Faith That Won't Quit

Good morning, good morning. How's everybody doing today? Go ahead and grab a seat. So good to be back here at Calvary Church. We were with you last year, and my wife and I feel such a connection with this family. How many of you glad to be in church today? Come on, come on, look at your neighbor and talk to him, say neighbor. All right, do a little better. Act like you like the person, okay? Just, you chose to sit next to him, right? Try it again, say neighbor. It's an honor to sit next to you. See, that was good, that was good. Now look at your other neighbor, the one you just ignored. Yeah, look at your other neighbor, say other neighbor. It's an honor for you to sit next to me. Yeah, I'm the best neighbor you've ever had. Best looking neighbor you've ever had. Best smelling neighbor you've ever had. That's a thing here in church, that's a good thing. Hey, real quick, my wife is with me, would you greet her? This is my wife Julie, she's right here. And this fall, we celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary. Let's go, and we were with you last year and since last year, our family has grown. We've added our third grandchild. Woo-hoo, so let's go, all the grandparents, come on, where's all the grandparents at?

Let's go, I see you, I see you, grandpa. Yeah, yeah, come on, come on, come on. So we're from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but so good to be with you in the house today and excited to not only come and share God's word with you, but just also to say thank you because through your generosity as a church, you've been supporting our ministry, Lead the Generation, like you've been doing for AbilityTree. You've been supporting our ministry for many years now and we're so grateful for that. We'd love to connect with you, just to say thank you personally. We have a table set up out there in the back. There's a bunch of stuff out there that you can get to support the ministry, books and hats and T-shirts, but I'll just highlight one book, it's called 23. It's on Psalm 23. How many of you love Psalm 23? The Lord is my shepherd, right? And so we'd walk you through that, all of that. There's six verses, 109 words, depending on translation and teach you how to pray it over yourself, right? So I'd love to see you at the table out there. That'd be really good. All right, let's jump into God's word. We're gonna study the first seven verses of Luke chapter 18 today. How many have got your Bible with you?

You brought your Bible to church? Come on, hold it up. Let me see, let me see. Old, you got your real Bible. Your old school, leather-bound, initials on the front Bible, falling apart at the seams Bible because you read it so much, right? That one, awesome, awesome. How many of you, all you cool kids got your iPhones? That's great. Some of you got an Android, that's embarrassing. And, ooh, sorry, just having fun, having fun. Okay, so we'll have it on the screen as well, but let's jump into this. We're just gonna study together for just a couple minutes the first seven verses of Luke chapter 18. This is Jesus speaking here and he tells a parable. Sometimes when Jesus told parables, we didn't really know what they meant. This is not one of those times. He told the disciples exactly why he was telling them this parable. Furthermore, there were times when Jesus told parables to large groups of people. This conversation was just with his disciples. So it's a little bit of a private meeting here. So let's read together here. Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.

Everybody say, always pray. Everybody say, don't give up. Don't give up. So it's interesting, this phrase here, always pray and not give up. If you go back to Greek, the original language of the New Testament, it would translate more literally like this. Keep praying or your mind will turn against you. Mm, you know it's good when everyone's like, mm. Well, here's an additional translation in the Greek. Keep praying or your inner strength will collapse, right? Right, okay, so let's go on. Now we know why Jesus is telling a parable. Verse two, he starts the parable. In a certain town, there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. How many of you know somebody like that? Don't look at your neighbor right now, don't do it. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with a plea, grant me justice against my adversary. Verse four, for some time he refused, but he finally said to himself, even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, everybody say bothering me. Yeah, yeah, because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see to it that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me.

