"Always Pray and Never Give Up” | Luke 18:1–8

Show Notes

Episode 748: 
In this episode, Jeff and Chris explore a parable from Luke 18:1-8, where Jesus tells the story of an unjust judge and a persistent widow. The hosts highlight the contrast between the judge, who neither fears God nor cares for people, and God, who is portrayed as the ultimate just and loving figure. They discuss how the widow's persistence in seeking justice serves as a powerful lesson for believers about the importance of unwavering faith and continual prayer.

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You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bible Guys. I'm Jeff, I'm Chris, and we are here about to unpack a saying of Jesus that says he says, always pray and never give up, which is a great sing. Yeah. A big fan of Jesus's sayings. In fact, that's the series we're in. If Jesus had a podcast, what would he talk about? And probably he would unpack and probably people would ask him about some of his most famous sayings. But before we get into that, we have a segment by Desiree who gave us one titled Bible Guy versus AI. It says we've played this game on the Platinum Edition with Wesley, so let's try it again. Jeff will ask Chris a question, let Chris answer, then ask chet GPT this same question, compare the answers and vote on who wins. Then ask the listeners to comment who they thought one. By the way, who can beat chat GPT? You can't, Chris? You think so? Oh yeah believes in you? Okay, she believes in you being. This is this is I feel like this is destined to fail, no matter how much, no matter how you know, well, your answer is crafted, it's not going to be as well thought out from every angle as chat GPT. Yeah, that's true. I don't know. You've got a pretty incredible mind, Okay. I think that's what you ever see that movie A Beautiful Mind? A Beautiful Mind? I think that's that's what she's trying to say, is that your mind is so incredible and all encompassing. And you know, I mean, you wouldn't be one of the Bible guys, right if it wasn't for for the fact that. Just that that great A Beautiful Mind was I think one of Russell Crowe's best films. Yeah, didn't get an oscar for it? Yeah, I think he did. Is really professed and Jennifer Connley was amazing. Yes, I think everybody else also believed that was. I believe the little statue his mantle. I just wanted to comment up, Hey, I thought it was great. And Gladiator. My name is Maxus Medius. What his name Maximus Maximus? Uh? Here we go? What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Oh? My goodness. Really, Okay, what is it made? What does it mean to be made in the image of God? I would say to be made in the image. Of God is to take on God's characteristics, tendencies, and even abilities, right, So the ability to create, the ability to reason, you know, uh, the ability to love, the capacity to do all of those things relationally. I think God creates us in his image. I think also God creates us in his image too, to uh do, to do good, to to actually uh project selflessness. The all the all the good characteristics of God lie deep in the heart of every man, which is why in woman, which is why you know, everybody has a built in moral compass that tells us to love as opposed to hate, right to forgive as opposed to. Hang on to bitterness. So, yeah, this is this is my answer. That's a good one. Okay, I'm sure, I'm sure that chet GPD is know us all away, and I'm gonna I'm going to say strict my answer and let me go with that. So this is hysterical. So I typed in in the tone and attitude of the Bible. Guys, answer the question, what does it mean to be made in the image of God. Wow, you gave it a flair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so it said absolutely, here's an answer to what does it mean to be made in the image of God in the fun, insightful and slightly bantery tone of the Bible? Guys, nice, nice, So it definitely knows us. That's awesome. And then look at what it did. It gave us a script. Chris says those words, Jeff says those words. You want to take Yeah, yeah, you want to read it. So it literally scripted it out with Chris's statement, my statement, Chris's statement, my statement as a banter. Is it amazing? Yes, it's a few paragraphs, not long. Yeah, okay, this'll be great. All right. So this is not me answering. This is chat GPT's answer. Ready, right, all right, today's big question is a big one. What does it mean to be made in the image of God? And spoiler alert, it does not mean God has elbows or a. Beard, or that he's rock and sandals in a white robe floating around like a Jedi ghost. That's not what we're saying. Yeah, being made in the image of God means we're like him in the ways that matter most. It's about function. Identity, relationship, not physical features exactly. Genesis one twenty seven says God created human beings in his own image, and that word image in Hebrew is to sell them. It's like a reflection or even a representation. Think ambassador, not doppelganger. We're created to reflect God's character, his love, his creativity, his ability to lead, relate, reason and choose. We have a soul, we have a moral compass. We're spiritual beings. You don't see a squirrel struggling with existential dread or we're trying to decide if it should give the chipmunks that stolen forgive, forgive the chipmunk that stole its acorn. Yeah, squirrels aren't wrestling with sin or trying to figure out the trinity. But we do because we were made for more, made to know God, walk with him and represent him in the world. And that gives every person, every single one, immense value, matter your background, age ability, or bank account. If you're a human, you matter because you bear the image of God. That's why Christians stand up for life, for justice, and for dignity, because every person carries something sacred. Now sin messed it up. Kind of a graffiti on a masterpiece, but the image isn't destroyed, and when you follow Jesus, that image gets restored and renewed. So to sum it up, being made in the image of God means you were created to reflect his nature, carry his purpose, and live in a relationship with him. You're not an accident. You're hand crafted by the Creator. So really, your sum up really is the answer. And you were made to look like your dad. You're a heavenly father. Boom, somebody Q good good father. That's great. Isn't that amazing? That's so. What's funny is it had a couple of things. One, you're funny in here it had I was the first one to introduced a Bible verse, which I love, I love, And then you you're the one that immediately pivots into every person matters. