Faith in Prayer

Three hours of sleep. That is all I have had tonight. I will have to go the next twenty hours on that that amount of rest. And who know how much sleep I will get tomorrow night. I pray more, but I honestly don’t have a lot of hope. I have been praying for years for relief from the chronic insomnia that robs me of energy, alert cognitive abilities, and emotional stability.

I say I have no hope, and yet, I love God, my Savior and Redeemer. I will not be ungrateful for the sleep I am granted. In fact, every morning I make a point of thanking the Lord for the sleep he has given me, however little it may have been. Maybe it’s the hope of ever having my prayer answered with a yes for sleeping a full night’s sleep routinely that I have lost. I still pray, but it is without real faith anymore because I have simply given up. It’s gone on too long and I have grown weary of asking for something that it seems God is not going to grant.

But scripture has something to say about that attitude, something that I need to hear once again and take to heart. Perhaps there are others reading this who also given up hope of ever getting an answer to prayer. God has a word for us:

Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart, saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent. For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise by continually coming she will [wear me out.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:1-8 NASB)

Jesus knows the frailties of the human condition and the tendency we have to lose heart when answers do not readily come. That’s why he spoke that parable to the disciples, to encourage them to not flag in hope and faith in God’s timing. There is a promise within his words that prayer will be answered at some point and it’s our job to keep praying with genuine faith in his reliability and faithfulness to keep his word. So, the ball is in my court. It’s up to me now to allow the Holy Spirit to rekindle the hope within my heart through the hearing of the Word, because that is what it takes to move us from faithless to faith-filled. I’m willing. I am tired of living without hope. It’s time to begin to “cry to him day and night” once again. I want him to find faith in me when he returns.