Okay, this is really funny too. In the Greek, I had to look it up because I thought it was, I just thought it was really funny that a full-grown man is talking about this woman bothering him and attacking him, right? I was like, what's happening there? So in the Greek, this phrase keeps bothering me is actually translated so that she won't give me a black eye and I just thought to myself, I don't know what kind of energy this woman had, but like this judge is, he's like on tilt, right? He's like, what is happening with this woman right here? Okay, verse six. And then Jesus, he finishes it up and he says, the Lord said, listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God, now he's juxtaposing the unjust judge versus the only just judge, God the Father. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones? Everybody say justice. Everyone look at your neighbor and say you're chosen. Will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? So let me set up this text here real quick. So years ago, my dad and I, I'm a pastor's kid, I'm a PK. My dad, right before we retired from ministry, my dad actually pastored not far from here in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. And so right before my dad retired,

we decided to have the most epic father-son journey that we were ever gonna experience. We were going to attempt to climb and summit Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa, right? So it's the highest peak on the continent of Africa. It's 19,321, 20 feet. And so we were doing this not just for the challenge of the climb, we were also partnering with an incredible organization that I love called World Serve. World Serve has drilled hundreds of wells all across East Africa in order to provide clean drinking water in remote villages. And so we were raising money as a part of the climb in order to put some wells in, specifically the wells we put in went into Northeast Kenya in an area called Garissa and Sambo and out in the bush. And we got to actually go and see those wells later on. But we trained for the climb for about a year. And every month we would jump on a conference call with the guides, the mountain guides that were gonna lead us on the trip. And they would coach us in various ways. You know, this is how you should work out and here's different things and so on and so on. One of the calls was about the gear that we were supposed to wear. So, you know, the shoes, the boots, the bright pants, the rain gear. One of the challenges that I was unaware of

but we were learning about, but one of the challenges of climbing Kilimanjaro is that you experience every weather pattern on the mountain. So at the base of the mountain, you experience like hot, humid rainforest conditions. And so, you know, you get a torrential downpour, it could be, you know, 90 degrees and tons of humidity. By the time you get all the way to the top and you're making your summit push, it's Arctic frigid temperatures. And you could be in the middle of a blizzard. And so you have to have gear for all of that, right? And so it's important to pick the right stuff. And so the guy's on the call and he is like, he kept using this phrase. He talked about a piece of gear. Here's the right boots. Here's the right socks. Here's the right rain gear, whatnot. And then he would say something like this. He would say, just remember guys, when you're on the mountain, there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear. And I'm like, hmm, that's kind of interesting. And then he said it again later on. There's no such thing as bad weather on the mountain. There's just bad gear in the mountain. At one point I wrote it down. I was like, I'm not sure what this means, but he kept saying it, kept coming back.

There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear. And I should have taken his advice a little bit more seriously. I assumed that because I grew up hunting with my dad that I probably had all the gear that I needed anyways. And so didn't really take a lot of his suggestions that he made and then found myself on the mountain in the middle of torrential downpours or in the middle of like Arctic frigid temperatures. And all of a sudden that guy's words are going through my head. There's no such thing as bad weather. There's only bad gear. And I'm now at this point realizing I didn't fully understand what he was trying to say. He actually was not saying you won't experience any bad weather on the mountain. He was actually saying if you are prepared with the right gear, then you'll be able to face whatever the mountain throws at you. I think Jesus is doing the same thing with the disciples here. I think Jesus is trying to help the disciples gear up, so to speak, or level up. And specifically it's in their prayer life. Everybody say prayer life. We know that because the text is really clear that Jesus tells them a parable about prayer. But let me just zoom out here and help you understand

what's happening specifically with Jesus and the disciples in Luke 18. At this point, Jesus and the disciples have been traveling together for probably close to three years. You know, if you just look at the book of Luke, their journey starts in Luke one. By the time we get to 18, scholars tell us we're about three years in on the journey, right? And it's in Luke 11, which is earlier in their journey, maybe only a year or so into their journey, it's in Luke 11 that Jesus has his first conversation with the disciples about prayer. Some of you will remember this. This is the moment where the disciples observe Jesus praying, they hear him praying, and then they say to Jesus, Jesus, teach us to pray like you. Anyone remember this? And then Jesus gives them a pattern for prayer. He doesn't say these exact words. He gives them a pattern for prayer. You know, hallowed be your name. You know this one, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, right? Give us this day our daily bread. Jesus is teaching them to pray in this moment. That's interesting because the disciples initiated that. They heard Jesus pray and they were like. Wait a second, I know how to pray, but when he prays, wow, something different happens.