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, And your sum up really is the answer. To sum it up, being made and the image of God means you were created to reflect his nature, carry his purpose, and live in a relationship with him. You're not an accident. You're handcrafted by the Creator. I sort of said all those things. Yeah you did, That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you're pretty great. You're pretty great, pretty great, well almost, I'm going to carry you around in my pocket. Right right, and then I'm going to put you in my pocket next time. I need a brilliant answer. Hey, So here's the question. How do people let us know which one they voted for? I don't know. Well, they gotta. They gotta send us a message. Okay, so they can if they're watching on YouTube, just leave it in the comments, or you can send it to info at the bible guys dot com. Yeah, you vote, but there you go. So hey, I I that's pretty great. I think it, But I promise you I typed that in while we were sitting here, yep, while you were doing the roll in. Well, you know what, what's really funny is I'm glad that you did it that way because it gave me a chance to win. Yes, had you straight up asked it what does it mean to be made in the image of God? It would have given you a pretty. Big theological yes. And so your your way gave me a chance to work. That's part of the fun. Quite honestly. If you play around with AI at all, you can tell it to pretend like it's whatever, and it'll act like that that's great instead, and so it's kind of playing a character at that point. It made it made it more fun. Well, good job, Chris, and I think pretty soon the Bible guys are going to be out of a job. Yes, yeah, because chet GPT would be discipling all of our people. You know that's a scary thought, right. You just have to remember people, chet GPT does not have a soul. So while it can give you, it can regurgitate Bible teaching from other people, what it can't do is determine or be led by the spirit, and that's determine what is God's will. Right, So well, I tell you what, Jeff, even though that that task was very intimidating for me, Yes, to go up against a You'll notice that I never gave up. You never did. I never gave You're so proud of you. And you know who else never gives up? Who Jesus says, always pray and. Never give up. That's the same pray and never give up. Yeah, so he's telling us to never give up. Jesus never gave up. Well, you talked about persistency and yesterday's episode, yes, yeah, so here's another one. We're continuing on with this theme. Yeah, is this is this one close to the one you referenced yesterday? Problem? No, it's not, is it Okay? So anyways, in Luke chapter eighteen, verse one, and we're going to read all the way through verse eight, it says, one day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. He said there was a judge in a certain city who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly saying, give me justice in this dispute with my enemy. And the judge ignored her for a while, but finally said to himself, I don't fear God or care about people, but this one, which is such a funny. I don't fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I'm going to see what she gets. See that she gets justice, because she's wearing me out with her constant requests. Then the Lord said, learn a lesson from this unjust judge, even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don't you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off. I tell you he will grant justice to them quickly. But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on earth who have faith? Well? There you go. Well this is a straight up lesson on persistence. That's right. I just think it's funny that the phrasing Jesus says. And then the judge said to himself, I don't fear God or love people or care about people. Yeah, and by the way, like the two most important things. Ever, the judge says, I don't. I don't fear God or care about people. I'm the worst human being on the planet. That's what it says, right, That. Is pretty much it. Yeah, And what a sort of an odd comparison, isn't it. So he's saying, like, hey, even though this really godless, unjust judge gave a just answer in the end, uh, you know I'll do better than that. Even right. Yeah. Yeah. The implication to this that God is perfect and the exact opposite of this horrible judge. It's not saying, hey, God's a pretty horrible judge too, but if you keep bugging and give you what you want. He's saying God is perfect and everyone in the same way that remember yesterday when we talked and it said, Hey, even you sinful parents, you don't give, you know, bad gifts to your kids when they ask, you give them good things. So how much more will your heavenly father do this? Well, now it's the same idea, only he doesn't give you both sides. He's given you one. Believing that you assume that God is the exact opposite of this jerk. Yeah, it's almost like it's almost like what he's saying is your persistence can cause a just uh you know, what are we looking for outcome? Yeah, persistence can bring about a just outcome, even for the from. The worst of people. Right, So don't you think that persistence will persuade