Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: Hi, friends. Thank you for showing up again. This is Shanna Williams, and this is the Grayson Grit Mindset podcast. And I'm glad you joined me again. And we are in May. It's almost halfway through 2026. I cannot believe it, but here we are. And it's a gorgeous day here in East Texas, and I can't wait to share with you what I feel like is a really beautiful episode today. And it's encouraging to me. And to be honest with you, when I do these podcast episodes, I don't always know exactly what I'm going to say. I don't.
A very detailed script printed out in front of me. I have a general idea, maybe a little bit of an outline, some scriptures.
But I always speak from where I'm at in my heart and maybe where the Lord is encouraging me.
And so if you've been listening the last few weeks, you know that we've been talking about the parables and the parables that Jesus taught, and they're just so encouraging.
So I want to just, first of all say, if you haven't been listening, go back and listen to the last three episodes, I think, where we talk about them because, man, they're just so powerful and they're so good.
And this week we are talking about, this episode's called the Kingdom of Heaven is like a Friend knocking at midnight.
So we're talking about the parable of knocking at midnight. But the really, the parable. We're talking about a couple of parables this week that have to do with persistence in prayer. Oh, how many of you struggle with being persistent in your prayer? Not just any old prayer, but, I mean, persistent in something that.
I mean, it's like repeatedly asking God for in a situation that is, you know, it just drags on forever, or you have to keep asking God about this one thing over and over and over. It could go on for months, could go on for years, or it could be like you get some relief in it, and then it comes back around a couple years later or months later or whatever.
And I get it. I so get it.
Yeah. So this has been kind of my life in a nutshell.
So I just want to share with you what's been helping me a little bit lately.
Yeah, so what's been helping me lately is just reading Jesus's words and realizing how powerful they were when he talks about prayer.
And so I want to look at these two parables because Jesus really is saying, you know, that bold, persistent prayer, especially when you're tired, desperate, or you're tempted to stop asking is not the right thing to do. And it can really feel like it is.
Have you ever felt like asking somebody over and over and over and over is almost a little embarrassing and humiliating and almost like this person, I've got to be getting on their last nerve. Like, I feel like they're gonna snap at me in any moment, right? I mean, I know they've got to be getting annoyed with me, but he is painting a picture for us, and we read these parables. We're gonna see this illustrated so beautifully that that is not the way that God feels about us. And I love it that he shows us this, because otherwise we would still be running around thinking, I am getting on God's last nerve. I need to stop asking him about this.
All right, so let's look at Luke 11, 5, 13.
I'm actually reading in the new King James Version. So this is Jesus saying this. And he said to them, which of you shall have a friend? And go to him at midnight and say to him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him. And he will answer him from within and say, do not trouble me. The door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give to you. I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will rise and give him as many as he needs.
So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks, finds. And to him who knocks, it will be opened.
If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?
Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?
If you, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?
I just love this so much.
I love all these beautiful parts of this story.
Because we see, like we see in this picture that he's a friend. You know, he's going to his friend, and his friend's like, ah, he's annoyed with him.
But Jesus is painting this picture that, you know, his friend's annoyed, but he's making this contrast that how much more God loves you so much more than this friend. But the friend only gave him the bread because of the persistence of him asking, but how much more will God give you what you ask for?
Just because of his great love for you, but also he's making the point of if you ask, if you seek, if you knock, it will be opened, it will be given to you, and he will give you what you ask for. Sometimes it's just the answer, right? I know it's not always exactly what we ask for, but he's making this point.
He is going to answer you.
And I love this because I think that sometimes we just give up. We just give up so soon. And I know it can be so hard.
It's, it's the, it's the, the endurance factor, the persistence factor that gets us, you know, I mean, I know it, I get it. I was just telling Mike, you know, because we, there's just this, you know, I think we all have this, this trial, this thing that it seems like this certain area of our life that we get hidden. For some people, it could be like relationship issues. Some people have health problems that seem to always be in their life.
You know, some people is financial. That seems to be our little fun thing that we get hit. And I think it's also related to what you're called to do. And it's crazy because I'm called to the financial world. So of course it makes sense that I would get hit in this area all the time. And it's probably because at some point I'm going to be extremely powerful in this area. And so the enemy, I think, comes after you really hard. And God allows it because he's molding you in this area.
