Several years ago, some friends of ours gave my sons a trampoline for Christmas. They loved it, and they loved for their daddy to jump on it with them. I admit, I enjoyed it too, but it was exhausting, especially with my, then four-year old sonwho always wanted me to hold him while we jumped. One weekend, I had already been talked into a trampoline session by my two youngest sons, had spent all my energy and had flopped into a lawn chair to recuperate when my oldest son appeared.
"Dad, let's go jump on the trampoline."
"Sorry, son. Already did that and I'm all worn out. Sorry you missed it."
C'mon, Dad. Please!"
"Son, I'm sorry. You could have jumped with us, but you were inside watching tv."
"But I didn't know. Nobody told me."
"Son, I'm just too tired. You snooze, you lose."
"Dad, P-L-E-A-S-E!"
Somewhere in the midst of that conversation, it dawned on me: This is really important to him.
Because I love my son, I let him help me out of the lawn chair and returned to the trampoline, jumped with him, wrestled with him, and had a great time. Of course, because I love my son, if he had asked for something that I knew wasn't good for him, he could have asked an infinite number of times, and I wouldn't have budged. But, either way his persistent pestering would have communicated something to me about him and his heart.
When Jesus teaches on prayer, a consistent theme is persistence. In Luke 11, He tells a story about a friend who comes at midnight to ask for bread for another friend. "Don't bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can't get up and give you anything." Sounds familiar. Then Jesus adds, "I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs."
Then again in Luke 18, Jesus told his disciples a parable to "show them that they should always pray and not give up." He describes a godless judge who didn't care about people, but who was being approached with a plea for justice, over and over again, by a persistent widow. "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, 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!'" (vs. 4,5)
Have you ever thought about how much faith it takes to "pester" God, or for a child to beg a parent to do something? If my son had no hope that I would grant his request to jump on the trampoline, he might ask once for the heck of it, but there's no way he would plead and plead if he didn't really believe his pleading would rouse me to move. We typically spend our energy on what we believe makes a difference.
What if God is willing to help, to heal, to give guidance, to restore, to bless, but is waiting to see if our hearts are fully engaged, and watching to see if what we are asking is really important to us. What if He's waiting to see if we really believe? No, waiting to see is what I did with my son. It took me "realizing" that jumping on the trampoline was important to my son to get me out of the reclined position. God already knows what's important to us . He knows we won't ask and ask and ask if we don't believe we'll receive. He knows we won't knock and knock and knock if we don't believe the door will be opened. He knows we won't seek and seek and seek if we have no hope of finding Him. We can sometimes fool the people in our lives, or even ourselves, with half-hearted efforts, but we can never fool God. Since He already knows, I guess our persistence in prayer give us an indicator of our faith, because if I really believe and something is truly important to me , I will persist. I will plead. I will pester.
The weird thing is, the more I plead, the more I believe.
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