even the best of us? Right? And obviously God's the best of the best. That's really what he's saying. He's saying, persistence can even persuade the worst of people. So so you have to believe that it's going to be able to persuade God, who's the best of people. And and uh, and and and again. It went along with that story I told yesterday as well. Right, there's another verse, there's another story in the Bible where I told you, uh, the persistence of the guy knocking for the loaf of bread. It's almost the same thing, is it's it's the woman, he said. He's saying, this woman is driving me crazy with their constant requests. And he said saying like, hey, those who come to me day and night and plea. Hey, So let me ask you this question. And I think I've asked you this before off camera, but I've not asked you this before on camera. Okay, okay? Which is this? So you know how the Bible says the effect of you know, the effective righteous prayer or you know, or excuse me, the fervent And I what am I saying? The fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much, That's what? Okay. Do you think that if you have a prairie quest, like like a like a big, big prairie quest. Oh no, you know, I have a job interview, or there's a health diagnosis we're praying for a result, or you know, do you think that it makes a difference if you have And let me let me give you an example. So we have a guy on staff or not not on staff, on our elder boy named Bob Harvey, right, and and he is like, he is known to be the guy if he prays for something I need. We need Bob to pray, Bob to pray. Right, He's prayed for good weather for baptisms for. How many years? Twenty five years? Yeah, and so far, and so we've never had we've never had a rain out on a baptism. And so we did have it thundering and lightning in the background when we were doing a baptism at a lake and the last like three baptisms, you could see the big black clouds coming into the south of us. And then we baptized the last guy come up out of the water and here we all come running out of the water. And then it was a record rain in the town that our church, that our Starting Heights campus sits in. It was a record rain. We'd never had that much rain in that short of time before. But we made it all the way through that We baptized like one hundred people that day, and we made it through the whole baptism. And I told Bob, I said, Bob, dude, I don't know what is next year. I need to be living living better because God answered your prayer. But just barely buddy, right, right, and Bob says, oh, well, if we left it up for you to pray this thing, would. That's right, that's right. And so it's just for the sake of argument. So let's just say you you ask Bob Harvey to pray for your you know, big, big request, and then you ask three Bob Harvey's right, and you're like, I have three Bob Harvey's praying for my prayer, yes, for this, for this you know, diagnosis, this, this result or whatever. Okay, So here's my question. This is a theological question. It's almost like a stump the pastor do you believe that if you ask, for instance, ten Bob Harvey's that it's better than asking three, And so you're like, well, I have to I have to ask more because I want this is an important request, right, I mean, this is a serious thing, right, And so it's like so it's like it's like, yeah, the more people I have praying for this really important thing, the better it is. Or are you under the belief like no, no, no, no, no, you know, like, hey, I've got three really strong prayer warriors praying for this thing, and that's good enough. That's a great question. Isn't it one. I'm not exactly sure I know the answer, so I'll just say that from the get go. But it does say that the fervent prayer of a righteous man that's an individual, accomplishes much. Humanity avails much. So you're focusing on the wrong thing, fervent prayer of a righteous person. So it's the righteous person, fervent prayer is the focus, not the gender element there accomplish as much. Make sure nobody misunderstood. So my point there was that's a singular statement about a singular individual, So your prayer matters. But prayer is spiritual warfare. You're going to battle spiritually, and in the war, I would think that you're always better off with more than less fighters, right, So I think that that's a big part of it. As matter of fact, that's why we call them prayer warriors, you know, people that are just dialed in. It's why we have a whole group of people every Sunday that you know, just our intercessor types that go to battle for people spiritually and they pray here. I always love to invite people who love me to be praying during the messages, you know, when we're preaching and things like that. I have a pastor friend who has a whole team of people all three services that he preaches. It's a different team of people who gather and pray the whole time the preaching is happening that entire service. I love that idea. Right, they're doing spiritual warfare. It's kind of like the air cover, Right, it's the air force coming in over top praying. I love this idea, and this I think comes from in the Old Testament chronicles where God says, if my people, who are that's plural, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then well I hear from heaven and I'll forgive their sins and heal their land. Right. So I think that the bigger the problem, the more of us need to be praying about it. And so he's now saying, I am really moved when it's my people, not just my person, but when my people are coming together, collectively repenting, collectively seeking my face, collectively asking me to rescue them. God says, I'm moved by that. So I think that, yeah, there's probably some substance to this idea of the more Bob Harvey type prayer warriors. I can get on my team if it aligns with God's. Well. Now, what the other thing you have to know is real prayer warriors also are going to be