Leadership, Love, and the Power of Persistent Prayer: Dr. Mark Bailey

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Leadership, Love, and the Power of Persistent Prayer

Guest:Dr. Mark Bailey

From the series:A Conversation with Dr. Mark Bailey (Day 1 of 2)

Air date:April 17, 2025

Mark:When you understand the bigger pyramid of prayer, so to speak, when He says “No,” it’s because He knows better. When He says, “Wait,” He’s wanting to develop our faith. When He says “Yes,” He’s wanting to respond to what our immediate needs are, and He does all three of those, and to confine Him to any one of those answers is to say, “I know better than God knows as to what I need.”

Ann:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave:And I’m Dave Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Alright, well, I’m excited.

Ann:I’m so excited today.

Dave:Yeah, we’ve got Dr. Mark Bailey from Dallas Theological Seminary and Dr. Mark, I mean, you want us to call you Mark?

Mark:Mark is great.

Dave:Okay. One of your famous students, Mr. Jim Mitchell—

Ann:Your most famous student.

Dave:He says he is your most famous student. He is our producer.

Mark:That’s terrific.

Dave:I hope our listeners and watchers know Jim’s name at least. They haven’t seen him on camera.

Mark:There you go.

Dave:We might have to try and get him on camera, but he compares you to the great Howard Hendricks.

Mark:No, don’t do that.

Ann:No, he says he enjoyed you even more.

Mark:Well, I wouldn’t put that on radio.

Dave:Well, it’s on there now, and you’re here because he would not let us come to Dallas without having you on. So we feel privileged. Seriously, we do.

Mark:It’s my privilege.

Dave:We’re having fun but give us a little bit of history. I know you were the president at one time at Dallas Seminary, but what all have you done there?

Mark:Well, I came in 1985 to be a professor to get out of administration and God had a sense of humor. And so when Chuck became president, he asked me to be the academic dean and then provost. And then when he stepped away, I didn’t want it. I tried to run from it for a year, and then I became the president in 2001 and served for 19 years. So in 2020, right in the middle of Covid, we passed the baton to my colleague who I had had as a grader who we worked him up through the system. Mark Yarborough became the president by unanimous vote of the board, and he’s doing a great job.

So it’s just fun to be involved. I serve as chancellor and that means teach a little bit, write a little bit, speak when they want me to, but don’t get involved in administration, which is wonderful.

Dave:That’s great.

Ann:But probably your greatest claim to fame is how many years have you been married?

Mark:53 to Barby, yep.

Dave:You married the original Barby, is that what you said?

Mark:Not an i e.

Dave:Oh, y?

Mark:It’s a y.

Dave:Alright, and two kids.

Mark:Two boys.

Dave:Two boys.

Mark:They’re our best friends. One is an athletic director, coach and Bible teacher at a Christian school in Fort Worth, and the other one is the choir and orchestra director at our church in Fort Worth where we attend. And so we all go to the same church. When they come off the platform from music, we all sit in the same row, teenagers all the way down to age six, and we have a blast.

Dave:Wow. That’s cool.

Ann:That’s a compliment. When all of you are at the same church and you’re sitting together, that really says something about you and Barby.

Mark:Well, we’ve invested in that, and we eat together at our expense every Sunday—

Ann:We get that.

Mark:—every Sunday when we’re in town, and so we tell them we’re spending their inheritance, but we’re really not. We’re having a blast, and we drive home on Sunday afternoon, seriously, every time how blessed we are. And the kids love each other. The cousins want to know if the cousins are coming. And cousins are best friends, and our daughters-in-law are best friends and—

Dave:Wow.

Ann:So sweet.

Mark:—we’re very, very blessed.

Dave:Well, we’re going to have you teach a little bit today. This is Passion Week. You know as much about that as anybody. Before you teach a parable because I know that’s one of the areas of emphasis, right? You taught parables. Give us real quick, what’s your hope and purpose when you teach the word of God?

Mark:Well, I used to have a mission statement that was to help people love God through the study of His Word. Paul’s statement—this came out of a history, and it ended up as a slogan at Dallas, which was not my choice, but to teach truth and love well, comes out of 1 Timothy 1:5. “The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith.” So the goal of instruction is never instruction. Instruction is always a means to a greater end, which is what Jesus said were the great commandments, loving God and loving one another so it doesn’t—

Ann:Well, before you get into that, can I ask, because you’ve taught—

Dave:We got to get him teaching.

Ann:I know, but you’ve taught the parables, you’ve taught Revelation, you’ve taught the gospels, what’s been your favorite?

