Importunity

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Importunity

In Luke's account of Jesus' teaching His disciples to pray, He teaches an interesting lesson about His Father's thoughts and feelings about our prayers:

Luke 11:5-13

Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go to him at midnight, and say unto him, "Friend, lend me three loaves for a friend of mine is come out of the way to me, and I have nothing to set before him!", and he within should answer, and say, "Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed: I cannot rise and give them to thee!"  I say unto you, though he would not arise and give him, because he is his friend, yet doubtless because of his importunity, he would rise and give him as many as he needed.

The passage does not deny the friendship - nor even diminish it - but it does say that it is not because of the friendship that the request is granted.

Many translations use the word 'importunity'.  Defined as "Persistence, especially to the point of annoyance", the concept is supported by Jesus' teaching about the persistent widow.  But perhaps the message "annoy God by praying too much" would be a poor take-home on a couple of levels!

Notes in the Geneva version of the Bible suggest that the translation could also be, "word for word, impudency" suggesting undertones of unashamedness - impertinence, even: "Late Middle English (in the sense ‘immodest, indelicate’) from Latin ... in- ‘not’ + pudent- ‘ashamed, modest’".  The 'New International Version' of the Bible helpfully translates this as "shameless audacity".

There is a sense, here, that our approaching God in prayer should not be done with any consideration of our own worth: there is 'no good' in and of ourselves - just shame.  But this passage seems to be encouraging us to put aside all our shame as we approach God in prayer.

I, personally, find this harder the closer I am to God: the more I share my thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares with God, the closer I am to Him - but the closer I am to Him, the more I am aware of my sin and wickedness and shame.  This should force a separation between Him and me - how can such evil and shame be intimate with such goodness and love?  It's impossible!

For man, it's impossible - not for God.  In a love that defies human comprehension, Jesus - the Son of God - chose to 'become' my sin, with all its wickedness and shame, and to die, killing my sin without killing me.

This is what God wants me to focus on when I pray to Him: His love, not my shame.  This is indeed audacious!



What else does this say about what Jesus, the Son of God, wants us to know about how God His Father responds to prayer?

1. The man asking for bread has no bread(!) - he does not even offer to buy the bread: when we go to God in prayer, let's not think - at any level - that we have anything in and of ourselves to make us worthy in His eyes to receive anything good (but ... see below).


2. He wants to serve another: Jesus is always encouraging the blessing of others with good things - this is the essence of love, and God is love.


3. He goes to a friend, not a stranger: to know God is to love God - there is nothing in God that is anything but infinitely lovable.  If God is a stranger to you, why would you trust the Father enough to ask anything of Him?  If you know God, why would you go to anyone or anything other than God?!


4. He asks to take from the friend who has an abundance to give the same to another friend who has none: as above, God is love.  That love is often described as a flowing river of blessing.  Rivers only flow downstream* - God is the source of His love, which is always overwhelming: it pours down to us (the subjects of His love); if it gets stuck there, it does some of the good it is capable of but, if it keeps on flowing, its effective capacity multiplies - we are never without AND we can enjoy the blessing of passing it on to others too.

In summary, we have nothing good in and of ourselves, but we have a Friend who has a limitless supply of goodness, who is keen to give so much to us that we have plenty to share with others, and who wants us to come to Him for it with our hearts fixed on Him, not on our shameful selves.

Father, please fill us with your Holy Spirit and give us (and help us to see those) opportunities to share you with people we meet today.

*If being pedantic, tidal rivers may see upstream flow, but let me push back: pure water only flows downstream!

The Face

With thanks to https://pixabay.com/en/birth-child-baby-newborn-hand-466140/

I remember, from a couple of years ago, watching a very interesting documentary that attempted to explain, among other things, the development of the face of the growing human embryo.

The perfectly pleasant presenter was predictably flannelling on about how various parts of our head and neck were vestigial remains of erstwhile gills (sadly, even in this day and age, too many scientists still unswervingly believe this utterly illogical explanation!), but he did highlight something fascinating: that the face develops from three different parts: the left hemisphere of the face, covering that side's forehead, eye socket, nose, cheek, etc. (or maxilla), the right hemisphere, and the jaw (or mandible).

These three parts, he went on, gradually grow towards each other and fuse together, leaving only the mouth. The last part to fuse, he explained, was the philtrum - the groove running vertically from the bottom of the nose to the middle of the upper lip.

That got me thinking. Why did God do it that way?

ALL of creation points to Jesus in some way - that's the great glory of all creation, that it proclaims truths about Christ to itself and to the rest of creation. So what does this tell us about the way of things?

Whenever I see three of anything, my first thoughts, clearly, are going to be about the trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. Here we have three parts of the face.