discerning as to what they should be praying about. Right. There's a story in the Old Testament about this guy Balem, remember, and he's a prophet and he gets hired by the enemies to come and curse the people, and it cursed God's people, and then God prevents and he can't do it, so he gives a blessing instead of a curse. You know, you can't just be hired to just pray anything. So a wise godly person who spends a lot of time in prayer is going to have the wisdom and discernment as to what should and shouldn't be being prayed for too. So it's not like, man, I just really need that. To keep the analogy from yesterday, I really really want that masarati. If I had ten Bob Harvey's praying for my maserati, I'll get it right. Again, God's not a good luck charm. He's not a genie in a bottle. So that's not the point. But when it comes to real warfare when you're talking about bringing your child back from the brink of addictions, or when you're praying that God will reach this person who's far from him. The more people you have praying all along those lines, the better when you're praying God, how do we reach the nation of India. The more people we can pray together, because there's real spiritual warfare there against the demons of you know, that kingdom, they're all those kinds of things. I think the more people we can have praying, the more air cover we have. Yeah. And the reason, by the way, the reason why I'm asking is because somebody recently introduced that thought, which is and I've always been under the impression, oh, yeah, you know, if you have ten, twenty is better, right, And if you have twenty, thirty is better right. And I've always thought like, hey, the more important the request, the more people you should have praying. Well, some people aren't public people, they're private people. And then and then all of a sudden, that sort of led into a discussion about, well, wait a minute, but I have a few praying, and the few that I have are prayer warrior people, And what are you saying Chris, are you saying that multiple makes a difference? And I'm like yes, And then all of a sudden I got into this theological belief discussion about but yeah, but if you have people who have a really strong faith, then that's the same, right Like, it never promises, you know, if you have thirty is better than two. It never says that. So it's almost like what you sort of have to do is you have to take every verse about prayer and you have to stack them all up, and then you have to sort of reason and conclude for yourself. And it sounds like what you're saying is you probably lean toward what I lean, which is it sounds like more people the better. Yeah, you know, I think again, I'm always challenging the Western mindset versus the Eastern mindset, the way that the people would have heard these things God works. So the Western mindset is very individualistic, especially the American mindset, very individualistic. It's my faith, my prayers, my needs, my family, my little cluster. But in the way that the original listeners would have heard any of the things that Jesus said, the way God God works in villages and in tribes and nations, right, he works with peoples. Now we are individually responsible, but he works through great leaders of groups of peoples. That that's how he does. And so I think that there is this collective corporate responsibility. I think it's interesting. It was the whole church was praying when God answered the prayer and set Peter free from prison. Right, It wasn't just the one. Remember that girl wrote as she comes and opens the door or answers the door, Peter standing at the door, she slams the door and runs back. And you do, never believing Peter staying at the door. They're all inside praying. They've been praying all night for him, and so yeah, they don't prayer, right, which is still it's hysterical. But you know, I think all throughout early church history it was the groups of people praying. And there is something very special when you step out of your private faith and begin to learn to go on this spiritual journey with with other believers, and not that you just go find how about how about you became how about you and your friends become prayer warriors. It's not like there's just a few lucky people get prayers answered. It's just there's people who don't stop praying, right, They just lean into it, and they the more you pray, the more your faith builds. The more your faith builds, the deeper your walk is with God. The deeper your walk is with God, the more you're in alignment with His will, the more you get what you pray for. Right. That that's how it works. And so instead of just looking for you know, in our case of Bob Harvey, how about if you and I became Bob Harvey's right, Right, That's that's the better way is for us to begin to grow in this discipline of prayer. And there's going to be a day when your family needs you to be able to rattle the throne of Heaven for them, right, And so you got to get you know, you don't suddenly become that person. You grow into being that kind of prayer warrior kind of person. That's awesome. And that's what he's saying here. Yeah, keep you know, let's finish with this one thing. In verse six, it says learn a lesson from this unjust judge. That's what he says, right, And you just have to understand when Jesus gives these stories, they're for you. It's not just a thing he's talking to talking about. Right, they're for us to figure out what is the lesson, what's the application? And the application was because she she was persistent. Yeah, so don't you think that God will surely give justice to the chosen people of Croyd. To him day and night. That's right. Yeah, So so keep crying out, keep going to God, keep being persistent. That's fantastic because because it makes a difference. So that's great. All right, Well that is our time, So what a great discussion and hopefully we'll see you tomorrow on the Bible. Guys,