[Propertalk] Shameless audacity

[Joe Parrish]

"...it suddenly dawned on me that this neighbor whose cupboards are bare, isn't knocking continuously at all! He doesn't come back again and again. Just a crisp, loud wrap on the front door. That's all.
"The word Luke chooses, which is usually translated as persistence in our Bibles, really means something quite different. The word walks into our text for its one and only cameo appearance in the pages of the New Testament. Luke chooses deliberately to use this word as a way that we are to come when we pray the Lord's Prayer during worship.

"Literally, the word means, shamelessness, or barefacedness. The neighbor rises from his bed not so much out of persistence, but because of the shameless audacity of his needy friend. This friend has the audacity to believe that even at the untimely hour of midnight, he will be heard and answered. The man dares to hold his friend to who he is and what the law of hospitality requires him to do.

"God is not calling us to cajole, wheedle, beg, plead, coax, placate, grovel, and mindlessly offer rote prayers up to heaven in the hope that God will finally grow bored with our persistence and answer us to be rid of us. Hear the Good News of the Gospel: God is calling us to be shameless saints; those who dare to stand barefaced before God, face to face, eyeball to eyeball, as neighbor to neighbor, and to ask for help." 

Thomas N. Hall

http://desperatepreacher.com/sermonbuilder/


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20100724/aeac28b4/attachment.htm>