But I think it's so hard and you have to persist and you have to, you have to endure and you have to learn how to pray, but you have to learn how to pray with boldness.
I mean, and it's, it's like moving past that point of, you know, embarrassment because you're like, I might like. I'm almost embarrassed to ask God about this again because I think I have prayed about this 568 times, Lord, I have been here that many times.
But here we are again. But there's something about this because Jesus is like, he's saying to keep doing it. There's a persistence factor here. And because you see this again when you look at the persistent widow, right?
And because I want to look at that scripture really quick, too.
So this is, This is found in Luke 18, 1 8.
And it says, then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.
I love that. 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 and 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?
I think this is interesting. Even though this. This parable is technically about justice and God bringing justice, we do see that here again is this idea of persistence with God, that there's something to us coming to God persistently.
And even when we feel worn down, even when the same battles keep returning, even when it's like, how long do I have to do this? You know? What do we do when hope gets tired? You know, like, it's like, do you keep going? When.
Like, there's no reason to keep going?
That. That's. That's beyond.
That's beyond the midnight feeling, you know, because when you think about this story of the friend at midnight, and you. I mean, you gotta. You gotta visualize that story in Luke.
Because when you think that through, when you actually visualize this, because it's not in our mind. We don't. I don't think we really. Yeah, it would be an inconvenience if someone showed up at our house at midnight. But back then, that's a really big deal. That would be an inconvenience because it's an unexpected guest at a weird time. So there's the hospitality issue. There's no bread. He has no bread. It's pounding on someone's door. I mean, that would be so awkward.
And how desperate would someone have to be to come to you at midnight pounding on your door?
So I think the point here, to clarify that and to point this out in the theology here, is that this friend was annoyed by his friend coming.
But the theology is that God is not annoyed by us. He is not like our grumpy neighbor. He's not.
Not like that.
And so he is actually like.
I think he's like a Welcoming.
So the point is here, like, if we can come to him in the middle of the night at midnight, banging on his door boldly, we don't even have to do it quietly. It's this idea of boldly coming to him at the worst time, at the. At the worst moment of our lives in desperation.
That's what Jesus is saying in this parable.
He's saying, just loudly, awkwardly, snot, with snot and tears.
That's how he wants you to come to him. And I think that we don't. We don't understand that because we let. We allow the enemy to say things like, oh, but remember what you did.
Or you're not good enough, you're such a sinner. Or, you know, you already prayed about this 50 times. Do you really need to bring it up again? But Jesus is saying, yeah, keep bringing it up, keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. I hope this is encouraging you and I hope that it's putting you back on track to keep being persistent about it, keep being loud about it.
Because I know it is for me. I'm gonna be honest, I know it is for me because I feel like a broken record sometimes and it's embarrassing. It's like, why I'm so tired of asking you about this, Lord. I mean, you've got to get sick of it. I'm sick of asking you. You've got to be sick of hearing me talk about it.
But that's not what he's saying. He said, this is the kingdom of God.
This is the way it works.
So we should be. If he's saying this is the way it works, then we have every right to approach the Lord this way.
I just think this is crazy, you know, that we have the right to just keep asking, seeking and knocking. Anyway, Jesus didn't say ask once and then walk away and just quietly disappear into the.
The darkness, you know, but he said to just keep doing it.
And so, you know, with, with the persistent widow, he's teaching again about persistent. I mean, she is powerless, that she has no leverage. This judge is unjust.
But she keeps coming.
Think about that. She's powerless, she's a no one.
And he's unjust. But this man, finally, because she won't leave him alone.
So how much more, Jesus is saying, how much more, how much more will God do and act righteously for his children than this unjust judge?
So this, this is just a crazy, beautiful illustration of our persistence to pray and to come to God in our time of need. How much more will he answer us than some unrighteous judge.
And how much more of a right do you have to come to him? Especially with what Jesus has done. He's reconciled us back to the Father.
