Keeping Faith without Losing Heart

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. -

Luke 18.1

One of the hardest things about prayer is to keep on asking when the answer doesn’t come. We’d almost rather be told No than feel as if we’re not being heard. Or worse, heard but ignored.

We all know that there are often good reasons for denying a request, but why does God delay? If something supernatural is blocking the answer, we have no way of knowing it.

We know God is good. We know he is faithful to his promises. We ask according to his known will.

And still no answer comes.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, says the old proverb. Isn’t that the truth!

The biggest deterrent to prayer just might be a loss of heart when the heartache of postponed hope becomes unbearable.

When tempted to give up praying, I return to a favorite Bible story, about a man whose hope was deferred twenty-five years. The great patriarch Abraham was called by God to leave everything behind and travel to a new land. A new land where God would make him into a mighty nation. A nation through whom all other nations would be blessed.

Whose hope wouldn’t leap at a promise like that?

So Abram, as he was called at the time, went. Just like that. He set off without knowing where he would end up. He brought along his nephew Lot because that young man was fatherless, and Abram had no son of his own.

Soon their combined wealth was too great for them to share the same territory. Abram let Lot go. The youth would not be his heir, but Abraham still watched out for him, even chasing down an enemy who took him captive. God honored Abram relinquishing his natural heir with a reminder of how much land he had set aside for Abram’s future descendants. Yeah.

Fifteen years after arriving in the land, Abram was rich and well known. But still no heir. He continued to converse with God, which amounts to prayer, on the matter. At one point God pointed out that he himself was Abram’s “very great reward.”

You can hear the heartache in the poor old man’s reply, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless.”

“Not so!” the Lord replied. “You’ll have a son from your own body.”

A year later, wouldn’t you know, his wife’s maid bore them a baby boy.

How glad the eighty-six-year-old was! He loved Ishmael as much as his own life. True, the pregnancy had brought grief to his family, but how much did that matter, really, as he watched his son grow.

About the time Ishmael became a man (at age thirteen!), God surprised Abram in another prayer time. He confirmed his covenant with him and his offspring, not just to make a nation of them, but to be their God forever.

To signify this commitment, God changed the names of his chosen couple to Abraham and Sarah. For their part, the sign of the covenant was to circumcise all their males forever. Yikes, yes, but faithful and obedient Abraham did it. Yikes again.

Then God made a startling declaration. “Your wife will be the mother of nations and kings.”

Impossible! Sarah is ninety years old. Besides, thought Abraham, my prayer has already been answered. I have a son. He’s old enough to begin a family of his own. Surely Ishmael’s children will inherit the promise.

“Not so!” God said again. “Through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned.”

Isaac? That is funny.

And true to God’s word, Isaac was born. Sure he was, after Abraham was a hundred years old.

Here is a riddle we all can solve:

What takes years and years, and can cause us to lose heart? Destiny.

So take hope, my friend. When you know what God has promised you, you ought always to pray and not lose heart. God who promised is faithful. If he has spoken to you, he will do it. You may not see the end of it, but God will keep his word. He who began this good work in you will bring it to completion in the day of Christ. The purpose for your life will take place. That’s what faith is, and that’s what makes us descendants of faithful Abraham.

By the way, here’s Abraham’s epilogue, and a great part of why I love this story so much.

Abraham lived another seventy-five years after Isaac was born.

Isaac didn’t marry until Sarah, his mother, died. He was forty years old.

His wife, Rebekah, remained barren for twenty years. When she did give birth, she had twins—by divine intervention in response to Isaac’s prayers for her barrenness. I like to think Abraham also prayed for grandchildren, since he knew God’s promise.

So let’s do the math. That leaves fifteen years in which Abraham saw and enjoyed the “double-portion” God had given to Isaac, the firstborn of God’s covenant people.

In those years, Abraham not only saw the twins born, he watched them grow to manhood.

Only then did he breathe his last and die at a good old age, an old man and full of years. His destiny appeared in Jesus and resounds in us today.

There are other stories of people who waited a long time to receive what was promised, and I urge you to get to know them. Nothing pleases God more than faith, in fact it is impossible to please him without it. But our hearts will wither and die if we do not feed them on the stuff of hope, which is the essence of delayed answers that eventually come. Here is a partial list to get you started.

1. The man at the pool had been coming for 38 years before Jesus showed up one day (John 5.1-15).

2. David was anointed king as a boy but he did not take up the throne of Israel until he was 30 years old (1 Samuel 16.1-13; 2 Samuel 5.4).

3. Simeon and Anna were both expecting the Messiah in their lifetime, and both were very old when they saw the infant Jesus presented in the temple (Luke 2.25-38).