Sunday 28 September 2025

Nollamara Church Of Christ Sermons. Raw transcript of meeting:

Date Of Sermon: 28 September 2025

Speaker: Jamie Boland

Sermon Title: Keep On Keeping On

Scripture Reading: Luke 18:1-8

 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said in a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God. Nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, grant me justice against my adversary.

For some time, he refused. But finally he said to himself, even though I don't fear God or care what people think yet, because this widow keeps bothering me, I will. See that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me.

And the Lord said, listen to what the unjust judge says and will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night. Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice and quickly. However, when the son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

Thank you, Denise,

for that reading. So a couple of weeks ago we finished our look at the Lord's Prayer, but I would like for us to continue this series on planting seeds. What I wanna do today is I want to rejig a message I first preached when I came to No Ma. It was over two and a half years ago, so there's actually quite a few new faces since then.

The message is both timely. And relevant. Now, as I shared earlier, as we've looked at prayer, we've looked at a simple formula. We want to keep it simple, keep it, keep it up. And today what we're gonna do is we're gonna focus on the third leg of that tripod and type of my message is, keep on keeping on.

Let's commit this time to the Lord. Father, we thank you that we gather as you redeemed, blood bought people. That we're no longer slaves to fear. We are children of God. As Diane prayed, it's only because the son of God came and gave himself for us. We gather now in the Spirit around your word, father speak.

We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, years ago when, uh, we were still at Suby Church of Christ, Claudia and I had a, a Saturday night ritual. Now, I used to work the, um, two Sunday services. So what we'd do is we'd attend as a family, the Saturday night service, 5:00 PM the kids were still small. So what we'd is, we'd pack them something to eat for after the service, and then we try to be home around seven 30 so we can put them to bed.

Now as we drive in up the street and we pull into the driveway, I would get out the car. I'd quickly race inside, I'd switch on the computer. This is the time before smartphones. Now you do it all on your smartphone, but back then I'd race inside, turn on the computer, I'd switch it on, rush back outside, help get the kids out of the car.

By the time I get back inside, the computers aren't ready to go. I just do one little click on the Pizza Hut website. Our details that come up automatically along with our usual order. It's a standing order we do every Saturday night. All I had to do was hit that send button, literally 15 seconds online and dinner is done.

I'm, you know, it's, it's all organized. I then help Claudia put the kids in their pajamas, and as she's putting them to bed, I grab the car keys. I drive two minutes around the corner. I collect dinner. Okay. It was machine-like efficiency. Now I'd be on the website. They'd even tell us how long our pizzas would, would be until they're ready, which was usually around 14 minutes.

And so what I would do is I would time my arrival to coincide with two piping hot pizzas. I could see them just rolling off the oven. Okay. It's minimal, fast, minimal delay. It's all designed for customer satisfaction. They want their customers to be satisfied and pleased and come back. Except this one night.

Now the website said 14 minutes as usual. When I arrived, I saw that the shop was full of customers. It was packed, tight, full of customers. This little Pizza hut just up in Short Hill, usually I turn up and it was empty. And even though the monitor, you go to Pizza Hut and Domino's, the monitor says your name and it tells you if your order's ready.

It said my order was ready. That night, I had to wait another 40 minutes before I got my pizzas. Okay, that's 55 minutes from the time of placing my order to receiving my meal. Okay? It's almost one hour of my life. I'll never get back again. Now, as I waited, I listened as customers began to complain, and I can tell you what I saw was pretty ugly.

Hungry people are angry people. Do you know that We even have a word for it now? Hangry. You know that word? It's a combination of hungry and angry. Put them together as an amalgam. Hangry. You should have heard the abuse directed toward this poor Chinese kid that was on the front counter. It was terrible.

Some of it was racist. Now it's been said that our sin always looks worse when we see it in someone else. You heard that before. When you see your sin in someone else, it looks quite terrible. And so what I saw that night was the only thing that stopped me from going back down that path and getting angry as well.