Did you ever listen to someone else pray, and then you thought to yourself, maybe I don't know how to pray. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're just like, I thought I had a prayer life, and then wow, I mean, where did that come from? That's apparently what the disciples thought in Luke 11. But now we're in Luke 18. Now we're not at the beginning, towards the beginning of Jesus' journey with these young men. We're towards the end, and Jesus tells them, actually before this text even happens, Jesus has already predicted his death to the disciples. They don't really fully understand it. He does so again at the end of Luke 18, if you read the rest of the chapter. Then when we go into chapter 19, Jesus goes into Jerusalem, and it's the beginning of what you and I know as the Passion Week. You know what I'm talking about when I say Passion Week? Right? Jesus is in Jerusalem. He's preaching, teaching. He's preaching with his arrest, and then eventually his crucifixion, and then ultimately his resurrection, and then 40 days after his resurrection, what happens? What happens? Oh, okay. Y'all are too quiet over here. I'm going to preach this side over here. Y'all being too bougie for me. I don't know what's going on. Okay. What happens after 40 days? Okay.

Y'all are going to pick it up over here. I'm just saying. Okay, okay. Okay. So what's happening here? Using this moment in Luke 18 to help his disciples level up their prayer life. Let me put it in a context that I think that maybe you can understand. It would almost be as if Jesus was saying to them, hey guys, listen. There's some bad weather on the way. We're going to run into some storm systems the higher we go into this journey. And when we run into those storm systems, your Luke 11 prayer life that you've been rolling with is actually not going to be able to sustain you or is not the right piece of gear for you to be able to handle what's going to happen in Luke 19 and 20 and especially in 22 when I get crucified. So I need you to level up. It's like he's both calling them out and calling them up at the same time and trying to say to them, the way you've been praying will not sustain you. You don't have the right gear for the weather systems that are coming in your life. How many of you have had moments in your life already where you're like, I went through some stuff, but dear God, I'm thankful that I knew how to pray. I'm thankful that I had a prayer life. I'm thankful that someone had trained me well so that I had the right gear in place. And when I look at this parable here, there's, there's two huge truths to jump out to me. This is just a two point message for you today, right? I see two different ways that this woman, this woman who is a widow, that her faith, everybody says faith actually propels her to be the one that Jesus chooses to use as a metaphor or as an example of how the disciples need to level up their prayer life. Here's the first thing that I see in the text. I see that this woman has what I would call lasting faith. Everybody say lasting faith.

Look at your neighbor and say, do you have faith that will last? Okay. You're doing better, but we can, you can do even more. You can, okay. Right. Look at your other neighbors. Say, do you have faith that will last? Okay. Okay. We're getting there. We're getting there. Okay. So this woman, she has a, some sort of legal issue. And so she decides to present herself to the judge and ask the judge to rule in her favor. And the text is very clear that he denies her justice, but she chooses not to give up. She just shows up again and again and again and again. She has what I would call lasting faith. She's modeling something here about your prayer life and about my prayer life. It's almost as if Jesus is saying it takes faith to pray. Would you agree with that? It takes faith to pray, but it takes lasting faith to pray again. It takes lasting faith to pray again and again and again. It takes lasting faith to keep on praying when you feel as if nothing is happening in all the times that you're praying. That takes lasting faith, right? And so that's what this woman does. This is what she models. She comes before the judge and the judge says, no, I don't care about your legal issue. We don't know what it was. We don't know what her issue was, but the judge denies her and she shows up again.

Now, just so you understand what a violation of social norms this would be. Okay. This woman in showing up at the courtroom. Okay. First of all, don't, don't imagine in your head right now, an American courtroom. Like don't think law and order. Okay. This would be an open air market type vibe. Like you've ever been to a farmer's market. And it would be something kind of like that. And the judge would have a table set up at one end probably. And people would line up early in the morning and then one by one, they'd be called forward to present their case before the judge. And then typically the judge would rule immediately right there on the spot in favor or against. And so when this woman shows up and asks for justice and the judge rules against her, case is closed. That's the way culturally speaking it worked. the audacity to show up again. The next day, and the next day, and the next day. She has what I call lasting faith. Everybody say lasting faith. The other word that you could say is this, she has persistence. Have you ever been around somebody who is so persistent that it's annoying? Come on, husbands, do not look at your wives right now. Just maintain eye contact with me. I'm telling, just straight ahead, guys, straight ahead. I'm trying to help, I'm trying to make sure you get fed this afternoon, okay?

