860 Keeping Your Heart Part 3 - Luke 18:1

How do you talk yourself into giving up?   Jesus gave us an idea how to avoid losing heart and his idea was that we should pray. Notice Luke 18:1.   "And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart." Luke 18:1 ESV   Another way to avoid losing heart is to pray. This parable is about the woman who wanted justice from the unrighteous judge. Even the unrighteous judge would do what the woman wanted because she was right and persistent.   For some reason, we have this narrative sentence of introduction from Luke. This parable is designed to remind us to pray and not give up. If the unrighteous judge will do what's right, we should expect a holy God to do what's right.   Prayer keeps us from losing heart because it plugs us back into God instead of focusing on our circumstances. And prayer is used by God to change us.   Even though this is one of the standard, Sunday school answers, it happens to be correct in this instance. Prayer is another tool God gives us to help us to persist.   Today, pray. Ask God to help you keep going. Ask him to show you what he's doing, and to energize you to join him. He will use you in the lives of your coworkers, customers, vendors, friends and family if you just pray instead of losing heart. Focus on God and ask him for the strength to keep going.