Topics · Prayer · Lesson 3 of 6
How Long, O Lord? Persistent prayer, delay and the waiting church
What do I do when God seems slow?
By the end of this lesson you should be able to
- Explain how the friend at midnight (Luke 11:5-8) and the widow and judge (Luke 18:1-8) teach by contrast with God.
- Identify the hard words in these parables and the main ways scholars read them.
- Trace the cry 'How long?' from the Psalms through Luke 18 to Revelation 6:9-11.
- Compare how five witnesses practised long prayer, and state the limits of each record.
Scripture at the center
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Tap a reference to read it, then come back to the lesson.
Background
Delay is not a modern problem. The Psalms ask 'How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever?' (; see also ). Habakkuk is told that the vision 'lingers' and must be waited for (). Israel groaned in Egypt 'a long time' before God 'remembered His covenant' (). This unit asks what Scripture says prayer is doing when God has promised to hear and has not yet acted.
Luke gives two parables. answers a disciple's request, 'teach us to pray', and moves from the Lord's Prayer to the friend at midnight to the Father who gives the Holy Spirit. follows Jesus's warning that disciples will 'long to see one of the days of the Son of Man' and not see it (), so the widow's parable concerns the interval before his return. Luke states its purpose: the need 'to pray at all times and not lose heart' (). comes from a church under Roman pressure, usually dated to the 90s AD, though some scholars argue for the late 60s.
Scholars disagree on five points.
- (1) Anaideia in can describe the asker's boldness or the sleeper's fear of shame.
- (2) The verb makrothymei in is rendered 'delay', 'be patient' or 'put off'.
- (3) En tachei in can mean 'quickly' or 'suddenly'.
- (4) 'Faith on earth' may mean faithfulness in waiting, or faith in the Son of Man generally.
- (5) 'Avenge' in is read as an appeal to God's justice, not personal revenge.
Outline
- The cry 'How long?' in Israel's prayers
- The friend at midnight and the Father who gives
- A judge who fears neither God nor man
- Will He continue to defer? The question about faith
- The martyrs' cry and the answer to wait
- Why the Lord seems slow
How to read it
Read both passages as parables. A parable makes one main point, and Luke often supplies the frame: 18:1 states the purpose, and 18:6 has Jesus draw the lesson. Neither parable makes God a sleepy neighbour or a corrupt judge. Both argue by contrast: if even these men act, 'how much more' will the Father (). The usual error is to hear that prayer works by wearing God down. Jesus excludes it in , where the Father 'knows what you need before you ask Him'.
The passages also differ in kind. The widow's behaviour is illustration; the command is in 18:1. is apocalyptic: its altar, white robes and fifth seal are symbols of heavenly reality, and it describes rather than prescribes wording for prayer. Its cry for justice has parallels in the Psalms (for example ), which ask God, not the speaker, to act.
Read the three together. asks whether the Father gives, whether he will act for his people, and what it means when the answer is wait. Scripture gives no timetable ().
What the Scriptures say
The friend at midnight and the Father who gives
A traveller arrives after dark. The host has no bread, and village hospitality obliged him to feed the guest, so he goes to a neighbour at midnight for 'three loaves'. Commentators describe a one-room house, the family asleep, the door barred. The neighbour says, 'Do not bother me.' Jesus says that 'because of the man’s persistence' he will rise and give 'as much as he needs' ().
The Greek word is anaideia, 'shamelessness'. Some read it as the asker's boldness. Kenneth Bailey, in Poet and Peasant (1976), argued from village culture that it refers to the neighbour, who would be shamed before the village if he refused. On either reading the neighbour is the contrast. The argument is not 'be as insistent as this man' but 'if a reluctant friend gives, consider the Father'.
Jesus continues: 'Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you' (). The verbs can carry the sense of continuing action. No father gives a snake for a fish, and 'how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!' (). The gift is the Spirit, the Father's promise (), which Luke narrates at Pentecost ().
A judge who fears neither God nor man
A widow has no protector of her own, and God is called the defender of widows (; ). She appeals to a judge who 'neither feared God nor respected men' (). She wants 'justice against my adversary' (18:3): a ruling that restores her, not revenge. He refuses 'for a while', then yields for a selfish reason: she 'keeps pestering me' and otherwise will 'wear me out' (18:5).
The Greek behind 'wear me out', hypōpiazō, literally means to strike under the eye. Interpreters differ on whether the judge fears blows, public shame or is speaking in exaggeration. In each case a man with no regard for God can be moved to act.