So I think what this does is these two ideas, these two parables is they kind of remove this idea of us feeling like a burden to God. Because I think we often feel like, I'm such a burden. I'm so in the way. And I don't know where these thoughts come from. I don't really know why we often feel like we're such an inconvenience. We're in the way. We're too needy. We must be annoying.
Like, maybe we just need to be quiet. I don't know. Maybe some of us grew up in a. In a family. I didn't, and I'm sorry if you did. But maybe you were made to feel like you. You needed to be seen and not heard or what that. What that saying is, where you just need to be quiet or you are abused like you didn't matter.
You know, that can make you feel like you just need to be quiet and you need to hold all your emotions inside and you didn't matter.
So I think that we need to be reminded and we need to be told, or we need to confront the lie that we are an inconvenience to God. Because we are not an inconvenience to God. He actually has an open door policy to us. I love that he has an open door policy for us.
When we come to his door and we knock, it opens for us.
It opens. When we seek him, we find Him.
When we ask questions, he answers them.
We may have to do it a few times. You know, I love that scripture because it's never been untrue for me. It's. It's always been that if I've been consistent and persistent in that, if I've sought the Lord when I needed an answer, if I've asked Him questions, if I've knocked on the door, he has eventually answered me. Did it take a little while sometimes? Yeah, maybe.
Maybe so. But is. Is that okay? That's part of the journey. Yeah, it's okay.
Sometimes he wants to be sought after, you know, that's okay.
Sometimes it just takes a little while to find Him. Sometimes it takes a little while to get out of my own head or to bypass my flesh a little bit, you know?
But here's the thing. We are not an inconvenience to God. We don't get on his nerves. We're not too needy we're not a burden. We're not annoying him.
That's what we need to get away from.
And I just want to remind you of Hebrews 14, where Paul says, or whoever wrote Hebrews, we don't actually know, but that we are allowed or told, that we can approach the throne, the throne room of grace boldly in our time of need.
That we could boldly approach the throne room of grace.
We don't have to cower down anymore.
We don't have to sacrifice animals to get there. We can confidently do this. We have access to Him. There's a mercy in our time of need.
It doesn't mean that we're doing this arrogantly. It means that we're confident because of the relationship that we have with Him. It means that because the blood of Jesus. And I love this, if you can see this in your head, you know, when you think about the tabernacle of Moses, and I love this, I got to teach about it last year. But the tabernacle of Moses, and they had the Ark of the Covenant, and you had the mercy seat, and they would take on the outer courts when they would sacrifice the animal, they would take the blood, and they would take that blood and they would go all the way into the Holy of Holies and they would drop the blood on the mercy seat.
And that was representative of the mercy of God so that he wouldn't kill them, basically.
And so this is the atonement. This is what Jesus did. This is the mercy seat idea that if of anything that God could be to us, he wanted to be merciful.
He wanted to be merciful.
He could have called that seat anything. He could have called it the judgment seat.
He could have called it the seat of authority. He could have called it anything.
But he told them to call it the mercy seat.
And I think that is so beautiful because that's who he wants to be to us. He wants us to understand that he is a merciful God and that we can approach him boldly in this throne room of grace, in our time of mercy, of needing this mercy, that he is merciful. He's a merciful God.
And it's a beautiful thing because we have this blood of Jesus on that mercy seat now that there is no judgment toward us now.
So I want to just encourage you that if you've been praying your prayers for years, which I have, I have. We probably all have.
I mean, I've got stuff going on right now that I'm just like, are you kidding me? Lord, it's so Hard, y'. All. And the reason I'm teaching this parable is because of what I'm going through, y'. All. It's. It. It. It's aggravating. But I'm so glad that the Lord said, look at this parable. Look at these parables, because look at what I said to you.
Be persistent. Don't give up.
And that's encouraging to me. That's just like, okay, he wants me to ask him. He wants me to keep asking him. He wants me to come boldly to him when I pray sometimes.
One of my friends taught me this.
She's like, envision yourself literally going into the throne room, approaching the throne room and approaching him on his throne. And you're coming toward him and you're asking, well, you're praising and worshiping him. I mean, probably I'd be on my face, but I'm approaching him and I'm bringing that request to him.