Mark:Whatever I’m teaching at the moment.

Ann:Really?

Mark:Yeah, and being in the Bible department, we go from Genesis to Revelation, and if you get assigned a section, it could be Genesis to Judges; it can be the gospels; it can be post-exilic and gospels, whatever. We take what they give us and run with it, but mostly they let us specialize.

Dave:Now you were able to pick any parable you wanted. We said just pick one. Why this one?

Mark:Actually, I got assigned these two.

Dave:Oh, you did?

Mark:I did.

Dave:Oh, that’s your famous student, Jim Mitchell.

Ann:This must’ve been his favorite.

Mark:You either credit him or blame him, one of the two.

Dave:Well, we should ask Jim why he picked this one. Well jump in, Luke 11.

Mark:You bet.

Dave:What are we going to study?

Mark:When I’m in Israel with a group of people on the boat in the Sea of Galilee, I love to set them up with, if you want to know the power of God, watch Jesus in the miracles. If you want to know the love of God, watch Jesus in his interpersonal relationships. If you want to know the will of God, pay attention to Jesus’ discourses. But if you want to know the wisdom of God, watch Jesus in the parables because the parables are wisdom literature. They’re designed to invite you into a world of its own, a narrative, a fictitious narrative, a story that Jesus tells true to life but designed to turn your world upside down and say, “This is what you may think about what’s going on in the world, but this is really what’s going on in the world.”

And so to be invited into the world of a parable, and often He surprises us as He will in this parable to see life from God’s perspective. And so I love to see that scenario from the life of Christ. And parables have become one of my favorite genres.

Ann:Those that are listening on YouTube or a podcast, they just paused it so they can write all of that down. They go back and listen to it.

Dave:Yeah, I got all the W’s.

Ann:I know, I’m sitting here already crying like “This is why God’s word is so great!”

Mark:It is. It’s wonderful.

Ann:It is.

Mark:It’s wonderful, yeah.

Dave:Alright, jump us in.

Mark:Well, the parable of the friend at midnight is the parable in Luke chapter 11, and it’s preceded in the context. Luke 11 to finds itself in what’s called the Luke travel log or the Luke central section that goes from 9:51 through 19:27, most scholars would say. And that’s when it says that Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem knowing that the time for his departure had come the time for his ascension. So you read 9 to 19 in Luke in light of the coming ascension.

So it’s really loaded discipleship material preparing his disciples for his departure because the die has already been cast. Israel has already said no to their Messiah. And Luke 9 to 19 is pretty much unique to Luke. And so Luke 11 is along that way. If you look at this passage, like other passages, Luke records this in a giant inverted parallelism.

And so this parable is parallel to the one in chapter 18 where he told them a parable that they ought always to pray and not faint. And so those are twin parables but have slightly different emphases. But this comes on the heels of the model prayer from Luke’s perspective. The disciples, and I love this, had watched Jesus pray. They had watched John pray. So they said, Lord, would you teach us to pray? Which is really tender watching those models. And so he gives them then the model prayer from the Luke perspective. And then he fits in this question and it’s a negative question as he begins.

And so the way I like to attack a parable is to ask, what’s the setting? What’s the problem being answered or the question being answered in the parable? What’s the narrative? What’s the central truth? And then what are the applications? So let me walk it through in those five steps very quickly.

The setting, as we said, is in the big picture in Luke 9 to 19. The mini picture is following this model prayer. And then we have this parable of the friend at midnight. Not only do you want to know the literary context, but also the cultural context because this parable reflects the culture of its day.

A friend comes at midnight because he has a friend who’s visiting him, and he’s run out of bread. And so he goes to a neighbor’s house and knocks on the door and a guy says, “I can’t come. I’m in bed. Children are with me in bed. Doors closed. I’m not coming.” And so as we read it, he said, “Which of you would act this way in light of that?”

Beginning in verse 5 of Luke 11, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’?”

Now, all of that is a rhetorical question designed in the original language, and even by intonation in the English language, asking for a negative question, this isn’t the way it would normally be. You wouldn’t do this, would you?

Ann:Especially in that culture, in that time.

Mark:In that culture exactly, because a couple of things there, bread was a daily issue. You didn’t store it. And you find that even in the prayer, give us this day our daily bread. So bread was baked every day and he’s at midnight, so he has no bread leftover. So in that culture of the ancient area, hospitality was everything. And to be caught off guard and not have provision when somebody visited you would be a cultural shame. So he’s desperate.