I just, I mean, it's just like, look, I love dogs. I love dogs, and by dog, I mean dog over 50 pounds, okay? Just to clarify, if your dog's under 50 pounds, that's not a dog. You can pick it up and put it in a little purse and carry. No, no, no, no, no, no, you don't own a dog. You own a football, punt it. I'm just, I'm just playing. I have a German short-haired pointer back home in Pittsburgh and so he's a hunting breed and he's a pointing breed and so he has these moments where he is so persistent and so stubborn, and typically, one of those moments is always when I'm eating bacon, and he comes and he's, I just wanna, I just wanna, just leave me alone, let me, and he's just there, and he's just staring at me, and there's only two parts of his body that are moving. His eyes are just bacon, you know, like, I mean, it's just, and the only other thing that's moving is the drool that's getting, you know, and it's just, you know, it starts to wave, but it's like low-budget horror movie effects, you know, but he looks at me, and I feel like, I feel like it's a form of warfare because his eyes are basically saying to me, I will break you, you will give me, you will relent. That's persistence, that's persistence. This woman is teaching us persistence. The great church father, Augustine, he wrote about this specific text in Luke 18,

and he said this, he said, persistent prayer is not meant to inform God because God already knows our needs. How many of you are grateful for that? He already knows my needs, but then he goes on and he says this. He says, instead, persistent prayer enlarges the capacity of the one praying. God isn't delaying because he's unaware. Sometimes he allows delay because he's enlarging our faith. That's what Jesus is saying to the disciples. I'm getting ready to leave, but I need you to enlarge your faith. I need you to grow into lasting faith. I need you to grow up from a basic, elementary Luke 11 prayer life and grow yourself into a more God-like Luke 18 prayer life. I need you to have more faith than to just pray at one time. I need you to have faith, lasting faith, persistent prayer. You know what the old church used to call this? They used to say, you have to learn how to pray through. How many of you remember that? They say, you have to learn how to pray through. Can I just declare that over your life and declare that over this house? That's some of that old school church anointing of learning how to pray through it and pray through the challenges, lasting faith, persistent faith. It's almost, I almost prophetically feel like God is saying,

listen, Church of America, you need to rise up and recognize that the enemy is dialing up the heat and you need to match his energy with a Luke 18 type prayer life happening in you. She had a lasting prayer life. Everybody say lasting. Okay, here's one more thing. One more and we're done. She also had what I would call loud faith, loud faith. Okay, this side, this is your chance. Everybody say loud faith. Loud faith. Hey, there we go, we got them. We got them, we got, okay, loud faith. Okay, okay, so in order for you to understand why I see loud faith in the text, let's go back to some cultural understanding of what's happening here. Okay, so again, this is an open form courtroom, right? And people get up in the morning and they show up and they get in line. But this woman is a widow. And it is not insignificant that Jesus chooses in this parable to identify her as a woman who is a widow. And in doing so, it would have immediately raised the awareness of the disciples to be like, oh, wait, she's a woman and she's a widow. Culturally, what's the significance? In this cultural moment in antiquity,

a woman who has lost her husband has lost social status. She has lost her covering. So when dealing with justice issues or issues of justice, typically what women were forced to do was to either go hire an attorney or depend on another man in her family to do the representing for her, to do the covering for her. But this woman did it by herself. This woman decided to violate. all of the social norms. This woman decided, I will take it into my own hands and I will do something that I have never had to do before. My husband used to do this for me, but now I will do it for myself. And so this woman shows up every day. Can you imagine, even the first day that she shows up, everyone's like, what's she doing? What's going on? Someone's like, what, what's happening? What's happening? There's a woman over there in line. What you talking about, Willis? Right, I mean, just like, just like, and then the justice, the judge denies her justice and then she comes back again and again. And every day there's more drama and every day there's more mystery. And every day, everyone's like, what is happening? And I mean, can you imagine being this woman's Uber driver?

