There is a somewhat strange parable in Luke 11. It comes in the middle of some teaching that Jesus is doing in answer to the disciple's request: Lord, teach us to pray.

What immediately follows their request is a sample prayer that we now call the Lord's Prayer. In our church we have a time of community prayer every Sunday when we praise God for answers to prayer, and bring our requests to Him as a church. We always conclude that time with the Lord's Prayer. It's a great example of prayer, one of many in the Bible, and we can all learn from applying the principles that Jesus teaches us through it.

But right after this model prayer Jesus tells us a parable about a man who is visited by a friend, has nothing to set before him, and who then goes to another friend at midnight to ask for three loaves of bread. I don't know about you, but in my way of thinking, and based on what I've been taught about prayer, this parable seems a little odd.

Since Jesus is teaching about prayer, and if we represent the man who gets visited and doesn't have any bread, in other words the one who has a need, then who is represented by the other friend? In other words whom do we go to in prayer when we have a need?

As our pastor likes to remind us, the answer that is almost always right in Sunday school and church is: God. God is the one that we go to and in this parable the man who answers from behind his door and tells his needy friend to go away represents God Himself.

Now I don't know what you've been taught about prayer, but I don't remember anyone ever telling me that I will go to God with my need and He will say, "I'm in bed, don't bother me, go away." And I have a hard time imagining that God would do that, but that is exactly what Jesus is teaching the disciples.

I suppose that I could look for symbolic meaning in all of this and wonder if the problem was that the man waited too long to go to his friend. After all, Jesus didn't say that the visitor came at midnight; all He said was that it was midnight when the man went to his friend. Was it possible that the man created the difficulty, this resistance from God, because he put off going until he had tried everything else first? That's hard to say.

But what we do know is that the man goes with a need and gets resistance rather than the assistance he was looking for.

James 1:2-4 says, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

Maybe James was thinking about this parable when he said that many kinds of trials, perhaps even some resistance from God Himself would test our faith. And he even goes further and tells us that we should consider it all joy, which makes no sense to me. After all, when was the last time that I rejoiced when I received more problems rather than answers to my prayers?

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