Persistence

"It was among the Parthians the custom that none was to give their children any meat in the morning before they saw the sweat on their faces, and you shall find this to be God's usual course not to give His children the taste of His delights till they begin to sweat in seeking after them."  - Richard Baxter

Lazy, lax prayer is about as useful as a cup full of holes.  Persistence is where the gold medal is, not in half-hearted petitioning.  Take Elijah for example.  He went before God, knowing that it was God's will for the rain to fall, he had already seen God fulfill his words in not allowing the rain to happen!  Yet, despite that, God still made Him go and pray seven times! 

Why?

I believe it goes back to many different things.  There is of course the need for faith, and God wants to teach us patience, and hope.  

One of the main reasons I believe is this:  Have you ever felt the great joy of working on some kind of project for a long time, and finally seeing it finished?  Not many in my generation have, because we are the microwave, instant gratification generation who wants everything right now.  

If you have gone through university and finished well, then you have a sense of what it feels like.  You spend four, eight, twelve years working and studying, focused on this one task, and when graduation day arrives you can hardly stand the joy of it all.  You stuck it out!  You passed!  Now you receive your reward of better salaries, opportunities, respect, and so on.

That isn't all though.  There are two kinds of students.  There are lazy students who go through college just wanting to skim through and pass by the skin of their teeth.  They can still make it, but in the end they are nothing more than faces in the crowd.

Then there are the honor students.  These are the ones who are focused, disciplined, get high grades, and stand out among the others.  These usually aren't the most popular among the faces in the crowd, but among the people with influence they become champions, and become people of influence themselves.

 Translate that into our Christian universe and it is the same.  How many hundreds of millions of Christians are nothing more than bench warmers, blank faces in the crowd who go through life without making so much as a ripple in their circle of friends.

Then there are the few who burn bright for God, and dedicate themselves to His purposes and plans.  These people are often ridiculed by the crowd, accused of being "holier than thou", and being fake.  Don't let that effect you, keep walking with Jesus, focused on Him, and you will grow in favor with Him until He makes you a person of influence.

This does not come overnight.  That is what you must understand.  Most of the Christians I know, even those who truly love God, give up after presenting their request to God a mere couple of days.  If you do that you'll never get your answers!

Most prayers take a significant amount of persistence to see the answer birthed.  It can take hours, days, week, months, even years to get it, but when it happens it is always worth it.

Pastor David Hogan

Let's look at the examples of some men of God in our present day and the past.

David Hogan, founder of Freedom Ministries who has been used to raise more than 30 people from the dead fasted every other day, and persistently asked God daily to let him raise someone from the dead for four and a half years before it finally happened!  How many Christians today would come to God with the same petition every day for four and a half years?  How many do it for a week?

Evan Roberts, leader of the Welsh Revival prayed eight hours a day for three months before God answered.

John Wesley served God as best he knew how as a miserable failure, waking up at four in the morning and fasting twice a week, seeking God for His truth.  He waited fifteen years before God finally answered Him.  Finally, one morning he woke up, and this is a quote from his journal:

"The moment I awakened, "Jesus, Master," was in my heart and in my mouth; and I found all my strength lay in keeping my eye fixed upon Him and my soul waiting on Him continually."

That may seem too simple of a revelation, and yet when God illuminates a truth in your heart, as simple as it is, it utterly transforms you to the core of your being.  Often with veiled eyes we look at Scripture, and in an instant God whips it off and we see the spiritual diamond we have been seeing as a lump of coal for all these years.

"Pray and never faint, is the motto Christ gives us for praying.  It is the test of our faith, and the severer the trial and the longer the waiting, the more glorious the results" - E.M. Bounds

"Massive efforts are made to do church in a timely fashion so we can continue with the rest of our lives.  Apparently, many have not yet discovered that we really don't have a life outside of Christ." 

                         - Bill Johnson, from his book Hosting the Presence: Unveiling Heaven's Agenda.

Prayer, patience, persistence; those who possess these qualities are the ones who inherit the promises of God.

"And we desire that each one of you show the same eagerness to the full assurance of hope to the end, that you be not slothful, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises."  

                                                                                                                                - Hebrews 6:11-12  

Never give up, you can have the promises of God in your life.