What’s the difference between playing the lottery, and waiting for an inheritance? Both involve potentially life-altering wealth, and both involve waiting, but one is a wish, and the other is a certainty.
In other words, the difference between wishing for a good thing and waiting for a good thing is the guarantee behind the good thing.
I thought about this last week at our church’s weekly prayer service. Our prayer pastor was sharing about a dream she’d had that reminded her of the parable Jesus told in Luke 18 about a widow who kept seeking justice.
As she shared, it seemed as if the Holy Spirit was calling me into a private session around that passage, and I want to pass along in this post what he showed me. First, though, take a minute and read the entire parable…
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 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? 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?” (Luke 18:1-8)
How long would you wait for a good thing if that good thing was also a guaranteed thing? Let’s say, for example, that you have an iron-clad agreement that at some point in the future, you’ll receive a payday that would drastically change your family for generations to come. You don’t know when the transfer will happen, but you do know it’s a question of when, not if. So, how long would you wait?
The answer has everything to do with the person on the other side of that door, right? In the parable that Jesus told, it says about the judge that “for some time he refused.” The Greek word used for “refused” means that he had a mind towards no. He was predisposed to not give the woman what she was asking for, so she had to overcome his negative tendency before getting an answer was even a possibility.
But God doesn’t have a mind toward no! All His promises are yes and amen (that’s in 2 Corinthians 1:20). He is good and only does good (that’s Psalm 119:68). It’s impossible for God to lie (check out Hebrews 6:18), and he’s a God who finishes the work that he started in us (you can read that in Philippians 1:6).
But according to the parable, he’s also a God who sometimes puts us off. Jesus said that God would grant justice to those who cry out day and night and that he won’t keep putting them off. But that means crying out in the day wasn’t enough, and also that there was some time that he didn’t answer and the people praying felt put off.
Yikes. Why would a God who is good and does good not answer a prayer that seems so, well, good?
If we really believe that he’s good, the answer is that answering right away wouldn’t be for our good, and only a good God could know why. We know that he made the Israelites wait to go into the Promised Land because they weren’t ready for the battles ahead of them (Exodus 13:17), and we know that David wrote about God being the one who trained his hands for war (Psalm 144:1). Training doesn’t happen on game day, but rather before game day to get us ready for game day.
This brings us back to playing the lottery versus receiving an inheritance. Why don’t we pray more? It seems like a mean answer, but it’s because we don’t really believe that prayer works. We think that God forgot about us, or that we caught him on a bad day, or that he’s got bigger fish to fry.
We treat prayer like a lottery ticket because we aren’t sure if God would rather say no than yes, so we give up when the answer is delayed. Our doubts about his timing cause us to believe lies about his character.
A good God wouldn’t make me wait.
A good God wouldn’t make me wonder if he’s listening.
A good God wouldn’t make me knock until my hands are sore.
Unless that good God is training those knocking hands for war, and that good God is building a faith that refuses to give up, no matter how long we have to wait.
A God who desperately wants to find faith on the earth when he comes.
So keep asking, seeking, and knocking. The door will be opened, and he will keep his promises. It’s our inheritance, and he will give it to us at just the right time.
