One of His disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. Jesus recited a model prayer--we call it The Lord's Prayer. Then Jesus told a story about effective prayer. According to Jesus' story a family receives a midnight visit from a neighbor who is requesting to borrow some loaves of bread. The neighbor is facing a crisis because he has a visitor at his house who was on a journey and he had no food to set before him. Since the custom of the time dictated that hospitality should be extended to a guest regardless of when the guest arrived, the neighbor was anxious to extend hospitality to the traveler by serving him a meal. Unfortunately, the family whose door the neighbor was knocking on had already gone to bed. The house in the story could have been a one-room house causing the father to waken his family in order to answer the door. So the father inside the house tells the neighbor to go away. When the neighbor persists in asking, he gives in and gives the neighbor everything he is asking for, not because the neighbor is a friend, but because he knew his neighbor was not going away until he gave him what he needed. By this story Jesus demonstrate how important it is to persistently petition God to meet our needs. If it is something really important, then you will keep asking until you get an answer.