I saw with my own eyes just how ugly the sin of impatience is. Instead, what I did is I stopped, I paused, I took a breath, and I thought to myself, here I am. I'm starting to get a little bit impatient because I'm waiting longer than normal, but how lucky am I to be eating a meal tonight when around 800 million people go to bed each night on an empty stomach, one in 10 people?

That's the statistic. One in 10 people will go to bed hungry and here's a shop full of customers unable to wait 50 odd minutes for a pizza. Now think of our modern society. Think of our condition we've become, you know, not to have to wait for things. Yeah. We are conditioned to no longer have to wait for things.

Now, I dunno if you keep up with all the terms they use these days to describe the, the different generations. Now, most of us here as I survey, we are baby boomers. You know what baby boomers are? We know this. Yeah. Okay. If you're born somewhere between the end of World War II and the early 1960s, that's you.

I'm the second column along, I'm Generation X. That covers, you know, those born in the early sixties up until say, 1980. Generation Y describes those born between 1981 and 1995. Now it's been said that Generation Y should be renamed Generation I for generation instant, okay? They get things instantly as probably worse for those who are even younger.

Now, think of the world, young people of have inherited, okay? You've got instant meals. You don't need to prepare anything these days. You just go to the supermarket, take it from the freezer section, get home, nuke it in the microwave. Yeah, instant mail. You got instant messaging. No need to wait for that letter to arrive in the mail.

Okay? Young people soon won't know what mail is. Snail mail, you've got instant information. Real time news 24 7. When I was a kid, you had to wait until 6:00 PM to find out the news headlines. These days it's popping up every few seconds on your phone. You got instant credit. No need to work hard and save up like our parents did.

You can have now what? They took years to build up. And this is my favorite one. Speed dating. Know instantly whether that person is the right one for you without wasting your precious time. Okay? We live in a world in which we are conditioned to getting what we want when we want. If you're hungry and the fridge is empty, you know fast food's just around the corner.

And if you can't be bothered getting in your car to leave the house, just call Uber Eats. Okay? This is generation instant. The only thing instant we no longer accept is instant coffee. Now I used to drink instant coffee, and then I bought my Italian wife an Italian coffee machine, and now I'm a coffee snob.

So here's the question. How does living in a culture that expects things instantly affect us spiritually? Have you thought about that? If you are conditioned to get things instantly, how will that affect us spiritually? I have a good friend named Paul. He used to pastor a church up in Greenwood. He once told me the God laid on his heart a burden to pray for the unsafe family members of his church.

And he said for 10 weeks, that was the sole focus at our weekly prayer meeting. Now after 10 weeks, he said there was no fruit, no one had been saved, not a single soul. And so what do you do? There's no bang for your buck. There's no instant satisfaction. Would you just give up, would you say forget about it.

Hey, God. You know, we tried. We gave it our best. We prayed it didn't work. We're moving on. Has that ever been your experience? Have you ever prayed for something for a long time and nothing seemed to happen? Maybe you prayed for a loved one to come for to Christ, maybe a spouse or a child. Maybe you've been praying for years for healing from an illness or for reconciliation, for a broken relationship.

And at first you were eager, you're full of faith. But then as the weeks turned into months and the months turned into years, your prayers grew quieter until eventually they just stopped altogether. I wonder if that's ever been your experience. Do you, I have a twin brother and we grew up close. We're we were really, really tight, but we grew apart when I came to faith in Jesus.

And boy did, I used to pray my heart would break for him. I will pray for him with passion and tears. And when I prayed, I believed and I had faith that God would do something. I had big faith that a big God would, you know, just break through somehow his heartened heart. But over time, I stopped. It made me realize that I'd lost that faith I had in the beginning.

That child childlike faith. I believed in my big God for big things. Christian singer Michael W. Smith. He has a, a really good song called Missing Person. The chorus goes like this. There was a boy who had the faith to move a mountain and like a child, he would believe without a reason, without a trace, he disappeared into the void.

