Jesus tells a story and the first verse gives the moral. We are always to pray and never to lose heart or give up. The story is about a widow that was being wronged in some manner. It doesn’t tell exactly what was happening, let’s suppose somebody was stealing from her.
She went to the judge and asked him to do something about it, but he just ignored her. Now this was a lousy judge from the start. The Bible says that he respected neither God nor man. He was a dandy. But when he did nothing she went back. And she kept going back.
I happen to be a James Dean fan, and have seen his three movies. They all have a moral and I would like to give you the moral in the movie “East of Eden.” This movie was taken from a Steinbeck book, and is based on the story of Cain and Abel. Their parents rejected James and favored his brother Joel. Because of this James had a difficult life. To make matters worse his mother was not in the picture.
Also his father was a strict, unyielding religious man. He told them that their mother had died but James hunted until he found where she lived. He started a relationship with his mother, and later told his father which further angered him. But the story does have a good moral. James’ father got sick, and the closing scene shows the brother leaving home, and James by his father’s bedside. You could say the moral was, which son was faithful in the end?
And the Bible says the widow didn’t rest, but kept going back and bothering the judge until he finally did something about the situation. V5, “Because this woman continues to bother me,” I will defend, protect, and advenge the lady. And when you pray. V7 says God will defend and protect and advance his elect who cry to him day and night. He will not delay help on their behalf.
V8 “When the son of man comes will he find faith on the earth?” When I was a lad, a young woman in our neighborhood contracted polio and was in an iron lung. They took her up to the Gospel Temple to a healing service, and guess what, she came home in an iron lung. I have seen God answer no to prayer, and I have seen a prayer answered that took a lifetime. Our duty is simply to pray without ceasing.
—James Neuhouser
