What is the meaning ofimportunity?

'Urgent,' with importunity. Luke 7:4; Luke 23:23; Acts 26:7; Rom. 12:12; 2 Tim. 4:2.

For the next thing is that as He was praying, His disciples would learn of Him how to pray, as John also had taught his. And the Lord responds to their desire,* and, by the illustration that He uses, encourages them to earnestness, and even "shamelessness" (as the word for "importunity" really is,) indicating the gift of the Holy Spirit as in the Father's purpose for them that ask Him. (See John 7:39)

445 Luke 18:3. — "Came"; or, "kept coming" (imperf.). Cf. Ecclesiasticus 35:14 ff.

446 Luke 18:4. — "The creed of a powerful atheist" (Bengel).

447 Luke 18:5. — "Completely harass" or "plague." Cf. R.V., "wear out," ὑπωπιάζειν. (Cf. 1 Cor. 9:27.) Weymouth: "pester." D. Smith: "It is a pugilist's term and means hit under the eye."

448 Luke 18:7. — The αὐτοῖς would be either, as the Expositor takes it, the "elect" Remnant (cf. Matt. 24:22, Rev. 6:9-11); or, the adversaries (cf. 2 Peter 3:9). Field: "He deferred His anger on their behalf" (that of the elect). Cf. further, Ps. 13:1 f., Ps. 55:17 and Ps. 94:1-4; also Prov. 9:11; Ecclesiasticus 35:18.

"Ask" — every child knows how to do that. It is just a simple laying of the need before the Father. But suppose the answer does not come; there is a delay. What then? "Seek " — there is something more there. "Knock " — it grows in persistence and importunity. We have need to listen to these things from His lips.

There is a difference between prayer and supplication. "Prayer" is s imply asking. Supplication is increasing intensity in prayer. "In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." I have often thought of the words of job. He had not the scriptures as we have, but he tells us what he would do if the way were open for him to come before God. "I would order my cause before him; I would fill my mouth with arguments" — just like a lawyer before the judge. Well, my brethren, we have not to do with a judge, but with our gracious Father. Still, there are times when we must knock and not simply ask. The Lord may keep us waiting ever so long and yet intend all the time to grant the request at last. Delay may be intended to make the blessing greater when it comes. We are inclined to think that delay means denial; it is not always so. Sometimes a need is urgent and receives an immediate answer, but when it is not so there are often times when He may seem to take no notice. I remember a good man and his wife who prayed twelve years for their unconverted son. At the end of that time he turned up, clothed and in his right mind, and that in answer to many prayers. Another woman told me she had prayed twenty-five years for her husband, and it turned out afterwards that while she was speaking to me he was actually present in the same house a truly converted man.

But there is another very important moral condition set forth in our Lord's teaching in Luke 11, and that is, "importunity." He tells us that the man succeeds in gaining his object simply by his importunate earnestness. He is not to be put off; he must get the three loaves. Importunity prevails even where the claims of friendship prove inoperative. The man is bent on his object; he has no alternative. There is a demand, and he has nothing to meet it — "I have nothing to set before my travelling friend." In short, he will not take a refusal.

Now, the question is, how far do we understand this great lesson? It is not, blessed be God, that He will ever answer us "from within." He will never say to us, "Trouble me not" — "I cannot rise and give thee." He is ever our true and ready "Friend" — "a cheerful, liberal, and unupbraiding Giver." All praise to His holy name! Still, He encourages importunity, and we need to ponder His teaching. There is a sad lack of it in our prayer-meetings. Indeed, it will be found that in proportion to the lack of definiteness is the lack of importunity. The two go very much together. Where the thing sought is as definite as the "three loaves," there will generally be the importunate asking for it, and the firm purpose to get it.

But these are exceptional cases, and generally speaking, the Lord would have us go on praying for a thing that is upon our hearts. He often keeps us waiting for months, and even for years, before giving an answer, in order to test the reality of our desire and to prove our faith. He would have us importunate about what we seek of Him, and thus show that we are really in earnest. This is the lesson conveyed to us in the parable of the traveller who applied to his friend for bread at midnight (Luke 11). He was heard because of his importunity. Another parable—that of the injured widow (Luke 18)—enforces the same truth, that men ought not to faint or grow weary in prayer.

It is not that God is a hard and unwilling Giver, but that importunity is a test of earnestness and faith.

The Lord then had much to add in encouraging the persistent, believing prayer of His own. If one had a friend (not simply a neighbor) and even at midnight went to him to request the loan of three loaves of bread because of an emergency, is it likely that his friend would excuse himself from helping because it would disturb his own comfort? The Lord answered, that if even on the basis of friendship the friend might not be disposed to help at that hour, yet simply because of one's persistence -- his earnest insistence in asking -- his friend will respond (v.8).

It is true that a man may respond simply because he does not want to be bothered by constant asking. This is not God's attitude, but He desires to see in our prayers the reality of earnestness rather than just giving up because no immediate answer to our prayer is forthcoming.

Our Lord stressed importunity. He instanced in parable the case of a judge, who feared not God, nor regarded man—a judge you see again and again delineated in the pages of Josephus, the Historian of the Jews at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus—a judge without principle or compassion.

A widow pleads her case, a woman bereft of her natural supporter. Who cares for a widow?—her influence is nil, and the judge cares not one straw that her adversary should have justice meted out to him.

But she persevered in importunity, and at last the judge gave her what she wanted and what justice demanded, not because of equity, but simply to escape her importunities. They wearied him, and he would fain be free of what wearied him, and for his own ease, and not justice, did he at last act, and so the widow won the day.

The figures employed were the best possible to encourage: on the one hand a judge of unrighteousness neither fearing God nor respecting man, on the other a widow wronged by an adversary near enough to inflict so much the greater evil, because he should have been her protector. Yet her persevering cry wore out the judge's indifference. He could not stand her continual appeal, and, to escape the annoyance, he let her have justice. The Lord reveals the thoughts and motives of the judge's heart, and draws the believer's attention to the way in which even now God's providential ways act in the most reckless and unprincipled on behalf of the oppressed.

"He said to them, Who among you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight and say unto him, Friend, let me have three loaves; since a friend of mine on a journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? and he within answering should say, Do not disturb me; the door is already shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise up to give [it] thee. I say unto you, although he will not rise up and give [them] to him because he is his friend, because of his shamelessness, at any rate, he will rise up and give him as many as he wants." The time may seem ever so inopportune, but although a man may not for friendship's sake listen to him who requests the loan of bread, he would rather rise and give than expose himself to trouble. Every one knows that this is apt to be the way of a man with the neighbour who is bold enough to press. He might be ever so much annoyed at the importunate suitor, but still to avoid the trouble of a continued appeal at his door, he yields. At least, such is an ordinary case: "Because of his shamelessness he will rise and give him as many as he wants."286