Persistent in faith

I love the fact that our readings for each Sunday follow on from each other. It helps to know that at certain times of year we will hear and read particular readings. In the last few weeks, we have moved from thankfulness to treating the word of God correctly to another big word this week. We are on ‘faithfulness’.

In the gospel reading (Luke 18:1-8) we heard of persistence. I have always pictured this by trying to see the point of view of both the judge who is constantly questioned by the widow to the widow who cannot get justice. I feel slightly sorry for the judge. This is not the most obvious way to feel perhaps, but can you imagine someone constantly asking you for something that you don't want to give. If you thought it may be acceptable, but didn't want to back down that would be embarrassing. Of course, I feel sorry for the widow as you can almost picture an impoverished hard-done by figure who persists in asking. 

Of course, this tells us a lot about the need to keep asking God for things to change. The biggest problem with this is that we don't want to equate the judge who doesn't fear God, to God Himself.

We must indeed be persistent in prayer. However, here is where the big faithfulness word comes in. Maybe we are to be faithful in our prayers as well.  This makes sense, we are to go to God praying faithfully knowing that He hears us and will not ignore our cries for ourselves and for others. We are to be faithful in persisting not only in the prayers we promise to make for others but also in how we practice our faith.

To me being faithful means being true, and not giving up.  It is persistence. Someone asked me once how we can stay faithful and believe even when things go badly wrong and make no sense. I answered that we believe in spite of things going wrong. It made sense to me on the one hand. It suggested that no matter what happens we keep believing, we are persistent in staying faithful. Now I think I would add that whilst we believe and stay faithful in spite of everything that may suggest otherwise, we do so because we know and worship God who is always faithful. This is another reason why He can never be ignorant like the judge in the parable. Rather, the judge represents all that tries to stop me from being faithful, all that makes me doubt the need for persistent prayer and faithfulness. After all the judge didn't even fear God.

In the epistle reading (2 Timothy 3:14-4:5) there is an encouragement and a command to stay faithful. Timothy had known about faith since childhood. I am always so grateful that like Timothy I was taught about faith from a young age.  I was able to decide for myself whether I made that faith my own as well. This is great, and Timothy was encouraged in his faith and reminded that the use of scripture (which would have been the Jewish scriptures) was to instruct and train him.

The part that sticks out for me, particularly in the reading from 2 Timothy is chapter 4 verse 2 where we are reminded to proclaim the message and to be persistent in doing this - 

“proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.” (NIV). 

We need to be faithful and persistent, always proclaiming the gospel