And I'm saying. I mean, after I worship him, I'm saying, lord, here I am.
I'm bringing this request to you, Lord, as he is the king of the universe.
Like, I would, if he were here somewhere and I were in his kingdom and I would come before him as a subject in his kingdom.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: He.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Here is the situation. I'm asking you, my king, I'm asking you to intercede, and I'm asking for justice in this situation. I'm asking you for your help. That's what I'm doing.
And I think when we see it that way and we realize and we envision it like that's actually what's happening, that we're in heaven in that moment, we're spiritually there with him, seeing it.
It's so amazing. And I just want to also interject here when you realize that the Bible says that Jesus is at the right hand of the Father now, ever making intercession for the saints, that you are persistent. You can be persistent in your prayers, but know that Jesus is always interceding for you. That's what it says.
He's always interceding for you.
Wow, that is incredible. I mean, imagine having Jesus praying for you. Is there anyone better than having Jesus pray for you?
I think not. I think that's pretty incredible.
And one of the other things that I do sometimes, because we're talking about prayer, sometimes I ask the Holy Spirit, I asked him, is, you know how to pray? Of course. How. How should I pray? But is there anything he can reveal to me that the Father wants me to know right now?
I ask him questions One of the things that I did the other day that was so cool and I felt inspired by the Holy Spirit to ask this. I was looking at, I had just read, I guess I, I had been reading in David's life because I've been doing the chronological Bible and you know, David would ask the Lord questions like when his, the entire nation of Israel basically, well, his family and his children, all his wives had been abducted and all of his army and all their wives and everything had been abducted, all their children and had been taken to Ziklag by, I can't remember who took them.
And they were all just like defeated about it. And he asked the Lord, should I go, should I go and attack them? And he said, the Lord said yes, go and recover all. He would do that a lot.
And so I thought, well, David did it. Can I just point blank ask the Lord questions? You know, because Mike and I were, we've been facing a situation and it was a very unjust situation. Not like that, but just unjust. And someone had, you know, they had made a decision that affected us and they were like, oh, we're just not going to hold up our end of the bargain. And you know, they had stolen from us basically.
And so I asked the Lord, should we.
And then I said something and I was asking Lord, should we do something? You know, not towards these people, but should we go a different direction and do this?
And it was crazy because we both kind of heard the same answer from the Lord.
So I just want to encourage you, like ask him point blank questions sometimes like that and listen because he will actually answer you. Like it's this whole principle of ask, seek, knock. Sometimes I think we don't realize that we can ask him very specific questions, especially when you're praying.
He loves to answer specific questions. And I think that's part of prayer is we don't pray enough, we don't give him something to answer. Like, if you don't pray, then how is he going to answer your prayers?
You've got to give him something to work with, right?
And so when we pray, we give him something to work with. We release, we release his will on earth when we allow him to pray through us especially.
So a lot of times though, when we do pray, we aren't allowing him to answer. And so I love this idea of just asking him a question but then listening.
What did he, did he answer? Like giving him a moment to answer. We just were so busy just like telling him all our problems and not giving him a moment and reverencing him enough to just say, okay, what do you want me to do? What can you answer that?
So I would encourage you to even be more specific with him and ask him questions and let him answer. I mean, it's very biblical. That's what they did, you know, I hope this is encouraging to you. So I hope that these parables blessed you this week. And don't stop praying.
It's life changing. And God wants you to.
He wants you to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. He wants you to be persistent. You're not getting on his nerves. You're not annoying, you're not an inconvenience. You're not his stepchild. He loves you so much.
Hope that blesses you. And I will see you guys again next week. Hey, before I go, make sure you like and subscribe to my podcast wherever you listen to them. I'm also on YouTube. You should go subscribe to my YouTube channel. Channel. I got some cool stuff coming soon. Like a cool little community that you'll be able to join. Don't forget my Choosing Better book, just released not too long ago. You can grab that on Amazon as well. So I'll see you guys later.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Bye.
Again.
Riding on the clouds he's shifting the wind he's bringing new light and no hey. His fire is burning light His L is breaking through the night he's coming for me D.
