January 27 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading

Devotional

If the kingdom is our hope and treasure, we must persist in prayer and knock on the door of heaven until we receive what we are asking.

In driving home this point about persistence and endurance, the Lord told a story about a woman who had been done an injustice. In spite of the fact that the judge was callous, a fellow who "neither feared God nor cared what people thought," the woman received justice at last because she was insistent. The point Christ was making was that we, who have a righteous Judge in heaven, must not stop asking for what we have coming according to his own promise.

The question is not whether the Judge in heaven will listen; the question is whether the church will continue to cry out. "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" Faith, in this connection, means insistent prayer that keeps knocking on the gates of heaven.

By asking that disturbing question ("Will he find faith?"), the Lord implied that we are inclined to give up on the promise and to give in to "ordinary life." We take sin for granted, and we accept injustice as part of our existence. We shrug our shoulders when people walk all over each other, and we don't expect the cause of the righteous to be victorious. We admit that there is much wrong in the world, in the church, in our own lives, but we figure we can't do anything about it anyway.

The greatest danger that threatens Christendom is not atheism or immorality but apathy. It is a state in which the vision of the kingdom is no longer before the minds of Christians. They no longer pound on the door of heaven. They don't really believe that the Judge is listening and the Lord is coming.

Will the Lord find faith? Will there be men and women who live not by the standards of the world but by the strange music of the kingdom of God?

Reflections

About what kinds of things does the Lord want us to be "insistent in prayer"?

Andrew Kuyvenhoven's Daylight, a modern devotional classic, was originally published by Paideia Press in 1977. This updated edition is copyright 2009 by Faith Alive Christian Resources. You can order a copy of this revised version of the book directly from the publisher.

A man of many accomplishments, Andrew Kuyvenhoven is probably best known for his contributions to Today (formerly The Family Altar), a widely-used monthly devotional booklet associated with the Back to God Hour. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations for this updated edition of Daylight are from the Holy Bible: Today's New International Version copyright 2001, 2005 by the International Bible Society.