by Erica Fitzgerald
“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. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:7-11)
In the last Titus 2 blog, we considered the prerequisite of our prayers (coming with the posture of an obedient child) and the perspective of our prayers (believing that God is our good Father who wants to give us what is truly best). Today, we will consider the prerogative of our prayers and the persistence of our prayers. Do we believe God has the power to accomplish whatever he desires for those who have received “the right to become children of God” (John 1:12)? And do we believe God is really listening and working—even when we don’t see the answer right away?
The prerogative of our prayers
As children of God through faith in Christ, we have the exclusive right to access the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16). And the One who occupies that throne has the exclusive right and power to do whatever he desires—which is always his own glory and the good of his children.
E.M. Bounds called prayer a “spiritual carte blanche on the infinite resources of God’s wisdom and power” but he said it is “rarely, if ever, used—never used to the full measure of honoring God.”
If that were true a hundred years ago when Bounds wrote those words, how much truer is it now, when true solitude is virtually nonexistent? His readers had the pulls of daily responsibilities and the age-old ploys of Satan to derail their prayer lives. We have all of that plus the entire internet in the palm of our hand, pulling us to fill every silent second with information or entertainment. We must be more intentional than ever to carve out time to pray.
The forces of nature, the course of human history, and every cell of our bodies
are governed by the power of our Father in heaven,
and through prayer we have that power at our disposal.
“Prayer is our most formidable weapon, but the one in which we are the least skilled, the most averse to its use,” Bounds continued. “We do everything else for the heathen save the thing God wants us to do; the only thing which does any good—makes all else we do efficient.”
It’s ridiculous when we really think about it. Prayer is our birthright as children of God. It requires so little of us—it doesn’t even require us to speak words aloud. Any believer who is conscious can do it—anywhere, any time. Why, then, is it so hard? Because it’s powerful—and Satan knows it.
“The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working,” James wrote (James 5:16b). Examples of answered prayer abound in Scripture, in the biographies of missionaries and saints throughout history, and in each of our lives. Why wouldn’t the Enemy pull out all the stops to wreck our prayer lives?
It’s light work for him to derail us through distractions, but when that’s not enough, he uses his trademark tactic: lying. If he can get us to believe things like “You don’t need to ask God for what you need because he already knows” and other similar things that contain kernels of truth, he can lead us to dismiss prayer as unimportant or ineffective—even though we know better.
The forces of nature, the course of human history, and every cell of our bodies are governed by the power of our Father in heaven, and through prayer we have that power at our disposal. May we never forget that.
The persistence of our prayers
Do we believe God is really listening and working—even when we don’t see the answer right away? God knows one of our greatest pitfalls in prayer is giving up too easily. That’s why Jesus urges us to “keep on asking . . . keep on seeking . . . keep on knocking,” as some translators render Matthew 7:7.
In the parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8), Jesus tells of an unjust judge who finally caved to the pestering pleas of a widow who repeatedly asked him for justice from her adversary. Like the stones-for-bread analogy in Matthew 7:9, it’s “a parable of contrast,” as G. Campbell Morgan put it. If even an evil person will eventually respond to persistent requests, how much more will our good Father respond to us when we commit to asking! Yet how often do we give up on prayer because we don’t see the answer quickly enough?
In Devoted: Great Men and Their Godly Moms, Tim Challies highlights the persistence of two mothers who pleaded with their heavenly Father the way that widow pleaded with the unjust judge. The mothers of Charles Spurgeon and Augustine persisted in prayer for their now-famous sons, taking to the bank the promise of James 5:16, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” They labored in faith-filled prayer for years (decades in Augustine’s case) before their wayward sons turned to the Lord. If those devoted moms had given up praying after a year when they saw no fruit, what would have become of those men? And what would we have lost who countless generations later have benefited from their teaching?
The principle of persistence is especially important when praying for the lost. Too often we’ll add an unsaved friend, family member, coworker, or neighbor to our prayer list, only to give up a few months later when that person’s heart remains seemingly impenetrable.
The late missionary George Müller, famous for his prayerfully dependent lifestyle, had something to say about that:
“In November 1844, I began to pray for the conversion of five individuals. I prayed every day without a single intermission, whether sick or in health, on the land, on the sea, and whatever the pressure of my engagements might be. Eighteen months elapsed before the first of the five was converted. I thanked God and prayed on for the others. Five years elapsed, and then the second was converted. I thanked God for the second, and prayed on for the other three. Day by day, I continued to pray for them, and six years passed before the third was converted. I thanked God for the three, and went on praying for the other two. These two remained unconverted.”
Those two were sons of one of Müller’s friends, and despite being prayed for by Müller for 52 years, they remained unsaved for the rest of Müller’s lifetime. At one point, Müller wrote:
“The man to whom God in the riches of his grace has given tens of thousands of answers to prayer in the self-same hour or day in which they were offered has been praying day by day for nearly 36 years for the conversion of these individuals, and yet they remain unconverted. But I hope in God, I pray on, and look yet for the answer. They are not converted yet, but they will be.”
Sure enough, both men were eventually saved—but not until after Müller died. Though he never got to see the answer to his prayers in his earthly lifetime, imagine his joy when each of those two men joined him in heaven.
What are you praying for today? Whatever it may be, and however long you’ve been waiting, don’t give up! When we come to God in faith, with the posture of obedience, the belief that he wants what’s best for us, the confidence that he can do whatever he wills, and a spirit of perseverance, we can be assured that he hears us.