You Are Not Wearing Him Down
The word for Monday, August 24, 2026 is You Are Not Wearing Him Down.
The anchor verses are Luke 12:32 and 2 Corinthians 1:20.
On the eleventh of August a storm crossed northwest Indiana with ninety nine mile an hour winds. About three hundred seventy thousand homes lost power. Seven people died, one of them a four year old boy.
Gary was hit worst. That was thirteen days ago, and tens of thousands across that region are still without power this morning. Schools in Gary have been closed since the thirteenth. People are throwing out spoiled food, lining up at community centers for a hot meal and a place to charge a phone, washing clothes in a sink, driving through intersections where nothing is lit. The utility is aiming to have the city back tomorrow night.
In a town nearby lives a woman named Myra Carden, seventy four. Her house came through the storm without a scratch. Her power went out anyway, came back, and went out again.
She reported it more than once. By her account, the answer she got was: you already put in a report.
What she said back was: well, what do you want me to do?
Something needs saying plainly before I go further.
That is not a metaphor. Those are real people, the lights are off this morning, and nothing in this word is going to turn them on. I am not going to use Gary as a picture of anybody's spiritual dryness. Their situation is theirs, it is physical, and it is caused by downed poles and the limits of what crews can rebuild in two weeks.
What I am taking is one sentence, because it is the sentence a great many people believe GOD says to them.
You already put in a report.
That is what a system says. It logs the request, notes that it is on file, and treats further asking as redundant. Nothing about you moved it.
A great deal of teaching about prayer assumes GOD runs something like that, and that the way through is volume. Persistence breaks resistance. Keep knocking and the door opens.
It is a theology built for a queue.
There is a parable behind most of it. In Luke, a judge who does not fear GOD and does not care about people is worn down by a widow who will not stop coming, and he finally gives her justice so she will leave him alone.
Jesus explains that story HIMSELF, and the explanation runs the other direction.
Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him?
The judge is the opposite of the model. HE holds up the worst official you can imagine, a man with no fear of GOD and no regard for anybody, and says that even that man eventually acts. How much more your Father.
HE does the same after the story of the man knocking at midnight for bread. A few verses later: if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give.
How much more. Twice, in two parables, that is where HE lands.
Hear the other version as somebody who has prayed about one thing for eleven years. If persistence is the mechanism, then an unanswered prayer is a prayer somebody did not push hard enough. The failure has an address, and the address is you.
That is not what Christ taught. This is the verse that ends the argument.
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
Good pleasure. HE likes doing it. There is no reluctance in HIM to be worked around, no threshold of sincerity to clear, no minimum number of mornings.
Paul says it another way to Corinth. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen. Already a yes. Settled, in Christ, before you opened your mouth today.
And Jesus said three words on the cross that close it. It is finished.
Past tense, from a dying man, about work HE had just completed. Nothing left pending. Nothing waiting on somebody to ask correctly.
Hear what this does not mean.
It does not mean your prayer has been answered the way you asked. Some have not been and some will not be. The lights in Gary are proof enough that saying a true thing about GOD does not fix a situation.
It means the delay is not a verdict on you.
GOD is not slow because you are weak. HE is not weighing your consistency and finding it short, and HE is not going to move because you finally sounded desperate enough.
You are not in front of a tired official who has to be worn down, and you are not in a queue.
Keep praying. Christ told us to. But pray the way you would talk to someone whose good pleasure it is to give you the kingdom, and not the way you would file the same report for the third time.
Myra Carden asked what they wanted her to do.
GOD has never once answered that question with a reference number.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
- 🙏 To the one who has been told your prayer failed because you gave up too soon.
- 🙏 To the one praying the same sentence for years with nothing to show.
- 🙏 To the one treating GOD like an office that has to be worn down.
- 🙏 To the one who has stopped asking, and is not disqualified.
Grace and Peace.