I've been searching for that missing person. You know, when I hear that song, I hear those words. I think that's me. I'm that missing person. I am that missing person because I used to believe without a reason and I used to have faith, a childlike faith, and now I'm searching, where's that person gone? Do you know people will talk about how they just don't see God at work in their life anymore?

You ever heard that? Pastors hear it? You know, pastor, I just don't see God at work in my life anymore. And the only thing I can think to say is, well, what is it that you're actually believing God for? What is it that you're holding onto in faith for God to do and move in your life for? 'cause that's the point.

If you're not seeing God at work in your life anymore, maybe it's because you've stopped believing God for things. Because of that, your faith has dried up and because of that, you've stopped praying. I reading today was from Luke chapter 18. John once found a retelling of this parable that was set in modern day America.

And the way it's told, you know, retold, it's frankly quite shocking. So lemme give her a trigger warning if that's you. Let me, let me read this paraphrase. It says, an American, an African American woman living on Chicago South side. She sought to have her apartment properly heated during the freezing winter months, despite city law and the matter her, her landlord refused.

He said, no way. Now the woman was a widow. She's desperately poor. She's ignorant of the legal system, but she took the case to the district court on her own behalf, just as she declared ought to be done. It was her ill fortune. However, to appear repeatedly before the same judge who was it turned out, was a self-confessed atheist and a racist bigot.

The only principle by which he lived was, as he put it, that black should be kept in their place. The possibilities of a ruling favorable to this widow were therefore bleak. They became even bleak as she realized that she lacked the one indispensable ingredient necessary for favorable rulings in cases like these, namely a satisfactory bribe.

Nevertheless, she persisted. At first. The judge didn't even so much look at her before dismissing her case, but over time it began to notice. You see, the case was too insignificant to go before a higher court, so this guy was stuck dealing with this matter. Just another Blackie thought, stupid enough to think that she can get justice in my court.

Then her persistence made himself conscious. This turned to guilt and then anger. Finally raging and embarrassed. He granted her petitioned. He granted her petition and enforced the law. He was a massive victory over the system, at least as it functioned in his corrupted courtroom. Now this certainly puts the injustice of this parable.

Jesus taught into a whole new light. It fleshes out just what's happening now. This sort of, this sort of stuff we should hear. It should make our blood boil. Yeah. Read the prophets. The prophets are angry over this sort of stuff amongst God's people and it raises the question for us, to whom do we turn if we're too small to fight the system, if we're too small to fight the system, where do we go?

To whom do we turn? Now, let me clear up one thing before we move on. The point of this parable, Jesus told is not to present an image of God. Yes, God is the one to whom we petition, but God is not a corrupt, unjust judge who needs to be worn down, so he'll somehow change his mind and do the right thing.

Now as parents, we know how persistent children can be when they want something. Yeah. Do you remember those days? It's easier when you're a grandparent, you can just give in and, you know, just hand 'em back to their parents. But when you're, you know, the primary caregiver, you've actually got to actually, you know, parent these children.

And when my kids were young, they would push and push and push to get what they wanted. And even if I told them no, or even if I told them to be patient and wait, they're young. They don't know how to wait. All they know when you're young is, is now. Yeah, all you know when you're a small child is right here, right now.

And so what some bad parents will do is this, for the sake of getting some peace of peace and quiet and for the sake of, you know, just getting that child to leave me alone, they cave in and give the child what they want. Let me tell you, this is not the point of the parable if you read the parable this way.

This is not the way it's meant to be read. Now, think about how Jesus framed this story. Luke says, and Jesus told his disciples a parable to show that they should always pray and not lose heart. This is the point of the parable that we might always pray and not lose heart. Yes. And Jesus rounds out the parable by saying, when the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?

Now, this is a statement that should shake us to our core. Yeah. This should shake you to your core when you hear these words, when Jesus returns, he's gonna be looking for a certain kind of faith, and it's a faith that perseveres in prayer. Can you see how this parable's not about God, but it's about us.

