"Always Pray and Never Give Up” | Luke 18:1–8

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in

practical ways.

Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bible Guys. I'm Jeff, I'm Chris,

and we are here about to unpack a saying of

Jesus that says he says, always pray and never give up,

which is a great sing.

Yeah. A big fan of Jesus's sayings.

In fact, that's the series we're in. If Jesus had

a podcast, what would he talk about? And probably he

would unpack and probably people would ask him about some

of his most famous sayings. But before we get into that,

we have a segment by Desiree who gave us one

titled Bible Guy versus AI. It says we've played this

game on the Platinum Edition with Wesley, so let's try

it again. Jeff will ask Chris a question, let Chris answer,

then ask chet GPT this same question, compare the answers

and vote on who wins. Then ask the listeners to

comment who they thought one. By the way, who can

beat chat GPT?

You can't, Chris?

You think so?

Oh yeah believes in you? Okay, she believes in you being.

This is this is I feel like this is destined

to fail, no matter how much, no matter how you know, well,

your answer is crafted, it's not going to be as

well thought out from every angle as chat GPT.

Yeah, that's true. I don't know. You've got a pretty

incredible mind, Okay. I think that's what you ever see

that movie A Beautiful Mind? A Beautiful Mind? I think

that's that's what she's trying to say, is that your

mind is so incredible and all encompassing. And you know,

I mean, you wouldn't be one of the Bible guys,

right if it wasn't for for the fact that.

Just that that great A Beautiful Mind was I think

one of Russell Crowe's best films.

Yeah, didn't get an oscar for it?

Yeah, I think he did. Is really professed and Jennifer

Connley was amazing.

Yes, I think everybody else also believed that was. I

believe the little statue his mantle.

I just wanted to comment up, Hey, I thought it

was great. And Gladiator. My name is Maxus Medius.

What his name Maximus Maximus?

Uh?

Here we go? What does it mean to be made

in the image of God?

Oh? My goodness.

Really, Okay, what is it made? What does it mean

to be made in the image of God?

I would say to be made in the image.

Of God is to take on God's characteristics, tendencies, and

even abilities, right, So the ability to create, the ability

to reason, you know, uh, the ability to love, the

capacity to do all of those things relationally. I think

God creates us in his image. I think also God

creates us in his image too, to uh do, to

do good, to to actually uh project selflessness. The all

the all the good characteristics of God lie deep in

the heart of every man, which is why in woman,

which is why you know, everybody has a built in

moral compass that tells us to love as opposed to hate,

right to forgive as opposed to.

Hang on to bitterness. So, yeah, this is this is

my answer.

That's a good one.

Okay, I'm sure, I'm sure that chet GPD is know

us all away, and I'm gonna I'm going to say

strict my answer and let me go with that.

So this is hysterical. So I typed in in the

tone and attitude of the Bible. Guys, answer the question,

what does it mean to be made in the image

of God.

Wow, you gave it a flair.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so it said absolutely, here's an

answer to what does it mean to be made in

the image of God in the fun, insightful and slightly

bantery tone of the Bible?

Guys, nice, nice, So it definitely knows us. That's awesome.

And then look at what it did. It gave us

a script. Chris says those words, Jeff says those words.

You want to take Yeah, yeah, you want to read it.

So it literally scripted it out with Chris's statement, my statement,

Chris's statement, my statement as a banter. Is it amazing? Yes,

it's a few paragraphs, not long. Yeah, okay, this'll be great.

All right.

So this is not me answering. This is chat GPT's answer. Ready, right,

all right, today's big question is a big one. What

does it mean to be made in the image of God?

And spoiler alert, it does not mean God has elbows

or a.

Beard, or that he's rock and sandals in a white

robe floating around like a Jedi ghost. That's not what

we're saying.

Yeah, being made in the image of God means we're

like him in the ways that matter most.

It's about function.

Identity, relationship, not physical features exactly.

