In his teaching on prayer, more than once Jesus mentioned the importance of staying with it and not giving up

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“So I tell you: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you." - Jesus, Luke 11:9

If someone does not reply to a message you’ve sent, how many times do you keep trying? Do you bulldog it and keep going until you get an answer, or is just one no-reply enough to call you off?

How about with prayer? Is it the same?

The reason I ask is because there seems to be a lot of no-reply involved in prayer. In other words, when you bring something to God as a request, it is very possible that you will get the sense that your request was either not heard, ignored, or flat out denied.

This doesn’t feel good.

And maybe this is why Jesus spoke to this situation exactly – more than once – to help us keep it in perspective. At least two times in the Gospel of Luke, for example, Jesus talked to his disciples about persisting in prayer, even when it seems to be of no avail.

In Luke 11:5-10, he told a story about a man who asked his neighbor if he could borrow three loaves of bread to serve a meal to an unexpected guest. Though he was denied at first, the man continued asking until he got what he needed.

And in Luke 18:1-8, Jesus told a story about a poor widow who kept going back to the same judge asking for justice. Because of her sheer tenacity, she too eventually got what she requested.

In both stories, the principle is clear: If persistence pays in our appeals to man, how much more will it avail in our appeals to God, because God is a good Father who gives good gifts.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that it is always going to go our way. God won’t indulge a request for something that he knows would be detrimental to us no matter how much we ask.

But it does mean that when Heaven seems quiet, it isn’t because our prayers are pointless. Like snow in January, prayer has a cumulative effect. As one inch of snow adds to another until eventually it is piled high, so a single prayer adds to another and another. The ask of “Ask and you will receive” is not a one-off sort of ask, but an accumulation of many, layered over hours, days, weeks, and even years of praying.

So, what may seem like a prayer that got a no-reply from God is not that at all. It is an important piece of an ongoing conversation.

May the conversation continue.

It’s a new day with God. Run with it.