Will He Find Faith?

And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

Luke 18:7,8

I've heard a lot of messages and a lot of comments about the statement made here in this scripture passage. One I've heard is that "I want to be one in which He finds faith when He comes again."

And I've heard people expound on this scripture text in numerous other ways.

Many times the nature of the remarks I have heard have taken the line: Will we believe God will do for us what we ask? Will we have faith that God will act on our need?

I don't profess to know more than any of those saints, but something struck me forcibly when I read this one time and it struck with such force that I never forgot it.

It wasn't will we believe He will do it. It was will we hang in there until He does. Will we continue to cry night and day, though He bear long with us. In other words, WILL WE HAVE FAITH TO IMPORTUNE?

Asking again tomorrow does not mean that I don't believe that God is going to give me what I asked for today. Asking for the same thing again tomorrow is importuning.

There are other scriptures that support this thought. Ask. Seek. Knock. I've not done a Bible study myself in that I actually went back and checked out the meaning behind the interpretation of these words. But I've heard MANY ministers who have say that it's more than just ASK. It's ask and keep on asking. Seek and keep on seeking. Knock and keep on knocking.

In other words, a vital part of getting through to our answer is IMPORTUNING.

I can see the wisdom in this. We will not be spending day upon day upon day, hour upon hour, down on our knees earnestly seeking God for something we have no real burden for.

God is not a wand-waving wish granter. He wants us to be "workers together" with Him to accomplish the work of the kingdom.

We are not going to ho-hum our way into an answer from God. We must be earnest. We must be fervent. We must have burden. We must be willing to put ourselves into asking.

Saints know that God gives us plenty we pray for quickly enough that there's no doubt in our minds that He cares for us and wants to do good for us. But not everything comes that way. For some things we MUST importune.

The day in which we live is much different from any other day in the respect that we have SO MANY THINGS that demand our time, things that would pull us away from spending time in prayer. We aren't persecuted like the saints of old were. Instead we are bombarded with all kinds of INTERESTING THINGS.... things we WANT TO DO.... places to go.... people to talk to that are even hundreds of miles away....endless choices of all kinds of things THAT TAKE OUR TIME. And time is the thing that we must give to importuning.

When the Son of Man comes will He find that we just couldn't set aside all the things that pulled us in hundreds of directions long enough to importune for the needs of the work of God?

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I said all that first, because that was my point. But I will conclude by saying, there ARE other conditions for an answer to our prayers besides "asking and keep on asking."

We must be clear before God, living holy. God heareth not sinners.

We must be praying "in Jesus name"-- that is, what we are asking for will be things that are consistent with His character and desires. Jesus submitted His personal wishes to the Father. Even when He had thoughts of doing things a different way, He submitted to what God wanted Him to do, the way God wanted things to go.

When we pray "in Jesus name", we will do that too. That is not to say that we can't ask for anything for ourselves. Jesus asked us to do that. But we will not be asking for things contrary to holiness or that work against the unity of His church. (You won't be asking Him to give you a job promotion that will take you away from a congregation.)

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