That we should always pray and that we should have a, a, a type of faith that gives us perseverance in prayer. This parable is Jesus' way of reminding generation instant. The prayer is hard work and needs to, needs to be persevered with. This is the sort of faith he's looking for. And so the question is, if Jesus were to return today, what kind of faith would he find in us?

If Jesus was to look into your life today, what kind of faith would he find in you? Let's think about this first verse. Jesus said, we should always pray and not lose heart. Think about the story of Hannah. Hannah was barren and the Bible says year after year she'd go with her husband to worship before the Lord at at Shiloh, and year after year she would pour out her heart asking for a son.

Eli, the priest is there. He sees her and he can see that, you know, her lips are moving, but no words are coming out. Understand what's going on here. This is the quiet prayer of someone in deep anguish. Someone who has prayed for so long, she can no longer give voice to that deep, deep longing that's in her heart.

Eli sees this and Eli misunderstands it. He thinks she's been drinking. Let me read from First Samuel, look at the words that I've highlighted that describe Hannah's emotional state. In her deep anguish. In her deep anguish, Hannah prayed to the Lord weeping bitterly, and she made a vow saying, Lord almighty, if only you will look on your servant's misery and remember me, and do not forget your servant, but give her a son.

Then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life and no razor will ever be used on his head. As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart and her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, how long are you gonna stay drunk?

Put away your wine? Not so my Lord. Hannah replied, I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer. I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Do not take your servant for a wick wicked woman. I've been praying here out of my great anguish and grief, can you see her emotional condition?

Now we know the end of the story. God answers her prayer and she gives birth to Samuel. But before that answer comes, there is heartache and pain. There is the agony of waiting and wanting this sorrow that comes from longing for God to do something and break through in my life and move in the way that my heart wants you to move.

And this is why Jesus tells us to keep on praying and to not lose heart. Can I tell you, Jesus understands the heavy emotional toll it takes on us when we pray and we pray. And yet, heaven seems silent. He knows the hurt that you feel when you pour out your soul time and time again. And he says, I know how you feel, but I want you to push through and persevere.

Always pray, and don't lose heart. Keep it simple. Keep it real. Yes, keep it real. Pour out your soul. Let it all flow out before him and keep it up. It's a beautiful little verse in Psalm 56, verse eight. Record my misery. List my tears on your scroll. It's a beautiful little verse tells us that Heaven remembers when we are desperate and we pour out our soul before the Lord Heaven remembers.

Can I encourage you those things that you're praying for? Those things that you've been coming before the Lord and pouring out your soul, please don't give up. Don't lose heart. God sees. God hears and heaven remembers, many of us here are probably familiar with George Mueller. He was a Christian of evangelists and director of an orphanage in Bristol in the uk.

Now he was known as a man of prayer. It was said that he prayed daily for the conversion of five close friends. Now get this. He's praying every single day for five close friends. Friends he loves. The first came to faith after five years. Three came to faith over the following decades, and the last was converted shortly after Mueller's death.

Some 60 years later. Okay. That's an amazing example of per persevering grave. Now, we look on the other side of that, but understand he went to the grave, Muller went to the grave having prayed for this one close friend for decades, and he'd not yet even come to faith. That's an amazing example of persevering faith.

Let me bring this back to the parable. In verse two, Jesus says, in a certain town there was a judge who needed feared God nor cared what people thought. Now, if it's interesting, you know, if this man was Jewish, he would at least feel, you know, the need as a Jewish person to honor God in some way. But he just doesn't care.

He doesn't care what God thinks, and he doesn't care what you think. And eventually though he says. Even though I don't fear God or care what people think yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me. Now, that is the new translation in the NOVI think the old translation used to say, uh, wearing me out, but I like this.

Do you see what Jesus is doing here? Yes. He creates this extreme example of an unjust judge to use it as a contrast to God. Jesus is saying, if this man who doesn't care about God, doesn't care about justice, and he certainly doesn't care about you, if he will eventually grant this woman's petition, how much more your loving heavenly Father, that's what Jesus is doing here.

