Persistent In Prayer

I experienced what it meant to be persistent in prayer one night when my five-year-old daughter came down with pneumonia. Three doctors diagnosed her that night. She was in and out of consciousness and was hallucinating with a temperature of 104, which can be a critical temperature for a child. The only thing that I could do that night was to pray. Being a new Christian, I did not know what it meant to be persistent in prayer, but I prayed through the psalms, not stopping for one moment, except when my daughter would wake up and hallucinate. I would take her hand and cry out to God. When she fell asleep again, I would continue to pray through the psalms. In the morning, the doctors came in to examine her for the next step of her treatment, but they could not find any trace of the pneumonia. Glory to God, He heard my prayers and answered! As a new Christian, it made an incredible impact on my prayer life, and it also helped a little five-year-old girl understand how much her heavenly Father loves her.

I beg you in the name of Jesus, if you are going through a crisis in your life, cry out to God. He is close to the broken-hearted.

Luke 18:1-8 – One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. "There was a judge in a certain city," he said, "who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, 'Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.' The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, 'I don't fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I'm going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!'" Then the Lord said, "Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don't you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?" (NLT)

God asks us to be persistent in prayer at all times. Why? Because He longs to answer our prayers. If that were not the case, there would be no point in praying all the time. Our persistence in prayer shows our commitment to God and to what only He can do, which is to bless us or give us justice. Many times, we give up too soon because we don't see God working or we do not get the answers that we want. Perhaps it's God's way of shaping our wills in accordance with His. I encourage you to pray like the widow who was persistent with the unjust judge. She got justice because of her persistence. We know that the unjust judge was not a believer because the passage tells us that he "neither feared God nor cared about people". How much more, then, will our Father in heaven bless us because we are His children!

The moral of this parable is to continuously seek God's face in prayer for whatever the need or challenge in life is, or whatever the Lord has placed on our hearts to pray for. Through persistent prayer, our faith increases, and that is pleasing to God.

What prayer are you asking God to answer? Ask Him to shape your will in accordance with His.

Prayer: Father, forgive us when we come to You in prayer and give up because of our weak faith. We ask that You would increase our faith, and that we would be persistent in prayer, being confident that when we come before You, You hear our prayers. May we have peace with Your answers to our prayers, because we know that they reflect Your perfect will. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

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