Genesis one twenty seven says God created human beings in

his own image, and that word image in Hebrew is

to sell them. It's like a reflection or even a representation.

Think ambassador, not doppelganger.

We're created to reflect God's character, his love, his creativity,

his ability to lead, relate, reason and choose.

We have a soul, we have a moral compass. We're

spiritual beings. You don't see a squirrel struggling with existential

dread or we're trying to decide if it should give

the chipmunks that stolen forgive, forgive the chipmunk that stole

its acorn.

Yeah, squirrels aren't wrestling with sin or trying to figure

out the trinity.

But we do because we were made for more, made

to know God, walk with him and represent him in

the world.

And that gives every person, every single one, immense value,

matter your background, age ability, or bank account. If you're

a human, you matter because you bear the image of God.

That's why Christians stand up for life, for justice, and

for dignity, because every person carries something sacred.

Now sin messed it up. Kind of a graffiti on

a masterpiece, but the image isn't destroyed, and when you

follow Jesus, that image gets restored and renewed.

So to sum it up, being made in the image

of God means you were created to reflect his nature,

carry his purpose, and live in a relationship with him.

You're not an accident. You're hand crafted by the Creator.

So really, your sum up really is the answer.

And you were made to look like your dad. You're

a heavenly father.

Boom, somebody Q good good father.

That's great.

Isn't that amazing?

That's so.

What's funny is it had a couple of things. One,

you're funny in here it had I was the first

one to introduced a Bible verse, which I love, I love,

And then you you're the one that immediately pivots into

every person matters. Yeah, that's crazy.

Yeah, And your sum up really is the answer. To

sum it up, being made and the image of God

means you were created to reflect his nature, carry his purpose,

and live in a relationship with him.

You're not an accident. You're handcrafted by the Creator. I

sort of said all those things.

Yeah you did, That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you're pretty great.

You're pretty great, pretty great, well almost, I'm going to

carry you around in my pocket.

Right right, and then I'm going to put you in

my pocket next time.

I need a brilliant answer.

Hey, So here's the question. How do people let us

know which one they voted for?

I don't know. Well, they gotta. They gotta send us

a message. Okay, so they can if they're watching on YouTube,

just leave it in the comments, or you can send

it to info at the bible guys dot com. Yeah,

you vote, but there you go.

So hey, I I that's pretty great.

I think it, But I promise you I typed that

in while we were sitting here, yep, while you were

doing the roll in.

Well, you know what, what's really funny is I'm glad

that you did it that way because it gave me

a chance to win. Yes, had you straight up asked

it what does it mean to be made in the

image of God?

It would have given you a pretty.

Big theological yes.

And so your your way gave me a chance to work.

That's part of the fun. Quite honestly. If you play

around with AI at all, you can tell it to

pretend like it's whatever, and it'll act like that that's

great instead, and so it's kind of playing a character

at that point. It made it made it more fun. Well,

good job, Chris, and I think pretty soon the Bible

guys are going to be out of a job. Yes, yeah,

because chet GPT would be discipling all of our people.

You know that's a scary thought, right.

You just have to remember people, chet GPT does not

have a soul. So while it can give you, it

can regurgitate Bible teaching from other people, what it can't

do is determine or be led by the spirit, and

that's determine what is God's will.

Right, So well, I tell you what, Jeff, even though

that that task was very intimidating for me, Yes, to

go up against a You'll notice that I never gave up.

You never did.

I never gave You're so proud of you.

And you know who else never gives up? Who Jesus says,

always pray and.

Never give up.

That's the same pray and never give up.

Yeah, so he's telling us to never give up. Jesus

never gave up.

Well, you talked about persistency and yesterday's episode, yes, yeah,

so here's another one.

We're continuing on with this theme.

Yeah, is this is this one close to the one

you referenced yesterday? Problem? No, it's not, is it Okay?