So he goes to his friend’s house and knocks. Now, if it was a stranger, you would never say what this guy in the bed said, but if it’s a friend and he called you up and said, “Hey, can you”—“Get out of here. I’m not coming tonight.” And the houses of those time had about two thirds of a courtyard that was open. Then the back third of the house was on an elevated plane, and that’s where they slept. And they usually put a dad on one end, the mom on the other end, and all the kids in between.

I like the analogy, if you go camping and you’ve got a bunch of kids and you’re in the tent, and at two in the morning the little one says, “I need to go,” what a hassle it is to get out of that tent without disturbing people. So I think you have a similar kind of a situation here, but Jesus asked the question, and the question is, is this the way it would work? And in essence the answer is: no, this isn’t the way it would normally work. Would you have a friend that would go, and would this happen? And it expects a negative answer.

Ann:Because the listeners are saying, no, we would never do that.

Mark:Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that’s the question. The answer is given in verse eight, “I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend.” In other words, friendship is not enough to get out of bed and give somebody three pieces of bread.

Dave:Especially when they can call DoorDash. I mean come on.

Mark:That’s right. That’s right. Yep. But “because of his,” my translation has “impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs.” Now that’s the setup. That’s the question. Is this the way it would happen? And the answer is, I tell you, no. This is why. In other words, would he give him bread because he’s a friend? The answer is no, that’s not. But because of his impudence. That word is only found once in all the New Testament and it’s right here. And a lot of ink has been spilled over it because of it. Because it’s normally a very negative term. It means shameless, shamelessness.

Ann:And this is the only time it’s ever used in scriptures?

Mark:It’s the only time it’s used in the whole New Testament.

Ann:I didn’t know that.

Mark:And every occurrence outside the New Testament, it’s a bad thing. And it’s because of his rudeness, his audacity. In other words, he wouldn’t answer him because he is a friend, but because of his persistent audacity, he’ll give up and give him what he needs. And so that sets you then up for the narrative, is that question answer. And so it’s an extended question. Then it finishes with that answer in eight.

So then the question comes, what’s the central analogy? Parables can teach in the shape of an H. This is to this as this is to this, especially with reference to this. Like the sower sowing seed in the soil is parallel to the Son of Man sowing His Word of the Kingdom. And receptivity determines productivity in that parable. So then comes the question, well, why does Jesus tell this weird story?

Dave:Great question. I mean, you’re confused at this point.

Mark:And so the issue is, does it mean audacity or is he meaning persistence? And the scholars are divided, and I don’t think you have to make a case for one of the other. I think it is audacious persistence because of the context that follows. Because the context that follows is ask and you’ll receive, seek and you’ll find, knock and it’ll be opened unto you. For everyone who asks receives, everyone who knocks… It’s that section of assured, when you pray, God will answer.

And so I don’t think you have to make a decision, but what you do have in here is what follows. And that’s the invitation in verse 9 and 10, “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” And then he asks a rhetorical question, and it’s what we call a light heavy: how much more? And he says this, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” And the answer is there’s nobody like that. No earthly father would treat his earthly kids that way.

Well then look at verse 13, “If you then, who are evil,”—God knows our basic nature. In other words, you’re human, you have an old nature. If you know as a person who struggles having an old nature and being sinful, “know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Now, there’s a couple of key things here. One is the rhetorical questions, but the other is the stated comparison. In literature, it’s called a kma yoter. It’s a Hebrew term, which means how much more. So when you come back and ask the question, what’s that central point of the analogy? He’s setting you up and I think it could be stated like this, because God is a loving father and desires to meet the needs of his children, the believer may be confident and audaciously persistent in prayer, knowing that our father will give us exactly what we need.

So unlike a resistant neighbor who is bothered by persistent audacity, the father welcomes audacious persistence. In fact, He commands it: ask, seek, knock—keep coming, keep coming, keep coming. All present tenses because He knows what our biggest need is. And in the context prior to Pentecost, the biggest need they have was for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

When Jesus is talking earlier in John, John’s gospel, John chapter 7, he says that the Spirit had not come for Jesus was not yet glorified. The Spirit came and went on people, clothed them. And David said, “Don’t take your spirit from me.” That’s not a worry we as believers have to have in our day because the Spirit is permanently indwelling the believer according to Romans 8. So what’s the biggest need of anybody is to have the presence and power of the spirit of God controlling our lives.

So he walks you through. And then some applications besides come on, keep asking. I jotted down a couple that I think are helpful reminders and then we can talk. Jesus shows that when it comes to our relationship with God, being audacious and unashamed is encouraged.