Every day, she jumps in the car. He's like, I already know, don't even tell me. I already know, I know, I know where we're going. So apparently Jesus loves it when you and I violate the social norms. Apparently Jesus loves it when four dudes decide to dig a hole in the roof of the house and cut in line of everybody who's already in the house and lower their friend down before him. Apparently Jesus is saying to the American church, stop depending on someone else to provide your covering in your prayer life. Can I get real on you for a second? This is one of the greatest weaknesses of the American church right now. I'll just let the pastors do all the praying. Come on, keys player, come on out here and join me. I'm gonna need your help. This is gonna get real hard for some people. We're gonna need some spiritual music to help this thing. Right, right, Jesus is trying, remember the context. Jesus is getting ready to go. The disciples are gonna have to step up. They're gonna have to begin to do what Jesus used to always do. They're gonna have to begin to do what Jesus used to always do. For the last three years, Jesus did all the praying. Jesus did all the teaching. Jesus did all the preaching.

Jesus did all the miracles. Now he's getting ready to leave and Jesus is looking at these 12 dudes and saying to them, I'm calling you out and I'm calling you up. It's time for you to do for yourself what you've always depended on someone else to do. And I'm telling you prophetically, this is what's happening in the American church all across the country right now. God is purifying his bride and he's looking at the American church and he's saying, stop depending on your parents or your grandparents or all of your pastors to do all of the work of praying. It's time for you to have some loud faith. Can I take it a step further? Can you handle a little bit more? This woman was violating cultural norms. She was doing what no woman was supposed to do in that moment in antiquity. Men, let me speak to the men in the room. The cultural norm of spirituality in American Christianity is for passivity in our men. Sit back, let your wife do it. She's the one who has the prayer life. Let your wife be the leader in the home. Let your wife, she's a better prayer than you anyway. She's closer to God than you. She has more intimacy with God.

So let your wife take the lead in those areas and then you just kind of follow along and you just sit back. It's plugging the American church, it's spiritual passivity. And what ends up happening, men, can I just be real blunt with you on this? Some of us have, as men, have allowed our wives to become spiritual widows because they have to do for themselves what you won't do for them and what you won't provide for them in a spiritual covering. And I'm telling you, Jesus is using this text to not only raise up the next generation of leaders in his day and age, this text now speaks to us generations later and I'm speaking to the men now. I'm not just calling you out, I'm calling you up. And it's time for men of God to rise to the occasion and learn how to have some loud faith. Now, that's a hard truth. And it would be like spiritual malpractice for me to just drop that on you and say, go do better, but not try to help you. So can I try to help you grow in your prayer life in the last two minutes that we have in the service? Let me give you five very specific ways that you can learn how to pray. Get ready to take some notes or just click on record on your phone

and just record this, or you can go back and watch it later on the stream. Okay, I'm just gonna give you five different ways to pray. One of the things that I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you five different ways to pray. One of the reasons why we're weak in prayer is because we think that prayer is a one-size-fits-all tool. It's not, prayer is more like a toolbox. And you gotta pull the right tool out for the right situation. So here's five different ways to pray. You probably have done all of these or some of these in different ways. Here's prayer number one. Prayer number one is what I would call the prayer of invocation. Invocation is just a word that means invite. Prayer of invocation is when we invite. invite the presence of the Lord to be with us. Okay, now why would we do that? Here's what the Bible says. Psalm chapter 16, verse 11. It says, in the presence of the Lord is the fullness of, what's that word? Joy, in the presence of the Lord is the fullness of joy. Okay, so how do I use this prayer? Let's say I'm wrestling with discouragement. I'm wrestling with depression. I could pray specifically against or about that discouragement,

or I could use the prayer of invocation because the prayer of invocation comes with a promise. The promise is when his presence shows up, joy comes with it. Right, right, right? So I'm wrestling with discouragement, and I just say, God, God, I need you right now. God, I just invite your presence. I just, God, I just need you, God. God, just fill me with your presence, and guide me, and lead me with your presence. This is the difference between God's omnipresence, that's God everywhere, that's like oxygen, and his manifest presence. That's like God breathing. Like it's like when you feel the wind. It's like you feel the manifest presence of God. Okay, he fills me with his presence, and I get the guaranteed promise of joy, and Nehemiah says the joy of the Lord is my strength, right? So I use the prayer of invocation. That's one of the ways I use that prayer. Okay, here's the next prayer that I'll teach you about. This is what I would call the prayer of gratitude. Everyone say gratitude. Okay, James, no, not James. We'll go to that one next. Philippians chapter four, verse six, says by prayer and petition with gratitude, make your requests known to God,