So anyways, in Luke chapter eighteen, verse one, and we're

going to read all the way through verse eight, it says,

one day Jesus told his disciples a story to show

that they should always pray and never give up. He

said there was a judge in a certain city who

neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of

that city came to him repeatedly saying, give me justice

in this dispute with my enemy. And the judge ignored

her for a while, but finally said to himself, I

don't fear God or care about people, but this one,

which is such a funny. I don't fear God or

care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy.

I'm going to see what she gets. See that she

gets justice, because she's wearing me out with her constant requests.

Then the Lord said, learn a lesson from this unjust judge,

even he rendered a just decision in the end. So

don't you think God will surely give justice to his

chosen people who cry out to him day and night?

Will he keep putting them off. I tell you he

will grant justice to them quickly. But when the Son

of Man returns, how many will he find on earth

who have faith? Well? There you go.

Well this is a straight up lesson on persistence.

That's right. I just think it's funny that the phrasing

Jesus says. And then the judge said to himself, I

don't fear God or love people or care about people.

Yeah, and by the way, like the two most important things. Ever,

the judge says, I don't. I don't fear God or

care about people.

I'm the worst human being on the planet. That's what

it says, right, That.

Is pretty much it.

Yeah, And what a sort of an odd comparison, isn't it.

So he's saying, like, hey, even though this really godless,

unjust judge gave a just answer in the end, uh,

you know I'll do better than that.

Even right.

Yeah. Yeah. The implication to this that God is perfect

and the exact opposite of this horrible judge. It's not saying, hey,

God's a pretty horrible judge too, but if you keep

bugging and give you what you want. He's saying God

is perfect and everyone in the same way that remember

yesterday when we talked and it said, Hey, even you

sinful parents, you don't give, you know, bad gifts to

your kids when they ask, you give them good things.

So how much more will your heavenly father do this? Well,

now it's the same idea, only he doesn't give you

both sides. He's given you one. Believing that you assume

that God is the exact opposite of this jerk.

Yeah, it's almost like it's almost like what he's saying

is your persistence can cause a just uh you know,

what are we looking for outcome? Yeah, persistence can bring

about a just outcome, even for the from.

The worst of people.

Right, So don't you think that persistence will persuade even

the best of us? Right? And obviously God's the best

of the best. That's really what he's saying. He's saying,

persistence can even persuade the worst of people. So so

you have to believe that it's going to be able

to persuade God, who's the best of people.

And and uh, and and and again.

It went along with that story I told yesterday as well. Right,

there's another verse, there's another story in the Bible where

I told you, uh, the persistence of the guy knocking

for the loaf of bread. It's almost the same thing,

is it's it's the woman, he said. He's saying, this

woman is driving me crazy with their constant requests. And

he said saying like, hey, those who come to me

day and night and plea.

Hey, So let me ask you this question.

And I think I've asked you this before off camera,

but I've not asked you this before on camera.

Okay, okay? Which is this?

So you know how the Bible says the effect of

you know, the effective righteous prayer or you know, or

excuse me, the fervent And I what am I saying?

The fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much, That's what?

Okay.

Do you think that if you have a prairie quest,

like like a like a big, big prairie quest. Oh no,

you know, I have a job interview, or there's a

health diagnosis we're praying for a result, or you know,

do you think that it makes a difference if you

have And let me let me give you an example.

So we have a guy on staff or not not

on staff, on our elder boy named Bob Harvey, right,

and and he is like, he is known to be

the guy if he prays for something I need. We

need Bob to pray, Bob to pray. Right, He's prayed

for good weather for baptisms for.

How many years?

Twenty five years? Yeah, and so far, and so we've

never had we've never had a rain out on a baptism.

And so we did have it thundering and lightning in

the background when we were doing a baptism at a

lake and the last like three baptisms, you could see

the big black clouds coming into the south of us.

And then we baptized the last guy come up out

of the water and here we all come running out

of the water. And then it was a record rain

in the town that our church, that our Starting Heights

campus sits in. It was a record rain. We'd never

had that much rain in that short of time before.