If this man who doesn't give a rip about God, a rip about justice, and he cares nothing for you, if he will do this. How much more your loving heavenly Father heaven. That's what Jesus is saying. He's saying, don't lose heart because you think that maybe God doesn't care. He does. The lack of an immediate answer to prayer might not be God's way of saying no.

It might just be his way of saying what not yet. And yes, there will be times. There will be times in our lives. We will pray and God will tell us no. And there will be times when he tells us to wait, but more often than not, God wants to grant your a petition. So pray. But please know there's something to be learned from praying, even when it seems there is no answer.

So persevere, understand. God sees a much bigger picture than we see, and often his timetable is not the same as ours here. Yeah. Think about the response of the widow in this story. In the ancient world, widows were amongst the most powerless people in society. This woman is helpless. We saw this in in, in Uganda.

You know, you'd see widows who were married, the husband dies, she loses the property because the family just come in and kick her out. So she's lost her spouse, she loses her children, and she loses the place where she lives. And the law would often do nothing. That's Africa today. It's probably many parts of the world today.

It was the, the way in Jesus' time as well. Jesus uses an example of a woman who is helpless, the example of a woman who could do nothing to change her circumstances. It's this deliberate way of doing this to, you know, reinforce that all of us, every single one of us, we're all gonna face situations in life that we will be powerless to change.

That's why he, he uses this woman. And at first the judge refuses her petition and she could walk away, you know, feeling let down, ignored. She could rightly say, I'm a victim of injustice. Think about the temptation to deal with this situation another way. Don't get mad, get even, you know, firebombing the courthouse is not an option.

Taking the law into your own hands is not an option. So she pursues the only option available to her. She goes back before the one who's able to make a difference. She goes back before the judge. This is exactly what prayer is. Prayer is relying on someone else. Prayer says, I may not be in control, but I trust in the one who is.

That's what prayer is to generation instant. Jesus is saying, keep on keeping on. Pursue the only appropriate path you have. Pray, and if you don't get an immediate answer, then keep on asking. Keep on seeking. Keep on knocking. Sometimes God delays not to deny us, but to deepen us.

Can I say that again? Sometimes that delay is not God denying us. It's God's way of deepening us. As I said earlier, Jesus closes the parable with words that should shake us to our core. When the son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? What is Jesus looking for? He's looking for a faith that manifests itself in persevering prayer.

Can I tell you that sort of faith is usually found in circumstances that will cripple us and bring us to our knees. You don't have to, you know, keep praying and praying and praying for those things that are simple, that, and that don't affect your life. You often have to keep on praying for those things that will cripple you and bring you to your knees.

And if that's you. If you have been bringing something to the Lord over and over and over again, see this as a chance to develop the sort of faith that Jesus will be pleased to find in you when he returns. I like the example we see in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus prays multiple times for strength. He prays and he prays, and in Luke's gospel we read and being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly.

Jesus went into that time. He prayed and he prayed and he prayed and he was able to go to the cross because he won the victory in prayer in Gethsemane. It was Gethsemane prayers that got him the victory at the cross.

Let me bring this back to us. Is there something that you used to wrestle with in prayer? Something that used to break your heart and drive you to tears? And maybe now the tears have stopped because your faith has run dry. I wonder if that's you. Jesus has given us the example, a powerless yet persistent widow who kept coming back until God's will was done.

How will we respond? Will we lose heart or will we pick up again that burden that God has given us and keep on keeping on.

I wanna close by finishing the story. I began earlier of my friend, the pastor, named Paul, as I said, as a church. They prayed for 10 weeks for unsafe family members. It was 10 weeks of prayer, but heaven was silent. So what do you do? How do you respond? Do you throw in the towel? Do you say, God, look, you know, we prayed, we gave it our best shot.

It's not working. So, you know, we just give up. Can I tell you this church persevered. They prayed and they prayed until they saw some fruit of their persistence. I wanna share a story that came out of that time. There was a, a lady in the church, she had a son who was in a very dark place. Outward Lee. His life looked good.