The judge is the opposite of God, not his picture. The parable does not say God is unjust or reluctant. It sets the worst decision-maker beside the widow's repeated appeal so that the next verses can argue from lesser to greater.
Will He continue to defer? The question about faith
Jesus tells his hearers to listen to the judge and then asks two questions. 'Will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry out to Him day and night?' The expected answer is yes. 'Will He continue to defer their help?' The second is hard, because makrothymei ordinarily means to be patient or long-suffering. Translators render the line 'is he slow to help them?' or 'is he patient with them?'. Either way the delay is real from the pray-er's side and God's character is not in doubt.
Then the promise: 'He will promptly carry out justice on their behalf' (18:8). En tachei can mean 'quickly' or 'suddenly', which would fit the Son of Man's coming 'like lightning' in . The closing question follows: 'when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?' The Greek says 'the faith'. Interpreters read it as faithfulness in prayer through the wait, or faith in Christ generally. It is a question, not a prediction of failure.
Christ stands in the text twice. He is the Son of Man whose coming ends the delay, and he is the one who prayed the same words three times in Gethsemane ().
The martyrs' cry and the answer to wait
When the Lamb opens the fifth seal, John sees 'the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony they had upheld' (), placed under the altar. The image draws on the sacrificial system, in which an offering's blood was poured out at the altar's base. They cry, 'How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You avenge our blood and judge those who dwell upon the earth?' (6:10). 'Lord' is despotēs, the master who owns his servants and can act. The cry recalls Abel's blood crying 'from the ground' ().
The answer is neither rebuke nor refusal. Each is 'given a white robe' and told 'to rest a little while longer, until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers, were killed' (6:11). The wait has an appointed end set by God, and the praying is honoured before it is answered. Elsewhere the prayers of the saints are offered with incense at the golden altar ().
The link to is plain: God's people cry out for justice and the answer includes a wait. Revelation does not say the martyrs lacked faith. It treats their cry as a faithful prayer that waits.
Key terms
- How long 'ad-'anah (Hebrew)
- The opening of lament in , answered in the psalm by trust (13:5-6).
- persistence / shamelessness anaideia (Greek)
- . Literally 'no shame'; scholars debate whether it describes the asker or the neighbour.
- wear me out hypōpiazō (Greek)
- . Literally 'strike under the eye'; it shows the judge's grudging motive.
- be patient / defer makrothymeō (Greek)
- . Usually 'be long-suffering'; its use here is disputed.
In the whole Bible
Delay is a pattern in the whole Bible, from Israel's long years in Egypt to the long wait for the Messiah. Several answers appear. God is patient so that people may repent: 'The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness, but is patient with you' (). The promise has an appointed time (). God hears from the first groan (), even when the answer comes much later. Some faithful people died without receiving what was promised ().
The canon treats the cry 'How long?' as lawful. and put it in the mouth of people the Bible calls faithful, and puts it in heaven. What the Bible condemns is the loss of heart that names. In the New Testament the Spirit (), the promise of justice () and the vision of the end (; ) give the wait its shape: the Father gives, the Son comes, and the prayers of the saints are kept.
Where Christ is
Jesus is the Son of Man whose coming anticipates and the Lamb who opens the seals in . He is also the one who waited in prayer. In Gethsemane he prayed the same words three times (), and on the cross he took the lament of on his lips (). The 'How long?' of the Psalms is not foreign to him.
The martyrs share the pattern of the Lamb who was slain. Jesus is the 'faithful witness' (), and they are slain 'for the testimony they had upheld' (6:9). Their blood crying out under the altar echoes Abel's blood crying from the ground (); says the blood of Jesus 'speaks a better word than the blood of Abel' (a tentative link, though the contrast is explicit in Hebrews).
The answer to the friend at midnight is a person, the Holy Spirit promised in and given after the resurrection. The church's waiting is the interval between the first coming and the second, and makes the Son of Man's arrival the hinge of the parable.
How praying people lived this
George Müller 1805-1898 · Brethren; Bristol orphan houses
Müller made his needs known to God alone and kept written records. A large legacy was held up in Chancery court; the compilation reports that he prayed for it daily for six years, with hundreds of petitions, until it was paid on 7 June 1884.
These are his own accounts, edited by compilers such as A. E. C. Brooks. They are not independent audits, and the 'five conditions of prevailing prayer' in Brooks's appendix are the compiler's summary, not marked as Müller's words. He also records seasons of testing when funds were low.
The principle: A petition is a daily matter to bring, with a written record, until God answers.
