The prayer spotlight falls this week on people who are often overlooked or even mistreated. Pray that the Lord will make us His vessels of love, hope, and justice. Pray for those among our Alliance family who do the important work of chaplaincy—bringing the message of Jesus to people in their most challenging times, when they need to hear that message the most and may well be most responsive to it.

Transcript

What is something that can cause you to lose your patience or freak out really quickly? For me, it’s losing something like my keys or my wallet. I can go from zero to crazy town in less than a minute. I just lose it.

In fact, I’m so bad that a few years ago Pang Foua got me this little Tile bluetooth tracker for Christmas. I have one on my keys and in my wallet. So, whenever I can’t find one of them, I hit the app, and it rings… Love it. Use it. Can’t live without it.

Well, this past year has given us plenty to freak out and lose our patience over:

• Racial Injustice – like the killing of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and so many other black Americans.

• COVID – It’s killed over 400,000 people in the U.S and not slowing down yet.

• A presidential race, election, and post-election marked by hate-filled speech, outright lies, and most recently violence.

It’s enough to make any one of us just want to give up—give up praying, give up trying, even give up hoping.

What if I could give you some encouragement this morning to not give up. Even better, what if I told you that this encouragement combines prayer, marginalized people, and social justice. Interested?

Well, that’s exactly what Jesus talks about in Luke 18 verses 1-8.

We’re gonna start by reading the passage. But, this time, I’m not going to do it. Pastors, you’re going to do it. Are you up for it? We’ll put it up on screen for you to read it out loud. Even if you’re watching by yourself, you get to lead yourself in Scripture today. Ready? Let’s go for it.

1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ 4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? 8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

Thanks, pastors. Hang tight because I’ve got a couple more verses for you to read in just a minute.

Now, at first glance, this passage appears to talk about a widow and prayer and justice, but it’s actually much larger than that. But, to see it, we have to go back to the previous chapter to understand the context of this passage.

Pastors, are you ready for one more reading? Here we go. This is chapter 17, verses 20 and 21.

20 Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Did you catch that? “The kingdom of God is in your midst.” It’s not over there, out there. It’s right here. So, our passage is really about a widow and prayer and justice, within the kingdom of God.

Thankfully, the parable was pretty straightforward:

Jesus tells it to encourage us to keep praying and not give up.

The widow represented a vulnerable person without power, a person on the margin of society.

The judge represented a person with power and privilege.

She comes to him saying, “Grant me justice against my adversary.” She was wronged and wants him to make it right.

She keeps coming back over and over and over and over… until she just wears him down.

Then Jesus brings it home: If an unjust God will grant relentless, repeated requests, how much more will a loving, just God do that.

The lowly, the oppressed, the marginalized people, they will see justice by God’s hand. And it comes through persistent prayer. That is what the kingdom of God is all about.

Let me sum this up for you: Kingdom justice is prayer, persistence, and patience in God’s promise.

— Objection —

Now, this passage raises one giant problem: What about the people who don’t get justice? This passage seems to promise justice. But we all know that doesn’t always happen.

There are black men who’s murderers never see prison.

There are immigrant children separated from their parents on our southern border.

There are wives abused by their husbands who get dismissed and told to go back to him.

What about them? Yes, we should advocate for justice in the courts and police reform and accountability for But this parable, this one is about God’s kingdom not our kingdom. And God absolutely promises justice—in the kingdom of God now or in the kingdom of God to come. That’s God promise.

That’s why injustice we see now doesn’t negate God’s promise. We can only see things in a very limited time and very limited perspective.

But kingdom justice is bigger than human justice. Kingdom justice is prayer, persistence, and patience in God’s promise.

— Closing —

So, what does it look like to love and persistently pray for people on the margins? To answer that, I’d like to share with you a page from one of my journals from 9 years ago. (I don’t journal much, but this particular one I glad I wrote down.

I had just finished a book called Holy Discontent. (BTW, I highly recommend it. It’s been one of this top 10 most formative books for me.) His premise is that “Holy discontent is when you experience an uneasy spirit about the brokenness of this world which aligns with the heart of God that spurs you to take positive action to change the world.”

After I read it, I wrote about the holy discontent God had given me.

My Holy Discontent is to help those who are:

• Lonely

• Rejected

• Beaten up

• Scarred

• Without friends

• Nervous

• Our-of-place

Basically, it’s to help people like me…

That is why RiverLife exists. That is who RiverLife exists for. We exist for you. But I wrote more.

• What Do I Want to Tell Them?

• God loves you, not for anything you do, but for who you are

• God is a father to the fatherless

• You have a family in the body of Christ

• God loves you just the way you are

• God can heal your pain

Don’t believe what people—your parents, your peers—say about you. Believe what God says about you

That is what I have prayerfully, patiently, and persistently telling people for the last decade. This is what the kingdom of God is all about.