But we made it all the way through that We

baptized like one hundred people that day, and we made

it through the whole baptism. And I told Bob, I said, Bob, dude,

I don't know what is next year. I need to

be living living better because God answered your prayer. But

just barely buddy, right, right, and Bob says, oh, well,

if we left it up for you to pray this thing, would.

That's right, that's right. And so it's just for the

sake of argument.

So let's just say you you ask Bob Harvey to

pray for your you know, big, big request, and then

you ask three Bob Harvey's right, and you're like, I

have three Bob Harvey's praying for my prayer, yes, for this,

for this you know, diagnosis, this, this result or whatever. Okay,

So here's my question. This is a theological question. It's

almost like a stump the pastor do you believe that

if you ask, for instance, ten Bob Harvey's that it's

better than asking three, And so you're like, well, I

have to I have to ask more because I want

this is an important request, right, I mean, this is

a serious thing, right, And so it's like so it's

like it's like, yeah, the more people I have praying

for this really important thing, the better it is. Or

are you under the belief like no, no, no, no, no,

you know, like, hey, I've got three really strong prayer

warriors praying for this thing, and that's good enough.

That's a great question. Isn't it one. I'm not exactly

sure I know the answer, so I'll just say that

from the get go. But it does say that the

fervent prayer of a righteous man that's an individual, accomplishes much.

Humanity avails much. So you're focusing on the wrong thing,

fervent prayer of a righteous person. So it's the righteous person,

fervent prayer is the focus, not the gender element there

accomplish as much.

Make sure nobody misunderstood.

So my point there was that's a singular statement about

a singular individual, So your prayer matters. But prayer is

spiritual warfare. You're going to battle spiritually, and in the war,

I would think that you're always better off with more

than less fighters, right, So I think that that's a

big part of it. As matter of fact, that's why

we call them prayer warriors, you know, people that are

just dialed in. It's why we have a whole group

of people every Sunday that you know, just our intercessor

types that go to battle for people spiritually and they

pray here. I always love to invite people who love

me to be praying during the messages, you know, when

we're preaching and things like that. I have a pastor

friend who has a whole team of people all three

services that he preaches. It's a different team of people

who gather and pray the whole time the preaching is

happening that entire service. I love that idea. Right, they're

doing spiritual warfare. It's kind of like the air cover, Right,

it's the air force coming in over top praying. I

love this idea, and this I think comes from in

the Old Testament chronicles where God says, if my people,

who are that's plural, who are called by my name,

will humble themselves and seek my face and turn from

their wicked ways, then well I hear from heaven and

I'll forgive their sins and heal their land. Right. So

I think that the bigger the problem, the more of

us need to be praying about it. And so he's

now saying, I am really moved when it's my people,

not just my person, but when my people are coming together,

collectively repenting, collectively seeking my face, collectively asking me to

rescue them. God says, I'm moved by that. So I

think that, yeah, there's probably some substance to this idea

of the more Bob Harvey type prayer warriors. I can

get on my team if it aligns with God's. Well. Now,

what the other thing you have to know is real

prayer warriors also are going to be discerning as to

what they should be praying about.

Right.

There's a story in the Old Testament about this guy Balem, remember,

and he's a prophet and he gets hired by the

enemies to come and curse the people, and it cursed

God's people, and then God prevents and he can't do it,

so he gives a blessing instead of a curse. You know,

you can't just be hired to just pray anything. So

a wise godly person who spends a lot of time

in prayer is going to have the wisdom and discernment

as to what should and shouldn't be being prayed for too.

So it's not like, man, I just really need that.

To keep the analogy from yesterday, I really really want

that masarati. If I had ten Bob Harvey's praying for

my maserati, I'll get it right. Again, God's not a

good luck charm. He's not a genie in a bottle.