and God will guard your hearts and minds with a peace that passes all understanding. Okay, so here you go. Have you ever wrestled with anxiety? Come on, I'm not the only one, right? Have you ever wrestled with anxiety, with fear, with panic, with stress? Okay, okay. I can pray against that anxiety, or I could use the prayer of gratitude. The prayer of gratitude sounds like this. God, thank you for all the difficult moments in my past that you brought me through. Thank you for every difficult season. Thank you for every valley season in my life. Thank you for every challenge I've been through in my past. God, you were faithful in my past. And God, you're a faithful God. You're the same yesterday and today and forever. So God, if you're faithful in my past, I know that you can be trusted to be faithful in my present and in my future. And what happens? I get the promise of the peace that passes all understanding because my heart is full of gratitude. Okay, three more, we're done. The prayer of intercession. This is probably the one that you're most familiar with. This is James chapter five, verse 16.

The prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Intercession, that's when we pray for someone else. The term that the Bible sometimes refers to us or that we preach is standing in the gap. So you stand in the gap for another person, right? This is when you pray for someone else, not you, but someone else. How many of you are smart enough and grateful enough to recognize the only reason why you're even in church today and still alive is because you had someone praying for you? Because you had a grandparent or a grandmama or a daddy or a mama praying for you, holding you up in prayer when you were lost in the sauce, doing whatever you were doing, you had someone praying for you. That's the prayer of intercession. You've already experienced the blessing of it in your life and now you pay it forward when you pray for someone else. Two more and we're done. The prayer of supplication. Everyone say supplication. That just means when I present my prayer request before God. You're familiar with this one too, supplication. I present my request. Hebrews chapter four, verse 16. Let us boldly with confidence come before God, the throne room of God and present our requests to him. Right, so I come before him with boldness, not like a beggar.

I just come before him and I'm walking in because the Bible tells me to walk in with confidence and make my request known to God. Here's the last one, here's the last one, here's the last one. When you get to the last one, when you've mastered the first four, then you get what I would call like a master's degree in the last one and this one is called the prayer of authority. Everyone say authority. Okay, now here you go. Luke chapter 10, verse 19. Jesus now speaking and Jesus says this. I have given you all authority. Okay, so the prayer of authority is when I recognize that when I am in correct relational alignment with God and I begin to pray, I am now interceding and praying in alignment with God and when I'm in alignment with him and I know what the word says about me, the word says that I'm an heir and a co-heir. The word says that I'm a son and that I'm a daughter. The word says that I'm salt and that I'm light, that I'm chosen, that I'm royal, that I'm anointed, that I'm blessed and I'm highly favored. The Bible says that I'm the head, not the tail, that I'm above, never below. So when I recognize what the Bible says about me and I'm in correct relational alignment with God,

I don't pray like a beggar asking for God to authorize what he's already authorized, I pray with authority and it's almost as if spiritually speaking, I'm looking down on the situation and I'm saying, do you understand who the God is that lives in you? lives and dwells inside of me. You want to know the difference between the first four types of prayer and the last one? In the first four types of prayer, I pray to God about my problems. In the prayer of authority, I speak to my problems about the God that I serve. In the first four, I pray to God about the giants in my life. In the last one, I speak to the giant about the God who lives and dwells inside of me. I utilize the prayer of authority. Loud faith shows up in your life, in your prayer life. You know where else loud faith shows up? When you get baptized. If you haven't been baptized yet, time for you to grow in loud faith. Time for you to sign up for the baptism that's happening next month. Loud faith. Stand to your feet. Stand to your feet. Stand to your feet. Stand to your feet. Pastor Dan's going to come in just one moment. For 30 seconds. For 30 seconds. I want you to practice one of those five prayers. So, so you could, it could just be giving gratitude. It could just be inviting his presence. It could be presenting your request like supplication. It could be interceding for someone else.

It could be standing on business, standing on authority about something that's happening in your life. And let's practice it like the widow did with loud faith.