Five Minute Friday - Importunity

Normally, Five Minute Friday goes like this...

Five Minute Friday is a special time set aside each week where, as our hostess and inspiration, Lisa-Jo Baker, puts it, "We write for five minutes flat. All on the same prompt...no extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation. Unscripted. Unedited. Real." 

But this week, for some reason unknown to me, there is no Five Minute Friday prompt posted, so, I've asked my husband to give me a word to write about. He gave me the word importunity. 

So...here...we...

Go!

Importunity. The only place that I, personally, have heard this word used, is in the Bible. It comes from one of my favorite passages of Scripture. It is found in Luke 11 where Jesus is teaching on prayer. 

In Verse 1 Jesus' disciples ask Him to teach them how to pray. 

In Verses 2-4 we find Luke's version of The Lord's Prayer. 

Immediately following, in Verses 5-8, we find Jesus posing a question to His disciples, and sharing a story about a man who goes to his friend's house at midnight and asks him to lend him bread because of unexpected company showing up, and him not having anything to feed him. But the friend says that he is in bed, and his children are with him, and he cannot rise and give to him what he asks. But the man persists, and Jesus says in Verse 8, "I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." 

Immediately following that, in Verse 9, we find the well known, "And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. 

The man that was in bed when his friend came calling at midnight would not get up and give him bread based on the fact that he was his friend, but, he would, indeed, get up and give the man bread because of the urgency and persistence with which the friend made his request. 

Jesus, of course, shares this little vignette about the man and his friend, to show the importance of cultivating a persistent prayer life.

I looked up the word 'importunity' in a KJV Bible dictionary. It means, "With urgent request; with pressing solicitation." Another Bible dictionary, actually, used the word "shamelessness" to define the word. 

Could you imagine shamelessly making an urgent request with pressing solicitation before God in prayer? 

THAT is exactly how Jesus teaches His followers to pray! When was the last time you made your requests known to God with importunity? 

Don't be afraid to ask, and keep on asking...seek, and keep on seeking, and knock, and keep on knocking, because, if you do, in due time, what you've asked for shall be given, what you've sought for shall be found, and those doors that you've knocked upon shall be opened unto you. Stay after it! 

Stop!

Until Next Time...

~Rebecca

#FMF

One Thousand Gifts - #32 - The Hobbit (Part 2 - The Desolation of Smog - a Mother's Day gift from one of my children), #33 - crochet hooks and yarn, and #34 - "Creek Country" by Terryl W. Elliott