He'd graduated from uni. He was holding down a decent job, but he was lost. He was a broken shell of a man. When he shared his testimony, he talked about how one night he was due to go partying with some friends, and so he said, I, I was in this house. We're waiting to go out late. I was stone cold, sober. He was waiting to take some free cocaine.

When he heard this audible voice, this voice said, what does God think about all this? Now, of course, naturally hearing this voice freaked him out. So he went to another room to sit by himself to kind of chill out, and he said, I began to think, what does God think of my life? He knew what sort of life he was living.

He believed God was real, and he knew that if I was to die, I would go and stand before my maker and, and things wouldn't turn out well. Now he compared that voice to God tapping him on the shoulder. The trouble is that the tap didn't really work. It only got his attention momentarily. That night, he proceeded indulged in a cocktail of drugs and he said he was used to taking drugs and having a good, good time.

But that night he experienced what he called hell. You see the tap on the shoulder didn't work. So God grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and gave him a glimpse of a lost eternity. He said that night there was no drug fueled high. All he sensed was fear and death. He said his soul was, you know, gripped by this dark sense of alienation from all that is good, all that is God.

'cause that's what Hell is. Yeah. An absence of God, an absence of good, no peace, no joy, weeping and gnashing of teeth. And he said that was that a few nights later he went to the church, he poured out his soul. In confession to Paul, prayed to sinner's Prayer, gave his life to Jesus. And as he reached for the door to leave that night, he, he said he realized that his heart, which, you know, he'd walked in his heart, felt so broken, so devoid of life, so filled with pain.

Suddenly it felt healed and whole. Then as he reached for that door, he said he heard that same audible voice again. This time the voice said, now you know why Jesus died on the cross. You see, he'd gone to Sunday school as a kid. He knew all the Bible stories, but at that moment, he experienced the greatest truth of all.

He said it was as if Jesus had died for him right at that very moment, that Jesus had taken all his brokenness and in exchange given him the gift of his own life. That man was me. I was lost. I, I was broken. I had no purpose, no hope, but I did have a church that was persevering in prayer for me, and in time got intervened and he intervened in a quite miraculous way.

I was the first unsafe family member who came to faith. Now, within a few months, this small church of about a hundred people, they saw another un, another six unsafe family members come to trust in Jesus. Okay? It's remarkable, remarkable testimony. That's the power of persevering prayer. And as a people, we wanna plant seeds for the future of this church.

We've begun to pray. We have begun to seek the Lord. We've begun to ask him to move, but we need to keep on keeping on. Amen. I believe things are starting to move, but there's still much more ground to break. I'd like to invite you, we're having a time of prayer on Saturday from 10:00 AM kind of slightly changing things up the way we do it.

We're breaking into smaller groups, if that makes you more comfortable. But if I could exhort you to come along. If you can't, then please pray from home. I put the prayer, we have the prayer points in the friendly messenger. Please keep planting seeds for the future of this church. Please keep praying.

Don't lose heart. Lemme close with these words from our reading today. From the lips of our Savior. Will not God do what is right for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? And the answer to that question is, no, he won't. He will do what is right. He won't keep putting us off.

He will do what is right. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you that you're a good, good God, that you've given us the gift of prayer, that you've given us a powerful weapon to come before the throne of God and to ask to give us this day our daily bread. Father, it delights your heart when your children humbly come before you seek your face and ask that you would move.

Father, help us to be a people that don't waver in faith, but keep coming back to the throne, keep coming back to the one who can move. When we can't, you can. And so Father, we thank you for this story that Jesus, the master teacher, created to show us that we should always pray and not lose heart. Help us to keep looking to you.

Help us to be a people who would persevere in prayer that would have the sort of faith that Jesus will be pleased with when he returns. Father, we commit to you the future of this church. We ask for you to move, do that, which we can't open doors and bless us, we pray for the glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.