Wrestling with the God who Listens

Have you ever been working on something—planting a garden, learning a new skill, trying to fix a relationship—and you just felt like giving up? You pour your energy and your time into it, but you see no progress. The soil remains barren. The notes still sound wrong. The silence from the other person is deafening. In those moments, the temptation to simply walk away, to lose heart, is overwhelming.

It’s in that very human space of wanting to give up that Jesus meets us this morning. Our passage from Luke begins with a very clear mission statement: “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart” (Luke 18:1). This isn’t just a story; it’s a direct command and an encouragement for those times when our prayers feel like they’re hitting a ceiling. It’s about trusting God, even when the work doesn’t appear to be working. Or at least, not yet.

Jesus introduces us to two characters. First, the widow. In her society, she was among the most vulnerable. She had no husband to provide for her or protect her. The law, and indeed God’s own command, stated that widows were to be cared for and given justice. But she isn’t receiving it. Her plea for justice is a cry from the margins, a cry that should concern the entire community. When she is denied justice, it is an injustice to everyone.

Then we meet the judge. Jesus gives us his resume in one brutal line: he “neither feared God nor had respect for people.” This man’s moral compass isn’t just damaged; it’s completely shattered. In ancient Israel, a judge was supposed to be a legal and a spiritual authority, a protector of the vulnerable. This man fails on all counts. He is a picture of institutional power that has become entirely self-serving.

The widow comes to him again and again, pleading, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” Finally, the judge gives in. But listen to his reasoning: “because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by her continual coming” (Luke 18:5). He does the right thing, but for the most selfish and wrong reason imaginable. He isn’t moved by compassion or a sense of duty. He’s moved by annoyance. He just wants to be left alone.

And here is the brilliant turn in Jesus’ parable. He is drawing a contrast, not a comparison. He’s saying, if this terrible, godless, selfish judge will eventually give in to persistence simply to get some peace and quiet, how much more will your loving, righteous, God give justice to those who cry out day and night?

God is not the unjust judge. God doesn’t answer our prayers out of exhaustion or a sense of burden. God doesn’t roll their eyes and say, “Fine, have it your way so you’ll stop bothering me.” God hears and answers out of boundless compassion and steadfast love.

This call to persistent prayer, this act of faith, doesn’t always feel like a polite request. Sometimes, it feels like a struggle. It feels like a fight. And for that, we turn to our reading from Genesis.

We find Jacob at a breaking point. He’s about to face the brother he cheated years ago, and he is terrified. He sends his family on ahead and spends the night alone. But he isn’t alone for long. A man appears, and they begin to wrestle, and they wrestle until daybreak.

Who is this man? Jacob figures it out. As the sun rises, he says, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved” (Genesis 32:30). Jacob literally wrestles with God. He is wrestling with his past, his identity, and his purpose. And notice what happens. Jacob doesn’t walk away unscathed. He walks away with a limp, a permanent reminder of the struggle. But he also walks away with a new name: Israel, which means “he who wrestles with God.”

When we truly engage with God in prayer, when we bring our doubts, our fears, and our desperate pleas for justice, we are, in a way, wrestling with God. And like Jacob, we don’t come away from those encounters unchanged. We may carry the limp of a lesson learned the hard way, but we also walk away with a new identity, one forged in the faithful struggle of prayer.

The widow models this wrestling faith for us. She is relentlessly persistent. As Eric Barreto writes, “her persistence in a broken system is a model for us to follow, knowing as we do that God’s economy of grace is not ruled by the whims of a judge.” She refuses to give up. She embodies the command to pray always.

This brings us to the question that Jesus leaves hanging in the air at the end of the parable, a question that should echo in our hearts today: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

This question takes us right back to when the disciples cried out, “Increase our faith!” Jesus is teaching us that faith isn’t a passive feeling of certainty. The faith Jesus is looking for is a tough, rugged, wrestling faith. It’s the faith of the widow who refuses to be silenced. It’s the faith of Jacob who refuses to let go.

This week in one of their devotionals the Centre for Action and Contemplation write, “Too often, the Bible’s good news is reduced to matters of individual salvation and detached from Jesus’s goal to transform the world. But a close reading of the Bible, including the teachings of Jesus, reveals a vast antipoverty program and social justice mission, which call on us to resist unjust economic practices and build a society in which everyone’s needs are met.”

Our faith calls us to do more than look internally at our own righteousness. It asks us that in our prayer and in our work we ensure that the whole system provides justice to those in need.

The faith we are called to is one that seeks out God’s promises for tomorrow but lives as though they are being fulfilled today. It’s a faith that keeps showing up, that keeps asking, that keeps knocking, trusting not in the strength of our own prayer, but in the unfailing character of God who hears it.

What are you wrestling with today? Where in your life are you tempted to lose heart? Look to the widow. Look to Jacob. Your persistence in prayer is not annoying to God. It is an act of profound faith. And our God is not a corrupt judge who needs to be worn down. Rather a loving God who leans in to listen, who sees your struggle, and who will, in God’s perfect time, give justice to the people.

Let us be a people who wrestle, who persist, and who do not lose heart, so that when the Son of Man returns, He will indeed find faith on the earth.

Amen.