Now think about it. I’m a sinner asking a holy God to listen to me. How audacious could you get? How audacious to say, God, would you do this for me? And He says that “I want you to keep asking.” And part of that persistence, God tends to purify a request as we keep walking with Him. So there’s never an inconvenient time to approach God. Midnight’s not a problem because as the psalmist says, “God never sleeps, nor does he slumber.” The gift of the Spirit is that act of a loving Father who knows how much we need and knows exactly what we need at the right time.

So bottom line, while the midnight friend might have responded begrudgingly out of mere being bothered or being persistently bothered, our Heavenly Father, how much more will your Heavenly Father, He responds out of love and the desire to give the best gifts to His kids. That’s the basic overview, I think.

Ann:So good. It’s such a good reminder.

Dave:I mean, there’s two questions I have. One, I want to talk about being audacious, but before that, what do you say to the skeptic or the woman or the man or the boy or girl says, “I have asked. I didn’t receive. I have knocked; it didn’t open. I have sought.” That always is going to come up. It seems like you could take that verse and say He’s promising something, He’s almost guaranteeing it, and yet it isn’t often happening. “I’m in a marriage right now that’s struggling, and I’ve been praying that God would save my marriage and nothing’s changing.”

Mark:Sure, sure.

Dave:“Obviously, I should be audacious and keep going, but it doesn’t feel like that door is ever going to get open.” I’m guessing you’ve heard that a million times.

Mark:We have, as a pastor, as a professor, as a father. I think when you take any doctrine like prayer, it’s like a triangle. There’re some verses that are really tight at the top, and if that’s all you had, it would seem like it’s absolute. But there’s other things that get added to that point, whether it’s marriage that’s for life. Well, are there any exceptions to that? So same type of a principle. So this is the simplest way to state it. Then there’s some attending circumstances. So you have not because you ask not or you ask to consume it upon your own lust, as James says.

So I can disqualify my prayers by selfishness. I can think wrong about God. And there’s passages that talk about if I fail to hear the word of God, even my prayer is an abomination to God, Proverbs 28:9. There’s some passages in the Bible I love, but I don’t like because they’re so convicting. And so you have to understand that, why would God delay his answers? Why would God say no in prayer? But this one, you asked the right question with the parallel that’s in Luke 18, which is the unjust judge and the widow woman who’s constantly asking him for justice. And he goes, in essence, he says, he admits he’s a bad judge. I don’t care about God or about people, but because she’s going to bother me to a point of, I’m going to wear be worn out, I’ll answer her.

Well, that’s as I said, parables teach in the shape of an H, but they also teach in the shape of an X. There’s a crisscross of contrast, and that’s what you have here. You have an earthly father in comparison to a heavenly Father. Wouldn’t an earthly father do this? Yes, but a heavenly Father does it better. And so that parable, the final question is real convicting: when the son of man comes, will he find this kind of faith on the earth? What kind of faith? Persistent faith that keeps asking—

Ann:Audacious.

Mark:—waiting for God’s justice. And so when you put both of those parables together, and they’re together in the inverted parallelism of Luke 9 to 19, they both speak to prayer but from a different angle. One is the need to be persistent until the Lord comes. I have a brother who was born with brain damage. We prayed for him all of his life. He’s now with the Lord. Why would God not heal him? Was it because of what God had planned for him, what God has planned for us, and what did He want us to know taking care of a special needs family member? My wife’s father had Parkinson’s for 17 years. We would’ve loved for God to heal him and prayed that way. God chose not to but boy, what he taught us in the meantime was phenomenal.

Ann:So Mark, you’re saying, like I’m thinking of all the times I’ve gone before Him. I’ve knocked on the door, I’ve sought Him, and He didn’t answer the way we wanted. Just like you’re saying, it wasn’t what we had hoped. But God taught you in which one of those circumstances you said He didn’t answer the prayer the way we necessarily wanted, but in the midst of it, He was with us.

Mark:And He’s teaching us. He’s refining us. He’s testing our motives. He’s teaching us Romans 8:28. Do all things work together for good to those that love him all according to his purpose? Absolutely. When you understand the bigger pyramid of prayer, so to speak, when He says “No,” it’s because He knows better. When He says, “Wait,” He’s wanting to develop our faith. When He says “Yes,” He’s wanting to respond to what our immediate needs are, and He does all three of those, and to confine Him to any one of those answers is to say, “I know better than God knows as to what I need.”