“for six years prayed day by day that the money might be paid”
Charles Finney, Daniel Nash and Abel Clary Finney 1792-1875 · Presbyterian and Congregational revivalism, New York
Finney's Memoirs (1876) describe Nash and Clary as praying partners. When a town resisted, he and Nash went to a grove and prayed until they felt they had prevailed, while Finney preached. Clary, a licensed preacher, was so burdened for souls that he gave his time to prayer, and at Rochester in 1830-31 never appeared in public.
Finney's theology is disputed. He called revival 'a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means', though he added that means do nothing without God's blessing. Old School Presbyterians and John Williamson Nevin (The Anxious Bench, 1843) objected. Historians debate the number and permanence of his reported results.
The principle: Finney took Jacob's night of wrestling as his model for prayer that holds on until the answer comes.
“He never, that I could learn, appeared in public, but gave himself wholly to prayer.”
David Brainerd 1718-1747 · Congregational/Reformed missionary to Native Americans
Brainerd's diary, published by Jonathan Edwards in 1749, records fasts and long secret prayer. On 14 June 1742 he set the day apart for secret fasting and prayer, and the entry describes an evening of intercession so intense that he was 'all over wet with sweat'. His editor notes years of agonizing prayer before the results of 1745.
Edwards edited the diary, Brainerd suffered depression and tuberculosis and died at 29, and the mission context carries paternalism toward Native peoples.
The principle: Prayer for others can be hard, long work borne without seeing results.
“It is good to wrestle for divine blessings.”
The Moravian hourly intercession, Herrnhut from 1727 · Moravian
After a communion service on 13 August 1727 ended a season of quarrels, twenty-four men and twenty-four women at Herrnhut agreed on 26 August to continue 'from one midnight to the next in prayer', dividing the hours by lot, and began on 27 August. The number grew to seventy-seven, citing the altar fire that was never to go out ().
An unbroken hundred years is a later claim. J. E. Hutton wrote that it is 'said' to have lasted so long, and no roster has been found. The safe statement is that the practice continued for generations.
The principle: Persistence was made a shared rota rather than a private mood.
Enslaved Christians in the American South recorded 1936-38 about life before 1865 · Black Baptist and Methodist, with African roots
In Works Progress Administration interviews, former slaves described meeting in woods and hollows to pray, sometimes through the night, and to ask God for freedom. The spiritual 'Steal Away to Jesus' is reported as a signal for meetings.
The interviews were taken some seventy years later, mostly by white interviewers who recorded dialect, and some accounts are second-hand. Used with care, they show prayer that waited across generations for justice.
The principle: The cry for freedom and justice was prayed for years in secret.
Review questions
- In , what is the 'how much more' argument, and what is the gift the Father finally gives?
- Why do many interpreters say the unjust judge in contrasts with God rather than pictures him?
- What are the main readings of 'faith on earth' in , and what in the context supports each?
- How does the answer given to the martyrs in differ from a refusal, and how does it compare with ?
- Which claims about Müller, Finney, Brainerd or the Moravians are reported by the people themselves, and which have been questioned by historians?
Read further
With Christ in the School of Prayer (Lesson 16) · Andrew Murray, 1885 free to read
A series of short lessons on Jesus's teaching on prayer. Lesson 16 faces the problem of long delay and says it is hard to understand why God's love should require repeated asking.
Read it in AideAnswers to Prayer from George Müller's Narratives · George Müller, compiled by A. E. C. Brooks, n.d. (Müller died 1898) free to read
Compilation of entries from Müller's own narratives about specific petitions and their answers. The appendix of conditions is the compiler's summary.
Read it ↗Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney · Charles G. Finney, 1876 free to read
Finney's own account of his ministry, including the praying partners Daniel Nash and Abel Clary. It is a first-person record by a figure whose theology was disputed.
Read it ↗The Life of David Brainerd · David Brainerd and Jonathan Edwards (ed.), 1749 free to read
Brainerd's diary as edited by Edwards. It shows fasting, secret prayer and years of apparently fruitless labour before results.
Read it in AideA History of the Moravian Church (2nd ed.) · J. E. Hutton, 1909 free to read
A general history that describes the events of August 1727 at Herrnhut and the hourly intercession.
Read it ↗Letter 130 (to Proba) · Augustine of Hippo, c. 412 free to read
A letter on how to pray. Augustine discusses praying without ceasing and why God may delay gifts.
Read it ↗Poet and Peasant · Kenneth E. Bailey, 1976 link only
Reads Luke's parables using Middle Eastern village customs. On it argues that the shame of the neighbour who refuses is the key.
Prepared with AI assistance from public-domain sources and other books' published teaching. A scholar's review is still to come; if you spot anything to correct, please tell us.
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