So that's not the point. But when it comes to

real warfare when you're talking about bringing your child back

from the brink of addictions, or when you're praying that

God will reach this person who's far from him. The

more people you have praying all along those lines, the

better when you're praying God, how do we reach the

nation of India. The more people we can pray together,

because there's real spiritual warfare there against the demons of

you know, that kingdom, they're all those kinds of things.

I think the more people we can have praying, the

more air cover we have.

Yeah.

And the reason, by the way, the reason why I'm

asking is because somebody recently introduced that thought, which is

and I've always been under the impression, oh, yeah, you know,

if you have ten, twenty is better, right, And if

you have twenty, thirty is better right. And I've always

thought like, hey, the more important the request, the more

people you should have praying. Well, some people aren't public people,

they're private people. And then and then all of a sudden,

that sort of led into a discussion about, well, wait

a minute, but I have a few praying, and the

few that I have are prayer warrior people, And what

are you saying Chris, are you saying that multiple makes

a difference? And I'm like yes, And then all of

a sudden I got into this theological belief discussion about

but yeah, but if you have people who have a

really strong faith, then that's the same, right Like, it

never promises, you know, if you have thirty is better

than two.

It never says that.

So it's almost like what you sort of have to

do is you have to take every verse about prayer

and you have to stack them all up, and then

you have to sort of reason and conclude for yourself.

And it sounds like what you're saying is you probably

lean toward what I lean, which is it sounds like

more people the better.

Yeah, you know, I think again, I'm always challenging the

Western mindset versus the Eastern mindset, the way that the

people would have heard these things God works. So the

Western mindset is very individualistic, especially the American mindset, very individualistic.

It's my faith, my prayers, my needs, my family, my

little cluster. But in the way that the original listeners

would have heard any of the things that Jesus said,

the way God God works in villages and in tribes

and nations, right, he works with peoples. Now we are

individually responsible, but he works through great leaders of groups

of peoples. That that's how he does. And so I

think that there is this collective corporate responsibility. I think

it's interesting. It was the whole church was praying when

God answered the prayer and set Peter free from prison. Right,

It wasn't just the one. Remember that girl wrote as

she comes and opens the door or answers the door,

Peter standing at the door, she slams the door and

runs back. And you do, never believing Peter staying at

the door. They're all inside praying. They've been praying all

night for him, and so yeah, they don't prayer, right,

which is still it's hysterical. But you know, I think

all throughout early church history it was the groups of

people praying. And there is something very special when you

step out of your private faith and begin to learn

to go on this spiritual journey with with other believers,

and not that you just go find how about how

about you became how about you and your friends become

prayer warriors. It's not like there's just a few lucky

people get prayers answered. It's just there's people who don't

stop praying, right, They just lean into it, and they

the more you pray, the more your faith builds. The

more your faith builds, the deeper your walk is with God.

The deeper your walk is with God, the more you're

in alignment with His will, the more you get what

you pray for.

Right.

That that's how it works. And so instead of just

looking for you know, in our case of Bob Harvey,

how about if you and I became Bob Harvey's right, Right,

That's that's the better way is for us to begin

to grow in this discipline of prayer. And there's going

to be a day when your family needs you to

be able to rattle the throne of Heaven for them, right,

And so you got to get you know, you don't

suddenly become that person. You grow into being that kind

of prayer warrior kind of person.

That's awesome.

And that's what he's saying here. Yeah, keep you know,

let's finish with this one thing. In verse six, it

says learn a lesson from this unjust judge. That's what

he says, right, And you just have to understand when

Jesus gives these stories, they're for you. It's not just

a thing he's talking to talking about. Right, they're for

us to figure out what is the lesson, what's the application?

And the application was because she she was persistent.

Yeah, so don't you think that God will surely give

justice to the chosen people of Croyd.

To him day and night.

That's right.

Yeah, So so keep crying out, keep going to God,

keep being persistent. That's fantastic because because it makes a difference.

So that's great. All right, Well that is our time,

So what a great discussion and hopefully we'll see you

tomorrow on the Bible.

Guys,