They ignore common convention, like waiting until morning to ask for bread, and they just go for it. If a person is audacious, they’re doing something boldly. What is shameless audacity? If a person is shameless, it means that they’re not worried about how what they’re doing makes them look. With this story, Jesus is teaching us something about prayer-He’s instructing us to pray with a kind of shameless audacity. Why? Because of the shameless audacity of his request. And in doing so, Jesus tells us that the host ends up with exactly what he needed. Yet here is this host, waking up his neighbors in the middle of the night to get bread. What’s more, these homes were usually so close to each other that if you woke up one family, you’d probably wake up their neighbors as well. Thus, if you wake up one person, you’re waking up their whole family. The reason why the neighbor mentions his family in verse 7 is because, back then, homes usually were only one room. Can you imagine someone if someone showed up at your house in the middle of the night and they wanted something, so you woke up your neighbors to get it for them? As audacious as such a request is now, it was even more so in the first century. Wanting to take care of their guest, they wake up their neighbors and ask them for bread. Thus, when the guest shows up at midnight, the hosts are unprepared.

During the first century, loaves of bread were very small, baked fresh each day, and usually eaten that same day. He sets up a story in which someone is surprised by a late night guest who they need to provide food for-specifically, this guest asked for bread. That’s exactly what He does in this text. When we watch Jesus’ teaching ministry, we may notice that often He tells a story and then later unpacks the meaning of that story. Question: What is your attitude toward prayer? What is your prayer life like? We’ve spent the last few weeks talking about fasting this week we’ll look at prayer.

Fasting and prayer are ways that we engage in spiritual training. If we make the commitment to train spiritually, we’ll be able to accomplish things we never thought possible. Last week, we talked about the difference between trying hard spiritually and training wisely in our spiritual lives.

Audacity meaning