Speaking of the face itself, this is about intimacy: we, as God's children, are encouraged to 'seek his face'; on the other hand, the thought of God 'turning his face away' or 'hiding his face' is frightful to the writers of the Chronicles and Psalms; yet it is a great blessing to have God's face 'shine upon you'.

The thought of these three parts of the face coming together, yet leaving space for the mouth, makes me think of the tabernacle … bear with me!

The tabernacle was to be set up with the veiled mercy seat that kept the law and testimony in the west, the altar bearing the twelve loaves of bread in the north, the seven-branched, olive oil-burning, eternally-alight lamp in the south, and the bowl of incense in the middle of these three.

Symbolically (and this is all purely from hunting around the Bible - nowhere else), the “mercy seat” hidden behind the ‘veil’ represents the Father, the ‘table of shewbread’ represents the Son, the ‘menorah’ represents the Spirit, and the bowl of incense represents the prayers of the saints (that is, all of God's people) ... check out the table below.

	Tabernacle pattern	Cosmic reality
The Holiest Place (representing the Father)	Hidden from sight by a veil	“No-one has ever seen the Father …” (John 1:18)
	The veil is embroidered with cherubim	Cherubim stand guard over the way back to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24), where the Father is (Revelation 22:1-2)
	The veil is torn when Jesus “gives up the ghost”	Jesus granted us access to the Father when he died on the cross
The Table of Shewbread (representing the Son)	The table (bearing the bread) is made of wood, but the eye only sees the gold covering	The cross (bearing Jesus) is made of wood, but the eye reads the sign: “King of the Jews” (gold represents kingship)
	On the table are 12 loaves of bread	12 represents ‘governance’ (tribes / disciples in Israel, hours in day / night, months in year, etc.); … and there is much on bread representing Jesus, from “Bethlehem” meaning “home / house of bread” to Jesus’ words when he broke bread: “This is my body…”
	When transported, the table and its contents were cloaked in scarlet (representing ‘sin’) and ‘skin’	At the cross, Jesus – the one who ‘became flesh’ (Job 1:14) – “was made sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
The Menorah (representing the Spirit)	A seven-branched candle…	The sevenfold spirit (Revelation 1:4, 3:1, 4:5, 5:6)
	… burning olive oil …	Olive oil is used for ‘anointing’, representing anointing by the Spirit; fire represents ‘purification’, another work of the Spirit (our words ‘pure’ and ‘pyrotechnic’ have the same Greek root)
	… to give light to the whole room	God is Spirit (John 4:24) and light (1 John 1:5), as well as love (1 John 4:7), which ‘shines out’
The bowls of incense (representing the prayers of the saints	Rising up, a pleasing aroma to the Lord	Revelation 5:8 … ‘nuff said!

... And then check out the diagram below … symbolically, this reassures us that our prayers reach to, and lie at, the very heart of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

Composite from http://www.bible-history.com/tabernacle/TAB4The_Ark_of_the_Covenant.htm, http://www.rawganique.com/Images/Swatches/HC1-040811-56.jpg, http://bibleabc.net/l_rev/images/bowl-70118.jpg, http://truthinmotion.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/bowl-of-incense-smaller.jpg, http://trivialdevotion.blogspot.co.uk/2011_06_26_archive.html, and http://www.thegalileeexperience.com/store/menorahs-candelabras-/menorah-tiberias-style-brass-regular-5-8-39-39-/prod_80.html - with thanks!

And so, just briefly back to the face again: what do the three parts fuse around?  The mouth.

And what does the mouth do?  Speak, converse, talk, chat, communicate, ...

And what is prayer?  Speaking, conversing, talking, chatting, communicating with God!

... Awesome!

Why would God listen to prayer?

(from Maurice Sendak's "In the Night Kitchen", with thanks to Ellen Duthie at wereaditlikethis.blogspot.co.uk)

When I go for periods of time when I don't let God into my affections - allowing his Word and his Spirit through the church to remind me of his love for me and to teach me more about him - I start to think of him as a kind of 'maxi-me': a more powerful version of me. but still with my limitations.

When it comes to answering prayer, this way of thinking leads me to conclude that, as I can't handle the many calls on my time, God - with all the millions of people around the world praying to him - must surely struggle too, so I mustn't worry too much if my prayers aren't answered straight away ... in fact, it wouldn't be all that surprising if most of them weren't answered at all!"

Thank God ... he isn't me!

But what about when prayers do seem to go unanswered?  Why is that?  Is it me?  Something I'm not doing or saying right?  Is it my standing, or 'righteousness', before God at the time?

