{"id":248,"date":"2014-01-22T08:01:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-22T13:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/pray-and-dont-lose-heart\/"},"modified":"2014-01-22T08:01:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-22T13:01:00","slug":"pray-and-dont-lose-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/pray-and-dont-lose-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Pray and Don&#8217;t Lose Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. (Luke 18:1 ESV)<\/em> Perhaps you know this parable that Jesus told. If not, let me give you the one sentence summary. There was a woman who kept asking a wicked judge for justice and the judge gave the woman justice because of her persistence. Moral of the story is simple: keep trying even if you don&#8217;t succeed at first. What a great lesson this is for all of us who have given up. And I&#8217;m not talking about those of us who have given up after failing the first time, I&#8217;m talking about those of us who have given up after a prolonged period of trying and failing. How disheartened have you been after the 100th time you&#8217;ve asked and tried for something and came up short? How many of those requests have you abandoned as hopeless? Some examples, a life partner, a child, a new job, etc. Perhaps, there hasn&#8217;t been a single thing you&#8217;ve asked for that persistently yet, or maybe you&#8217;re one of those people that gives up after a few times of trying; regardless, that feeling of hopelessness overcomes us and we&#8217;re thrown into disheartened mess. This is exactly why Jesus tells his audience this parable&#8211; because as long as there is somebody trying and persisting, there is hope. That hope stems from the fact that God is always listening. This isn&#8217;t where it ends either. God not only listens, He is better than a wicked judge at giving justice! As a result, we NEED to pray and not lose heart&#8230; ever. When you cry out to God day and night in prayer, and I don&#8217;t mean the prayer of a madman, but in the earnestness of a child, there is nothing that can stop that prayer from being fulfilled by God in His justice. Don&#8217;t lose heart for prayers that have not been answered yet, keep on praying because God is listening and He will provide swift justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. (Luke 18:1 ESV) Perhaps you know this parable that Jesus told. If not, let me give you the one sentence summary. There was a woman who kept asking a wicked judge for justice and the judge &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/pray-and-dont-lose-heart\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Pray and Don&#8217;t Lose Heart<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}