Dave:Yeah. When you look at your, you told us earlier, you sit in church with your sons and your grandkids now, obviously you’ve lived somehow this out as a dad, as a husband. Can you talk about that a bit? What did that look like, even modeling and teaching your boys these kinds of principles?

Mark:I would love to go back and do fatherhood all over again. I’d do it, I think a whole lot better.

Dave:Really.

Mark:I didn’t want my boys, number one, to reject God because of me being in ministry number one. I never cared whether they would go into the ministry. They both ended up in the ministry, but I didn’t care what they would do as long as they would follow God.

And so I wasn’t a real legalist in seven minutes with God or ten minutes with God. I didn’t do a great job at those early days with family devotions as a formal thing, but we were always talking about the Lord and always talking about what God, His best and what is God’s will? What’s God’s best? I did start with them intentionally taking them to breakfast once a week, doing what I call napkin theology or turn a place mat over and draw on it and talk about some spiritual things. And they look back on that as more formative than I thought it might be.

But I liken it to a relationship with my wife. I don’t say, “Honey, I’m going to spend 10 minutes a day with you.” I’m going to pursue her all the time. If I’m on the road, I’m calling her. I don’t care how much it costs back in those days when long distance was there, the relationship was worth it. So what I wanted to know, are they pursuing God rather than spending ten minutes with Him? I want their whole life to pursue Him. And that’s what we pray every night for them and for the grandkids; that God will capture their heart and that they’ll follow hard after God.

And so by God’s grace, now, I’m praying with families. I have a list on my iPad, and we’re praying because we have some very dear friends whose kids have gone off the rails and they would love to see them come back. And we would too. So why God does what He does in some families and why kids do what they do in others is a bit of a mystery, but we’re still praying for them to come back.

Dave:Yeah. That’s pretty cool. Everything you just taught—be audacious, be persistent—you’re doing.

Mark:Well, that’s the attempt. That’s our attempt.

Dave:Yeah. Well, that’s good work.

Mark:And I owe more to God and my wife than I would ever take credit for. That’s for sure.

Dave:Me too.

Ann:And I think the thing that I would encourage listeners too, is just to get in God’s Word.

Mark:Oh yeah.

Ann:It’s so rich. As you’re talking, it feels like “Jesus, I want to hear more. Tell me more. Tell me.” And I think the more we’re in the word, the more hungry we are for God’s Word. Just the persistence of prayer; I’m saying to our listeners, “Don’t give up. Go to that door at midnight. Go at 1:00 AM. Go at 3:00 AM. Go at 5:00 PM, all day; take those requests before God, because He always hears. He’s always listening.”

Mark:Yeah.

Ann:Such a good reminder.

Mark:And sometimes the answer comes years down the road.

Ann:Yes.

Mark:Yeah.

Ann:I’m not that patient. I don’t like to be.

Mark:But it’s that stirring question, will He find this kind of faith when He comes? What kind of faith, if I can say it, that keeps that tough prayer request still on the list.

Dave:That’s good.

Mark:Still on the list; don’t cross it out.

Ann:That’s good.

Dave:Yeah. Well, tomorrow is Good Friday.

Ann:Yeah.

Dave:And we just heard you teach Luke 11. How about John 11, Lazarus.

Mark:Wonderful passage.

Dave:We’ll do that tomorrow.

Mark:Look forward to it.

Ann:We are Ann and Dave Wilson, and this is FamilyLife Today. And you’ve been hearing an interview we had with Dr. Mark Bailey at the NRB conference.

Dave:Yeah, we were on the road, as you could probably tell, and I hate to tell you, but we had Dr. Mark walk all the way up to the top of this hotel.

Ann:Yeah, we did.

Dave:That was a long way. He was pretty exhausted, but man, was he riveting.

Ann:Yeah. Wasn’t he good? It made me want to take a class with him.

Dave:I don’t want to take a class. I’m done taking classes, but if I took one, I’d take it with him. Great stuff. Tomorrow’s good Friday. So this is a really important week, and we just wanted to let you know something that you’ve probably heard us say before, but we have a team of people that pray for you, and we want to pray for you. If you have needs, we would love to lift up your name, your needs to our Father, and we’d love you to reach out to us. Just go to FamilyLife.com/Prayforme, and you can put your prayer request there and we’ll pray for you.

Ann:And I just want to remind you, it may feel like you’re alone, but you are never alone. And sometimes we just need somebody to pray for us. I know that we get these prayer requests; I go on a walk, and I pray for you. And we have a whole team so send that request in. Go to FamilyLife.com/Prayforme.

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