Prayer: Perpetual Persistence

How persistent are you when you pray? Do you ask for something two times, ten times, a hundred? Do you get discouraged when it seems God doesn't answer your prayer right away? Do you finally give up, thinking that there's something wrong with you ... or something wrong with God?

Well, friend, you are not alone. Many of us wonder just how seriously we should take Colossians 4:2, "Be persistent in prayer, and keep alert as you pray, giving thanks to God." Jesus knew we would struggle with this, so He gave us two parables about perpetual persistence.

In Luke 18:1-8 we are told of the persistent widow: "And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’ ”  

Luke goes on to say that our Father is unlike the judge: that he will hear and answer our prayers because he loves us as His children. Yet the story does illustrate the importance of praying with perpetual persistence. He tells us directly to not "lose heart."

In Luke 11:5-10, we have the parable of the persistent friend: "And he said to them, '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." I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence (i.e. persistence) he will rise and give him whatever he needs."

Both of these parables illustrate the importance of not giving up on the requests we make. The word for this is "supplication." Supplication means to ask with earnestness, with intensity, with perseverance. 

As Richard Foster writes in his wonderful book, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, "This is an important teaching to hear, for we live in a generation that eschews commitment. One of the old cardinal virtues was fortitude, but where today do we find such courageous staying power? We must admit that it is in short supply everywhere we look." 

Also, we live in a generation that is looking for instant answers, instant success. We are very impatient people. Unless we see immediate, dramatic answers to our prayers, we abandon that request, moving on to other matters; or, worse, we abandon the practice of prayer altogether. 

Foster goes on to say, "In the levitical legal code the fire on the alter was to be kept burning perpetually: it was never to go out. (Lev. 6:14). As God builds stamina and grit into our spirituality, we today must learn to burn the eternal flame of prayer on the alter of devotion." 

We need to take the long view: God's view. We need to be perpetually persistent in prayer.