They are putting in new roads in our neighborhood, and as such they are compacting the ground. As such, there is a constant, loud, repetative thumping noise from sunup to sundown that cannot be drown out. It's like living in an apartment with someone banging on your wall over and over again all day. At this point, I'd do anything to make it stop. Well...that's the kind of way that God wants us to pray. He wants us to pray and never stop, to go to him over and over again. Don't beleive me? Jesus tells us a powerful parable we consider today to help us understand.
#SetYourMindAbovePodcast
They are putting in new roads in our neighborhood, and as such they are compacting the ground. As such, there is a constant, loud, repetative thumping noise from sunup to sundown that cannot be drown out. It's like living in an apartment with someone banging on your wall over and over again all day. At this point, I'd do anything to make it stop. Well...that's the kind of way that God wants us to pray. He wants us to pray and never stop, to go to him over and over again. Don't beleive me? Jesus tells us a powerful parable we consider today to help us understand.
#SetYourMindAbovePodcast
Welcome back to all of our listeners! I’m BJ Sipe, and you’re listening to the Set Your Mind Above podcast – where everyday ordinary events teach us extraordinary eternal truths. I’m so glad that you’ve tuned in today, I am excited to share my life and my faith with you, and I sure hope that you’ll do the same with me along the way.
One of the things that Kylie and I are the most thankful for is the door that God opened up for us to be here in Danville, Kentucky. We have simply fallen head over heals for this town, our church family, and the community that surrounds us. More specifically, one of the things that Kylie and I are most thankful for is the particular neighborhood that we live in. Here in the Hunt Farm subdivision, we really are like a family. I have developed wonderful friendships with our neighbors, and everyone looks after one another. It doesn’t matter what it is: if someone is sick, if someone has experienced loss, if someone is out of town or has any needs – everyone steps up to take care of one another. In like manner, when there is something worthy of celebration, such as a new baby, a promotion, or a nomination for some kind of award, the whole neighborhood celebrates it. Every month they keep adding more houses and our neighborhood is growing, which is a tremendous blessing! However, there is one thing about the constant construction around us that is really starting to grate on our nerves. Currently, they are putting in new roads to extend further back into the fields to start putting up more houses. There is a lot of digging, shoveling, and dumping going on – which isn’t all that noisy. However, there is something that they are doing as they are working on this big project that has Kylie and I ready to pull our hair out. I don’t even know what it is they are doing, but I know exactly what it sounds like. From 8 am until about 5 pm, over and over again there is a repetitive thumping noise. The echo through the neighborhood and between our houses makes it sound as though someone is right on the other side of our wall nailing pictures up from sunup to sundown. I’m seriously having flashbacks to apartment living for the majority of our marriage. The worst part is there is nothing that we can do about it. Nothing drowns out the sound: not the TV, not music, nothing. It’s an ever lingering, constant thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump. Kylie thinks that it is some kind of compacting of the ground as they are building the road, which is very possible. It’s all part of living in a growing neighborhood, for which I am very grateful, don’t get me wrong. However, at this point I would probably do anything to get the noise to stop. Forget a klondike bar, I’m too busy coming up with ideas for what would I do for peace and quiet. To get the noise to stop, I would drink a liver smoothie. To get the noise to stop, I’d wear an Ohio State Buckeye jersey for a month. To get the noise to stop, I would let my barber shave Hello Kitty into back of my head. Or my wife’s personal favorite, to get the noise to stop, I’d scrub the entire bathroom with a toothbrush. Okay, I think you get the idea. The point is it is beyond annoying after this long, it is wearing me down. I can’t wait for it to be all over with, not only because we’ll expand our Hunt Farm family, but because the mysterious thumping noise will finally be done away with.
As I sat in my living room watching some instructional videos to review for this weekend’s marriage class, I thought about these things trying to ignore the ongoing thumping noise in the background. It was at this moment that I had the following realization: this annoying, constant, wearisome thumping noise is exactly the kind of way that God wants us to interact with him. Just hear me out on this one. Let’s turn to Luke 18 and read the parable recorded in vv. 1-8. Though more of a paraphrase, I appreciate the way the New Living Translation renders this parable. It reads, “One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’ ” Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?” I love this story for so many reasons, and I hope that by the end of this you will too. Jesus tells them this parable to communicate two things: what he desires of us, and what we ought to expect of him. So what does he desire of us? The text tells us that the reason he told this particular parable about this relentless widow was so that we would learn how he wants us to pray. He wants us to be as relentless as this widow. Elsewhere in Scripture we are called to “pray constantly” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). That is not to say that we do nothing else but pray, but what it does call for us to do is to pray in such a way as the widow that Jesus described. I feel like far too often we run into a pattern of only praying during “traditional” times. We pray before meals, sometimes before bed or when we wake up…and that’s about it. While there is nothing wrong with praying at these times, and I certainly do as well, we must learn that prayer must be an ongoing practice at any and all times in our lives. If there is something that is truly on your heart, be it praise, a request, a confession, or whatever else, he wants our prayers to him to be like the ongoing thumping noise in our neighborhood. He wants to hear from us again, and again, and again, and never to lose heart all the while that we pray. In return, he told them this parable so we should understand what to expect from him. If this judge in the story who couldn’t care less about serving God or helping others was willing see that justice was done simply because he was worn down by the widow’s persistence, how much more should we know that God is interested in the requests for justice from his children? He loves and cares for us in ways that we could never truly understand. For those who have children, just think for a moment if they came to you asking for help because they were wronged or hurt by someone. How many times would they need to come to you for you to want to rise up to defend and protect them? Wouldn’t it only be once? How much more would you be moved to action if you discovered 15 voicemails in one day asking for your help? Please let me clarify: I am not suggesting that the more you pray about something that it guarantees God will do it. We must pray according to his will, and we must trust in his answer even if it’s not what we had hoped for. But nonetheless, the point of this parable is clear: don’t stop praying, and don’t give up. Badger & pester God, as though you were trying to annoy him with how many times you call upon his name. He’s not annoyed at all, he wants you to come to him. May the sound of your voice be the constant noise that reverberates off the walls before the throne of God above.
Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. Tune in, Tuesday-Fridays, as a new podcast episode will be uploaded each day. Also, be sure to follow the Facebook page for the Set Your Mind Above podcast for future announcements and video sessions. As you have the opportunity, share these thoughts with your friends and family, and share with me what important lessons you are learning from every day, ordinary events. Until next time know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.