life, in our world. Prayer helps us to see God at work in our life. 

How Should We Pray? 

Okay, let me just wrap this up by sharing a few thoughts on how to pray. In short, the only wrong way to pray is not to do it at all. So pray in whatever way works for you. Outside, inside, alone, with a group, with your Bible, with an app. In the morning, at night, throughout the day. Pray with short prayers, like arrows piercing the heavens. Pray long prayers – ones you read, and ones you express from your heart. Pray with words, or without words. Just pray.

Martin Luther once wrote a booklet on prayer for his barber, and offered these wise words near the beginning of this booklet:

“First, when I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer because of other tasks or thoughts (for the flesh and the devil always impede and obstruct prayer), I take my little psalter, hurry to my room, or, if it be the day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled and, as time permits, I say quietly to myself and word-for-word the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some psalms, just as a child might do.” 

So pray with Scripture. But if you don’t have Scripture handy, pray without it. As a famous spiritual director, Dom Chapman, would often say, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” Because there really is no wrong way to talk to God, other than to not talk to God at all. So pray all ways, all different ways, so that you don’t lose heart. 

Closing

At the end of today’s gospel reading, Jesus asks us a simple question: When the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth? When Jesus returns, will he find people praying, people who have not given up on God? If so, he will also have found people who have not grown weary and discouraged by life. People who have cared for their souls. People who have continued to see God at work in this world. Because they are people who have not given up on prayer. And may we be among them, people who have learned to pray always, so that we don’t lose heart. Amen.