After Jesus has painted a not so pretty picture of the end times leading to his coming, He then turns to perseverance and prayer. The parable of the persisted widow and the crooked judge fits right in with rabbinic style literature. Our western minds bristle at the idea of God being equated to a crooked judge but really this contrast is part of the point. If persistence gets a bad judge to finally do what right, wont persistence be even more effective when praying to a good God? The answer is emphatically yes! Even though God already knows everything He still wants us to pray. He wants us to express our needs, praise, and worship to Him. True prayer is an acknowledgment of our need and His glory, which leads to the next parable.
This parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is really easy for us to look past and make fun of the arrogance of the Pharisee. None of us should assume that we don’t have this in us however. In our hearts, even if we know we need some work, we want God to change other people and not ourselves. We want others to repent and we don’t want to take a true, honest and completely thorough look at our own lives. We don’t really want God to show us something that we need to work on. We don’t really want to work on anything. We need to be repentant and do real business with God when we pray. True humility and obedience are emphasized throughout scripture and are here again. All of us should take it seriously and come repentant, humble, and ready to obey in and out of prayer.
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