more
willing to give good things to those who ask Him than any earthly father
to give his child bread. In the second, He assures us that God longs to
avenge His elect speedily. The need of urgent prayer cannot be because
God must be made willing or disposed to bless: the need lies altogether
in ourselves. But because it was not possible to find any earthly
illustration of a loving father or a willing friend from whom the needed
lesson of importunity could be taught, He takes the unwilling friend and
the unjust judge to encourage in us the faith, that perseverance can
overcome every obstacle.

The difficulty is not in God's love or power, but in ourselves and our
own incapacity to receive the blessing. And yet, because there is this
difficulty with us, this lack of spiritual preparedness, there is a
difficulty with God too. His wisdom, His righteousness, yea His love,
dare not give us what would do us harm, if we received it too soon or
too easily. The sin, or the consequence of sin, that makes it impossible
for God to give at once, is a barrier on God's side as well as ours; to
break through this power of sin in ourselves, or those for whom we pray,
is what makes the striving and the conflict of prayer such a reality.
And so in all ages men have prayed, and that rightly too, under a sense
that there were difficulties in the heavenly world to overcome. As they
pleaded with God for the removal of the unknown obstacles, and in that
persevering supplication were brought into a state of utter brokenness
and helplessness, of entire resignation to Him, of union with His will,
and of faith that could take hold of Him, the hindrances in themselves
and in heaven were together overcome. As God conquered them, they
conquered God. As God prevails over us, we prevail with God.

God has so constituted us that the clearer our insight is into the
reasonableness of a demand, the more hearty will be our surrender to it.
One great cause of our remissness in prayer is that there appears to be
something arbitrary, or at least something incomprehensible, in the call
to such continued prayer. If we could be brought to see that this
apparent difficulty is a Divine necessity, and in the very nature of
things the source of unspeakable blessing, we should be more ready with
gladness of heart to give ourselves to continue in prayer. Let us see if
we cannot understand how the difficulty that the call to importunity
throws in our way is one of our g