And is there a contradiction, then, between John 14-16 and Luke 16?  ... Between "whatever you ask in My name, that I will do" and "‘Lord, Lord, open for us’ ... but He will say, ‘Depart from Me’"?

In Luke 11, Jesus' disciples ask him to 'teach' them to pray.  Jesus gives them a little insight into his own conversation with his Father ('The Lord's Prayer') ... but then, insightful and loving as ever, he addresses their real concern, their hidden question: "...Lord, teach us to pray in such a way as to persuade the Father to answer our prayers!"

Isn't that what we all want to know?

When we're not close to God in love, we don't necessarily stop believing in him, but we think differently about him.  We trust in his supernatural power (he is 'God', after all) and we trust in his love for us (he did die / send his Son to die to stop us being eternally separated from him, after all), but we don't walk with him in active enjoyment of the love between us ... so he just becomes a 'Father Christmas' figure: we ask him for what we want and, if we've been good enough, he will deliver what we've asked for.

To answer their deeper question, then, Jesus goes on: "Imagine what would happen if you went to a friend in the middle of the night and said, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread: an old friend traveling through just showed up and I don't have a thing on hand.'

"The friend answers from his bed, 'Don't bother me. The door's locked; my children are all down for the night; I can't get up to give you anything.'

"I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needs."

This story speaks a lot about friendship.  Everyone seems to be friends - there are friends everywhere - it's a beautiful thing!

... But I bet the fellah who had been tucked up in bed for the night is not feeling very friendly at this particular point in time.  And, left to respond purely on his feelings, he clearly isn't about to act on the request: look at where the 'yet' is in Jesus' reply!  He will not rise because he is his friend, yet he will rise because of his friend's importunity.

Impor-what?

What convinces him?  His friend's 'importunity'...

No, I had no idea what this means either!  I thought it meant something along the lines of 'bold (to the point of obnoxious) persistence', and this certainly chimes with a rather scant reading of Luke 18, where a 'persistent widow' harangues a local judge for justice such that eventually, because of her persistence, he answers her.

But, wait!  Is this how we are to think about God, our loving Father whose Son loved us literally to death and whose Spirit has made his very home in our hearts?  Do we really have to wear him down as if his default setting is a general reluctance to get involved in our lives in any way?

Yes of course that idea is ridiculous!  And if we read the story in context, it's clear that this judge, described as "unjust", is the polar opposite to God who judges perfectly with eternal love.  The point of this passage is to show that, if even someone 'unjust' will eventually respond to your desires when their motive is simply to shut you up, how much more willingly will God respond when his motive is his passionate love for you?

So I'm not convinced that the dweller of the house in this story (... the father of the secure children ... the giver of the bread ...) is going to respond because of 'bold persistence'.

What's it all about then?  What is this 'importunity' that seems to be the reason for the request being granted?

Getting into the Greek word, here translated as 'importunity' - with help from Dr. James Strong et al, it literally means 'not bashful/modest'. 

But the word origin for 'bashful/modest' is actually, literally 'not seeing/knowing', which makes the word 'importunity', in this case, mean, literally, 'not not-seeing'!

Not-not-seeing!

So who is that referring to?  Who is the friend asking for bread designed to represent?  Who are those who are 'not not-seeing'?

Luke 8:10 describes those who are 'not-seeing': "... Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand."

Those who 'seeing, might not see' are those who do not understand The Word of God.  Now, if there existed, as reported, people who do not understand The Word of God even when he is standing right there in front of them, what hope is there for any of us?  Who can understand?

There is only one who can make all these things clear: the Spirit of truth.  Jesus would later say of him: "he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you."

Elsewhere described as "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord", this one is able to make one "of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord", such that later Christians can boldly ask "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, (to) give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him".

This holy Spirit of God is the one who can give knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of God and his mysterious Word - so who are they to whom he chooses to give this understanding?

"The mystery (is) revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit" - he gives understanding to all who are set apart for God ("holy apostles") and to all who affirm / make known his thoughts ("prophets").  In other words, everyone who ever has been or who ever will be offered the Spirit and, in accepting him, are eternally enjoined with him.

So, backtracking, those 'not-seeing' are those who don't know the Word of God, whilst those 'not not-seeing' are those who have been sealed with the holy Spirit because they have accepted the offered Spirit of Jesus ... and the father of the house gives his bread to his friend purely on account of his friend's having the holy Spirit.

In all things...

So, basically, our prayers are answered NOT because we are in a state of friendship or active affection before God but simply because we are 'saved'!

... So, pray when you're content, pray when you're not, pray when you are angry with Him, when you're ashamed before Him, pray when you've been turning your back on Him ... our loving Father, Son, and Spirit will still answer, and will still give his very good gifts in abundance.  Thank God!