Shameless Audacity

“… yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.”

Luke 11:8

I was doing a radio interview shortly after The Circle Maker was released, and the host of the show told an amazing story about his missionary friend, Dr. Bob Bagley. Bob’s church in Africa didn’t have a church building, so they literally met under the shade of a single tree near the village — that is, until the local witch doctor cursed the tree, and it withered. The church didn’t just lose their shade; they were overshadowed by the curse. It undermined the authority of their message. Bob knew their status in the village was in jeopardy if he didn’t do something about it, so he called for a public prayer meeting. Not unlike Elijah, who challenged the prophets of Baal to a prayer duel, Bob confronted the curse and called down a blessing on the tree. He literally laid hands on the tree and prayed that God would resurrect it.

Now that’s shameless audacity!

If God doesn’t answer his prayer, he would have dug an even deeper hole. That is the risk of prayer, isn’t it? But if we don’t ask, we’ll never know. We accumulate lots of wouldas, couldas, and shouldas. Here’s what I know for sure: God won’t answer 100 percent of the prayers we don’t pray.

There is an old adage: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Every prayer is a calculated risk, but sometimes God calls us to ante up all the faith we have, and then let the chips fall where they may! That’s what Bob did. He asked God to resurrect a tree, and then he added a little tagline to his prayer: “It’s not my name that’s at stake.”

When we act in faith, we aren’t risking our reputation; we are risking God’s reputation because He’s the one who made the promise in the first place. But if we aren’t willing to risk our reputation, we’ll never establish God’s reputation. We’ll also never experience miracles like the one Bob saw. Not only did God break the curse and resurrect the tree; it became the only tree of its type to yield its fruit, not once, but twice a year. A double crop! A double blessing!

Why do we mistakenly think that God is offended by our prayers for the impossible? The truth is that God is offended by anything less! God is offended when we ask Him to do things we can do ourselves. It’s the impossible prayers that honor God because they reveal our faith and allow God to reveal His glory.

Shameless Audacity

In Luke 11, Jesus tells a story about a man who won’t take no for an answer. He keeps knocking on his friend’s door until he gets what he came for. It’s a parable about prevailing in prayer. And Jesus honors his bold determination: “… yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need.”

I love this depiction of prayer. There are times when you need to do whatever it takes. You need to grab hold of the horns of the altar and not let go. You need to dare demonic forces to a duel. You need to do something crazy, something risky, something different.

The epitome of shameless audacity is the circle maker himself. When a severe drought threatened to destroy a generation of Jews, Honi drew a circle in the sand, dropped to his knees, and said, “Lord of the universe, I swear before Your great name that I will not move from this circle until You have shown mercy upon Your children.”

It was a risky proposition. Honi could have been in that circle a long time! But God honored that bold prayer because that bold prayer honored Him. And even when God answered that prayer for rain, Honi had the shameless audacity to ask for a specific type of rain. “Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain of Your favor, blessing, and graciousness.”

The moral of this parable is to prevail in prayer, but it also reveals the character of Him who answers prayer. The request is not granted simply because of repeated requests. Prayer is answered to preserve God’s good name. After all, it’s not our reputation that is on the line; it’s His reputation. So God doesn’t answer prayer just to give us what we want; God answers prayer to bring glory to His name.

The beauty of obedience is this: it relieves us of responsibility. It takes all the pressure off of us and places it squarely on God’s sovereign shoulders.

When we give God the tithe, for example, our finances are no longer our responsibility; they become God’s responsibility. God even says, “Test me in this.” And if we test God, we’ll find that He can do more with 90 percent than we can do with 100 percent. It turns financial management into a giving game that gets more fun the more we give. And the more we give away, the more we can enjoy what we keep.

When we pray, we relieve ourselves of responsibility. We let go and let God. We take our hands off and put our concerns into the hands of Almighty God. And trust me, He can handle whatever we put in His hands.

Sometimes we’re afraid of praying for miracles because we’re afraid that God won’t answer, but the answer isn’t up to us. We never know if the answer will be yes, no, or not yet. But the answer isn’t up to us. It’s not our job to answer; it’s our job to ask. And Jesus exhorts us to ask.

These three words — ask, seek, and knock — are present imperative verbs. In other words, they aren’t something we do once; they are actions that are repeated over and over and over again.

Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking.

And, I might add, keep circling!

The greatest tragedy in life is the prayers that go unanswered simply because they go unasked.