Impudent Prayer

“I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.” Luke 11:8

“Impudence” is the key word.  Other versions show “importunity,” “persistence,” “boldness,” “shamelessness,” and “brazen insistence.”  All good translations.

The word is anaideia.  That’s the negative prefix an + aideia (“shame, respect, modesty”).  Souter glosses it as “shameless persistence (e.g. in greed).”  The ESV translates it “impudence.”  More casually, we might call it “nerve.”

Jesus is teaching us to pray impudent, nervy prayers, because that’s when we get serious with God.  He likes that, and doors start opening up.  Matthew Henry: “We prevail with men by impudence because they are displeased with it, but with God because he is pleased with it.”

As we enter 2011, how are we praying?  Do we have the nerve to ask God for what we really long for and what would really display his glory?  Let’s not settle for polite prayers that bore us and change nothing.

(HT: Ray Ortlund)