Perseverance In Prayer

"He spoke a parable unto them…that men ought always to pray, and not to faint" (Luke 18:1).

No temptation in the life of intercession is more common than this of failure to persevere. We begin to pray for a certain thing; we put up our petitions for a day, a week, a month; and then, receiving as yet no definite answer, straightway we faint, and cease altogether from prayer concerning it.

This is a deadly fault. It is simply the snare of many beginnings with no completions. It is ruinous in all spheres of life.

The man who forms the habit of beginning without finishing has simply formed the habit of failure. The man who begins to pray about a thing and does not pray it through to a successful issue of answer has formed the same habit in prayer.

To faint is to fail; then defeat begets disheartenment, and unfaith in the reality of prayer, which is fatal to all success.

But someone says, "How long shall we pray? Do we not come to a place where we may cease from our petitions and rest the matter in God's hands?"

There is but one answer. Pray until the thing you pray for has actually been granted, or until you have the assurance in your heart that it will be.

Only at one of these two places dare we stay our importunity, for prayer is not only a calling upon God, but also a conflict with Satan. And inasmuch as God is using our intercession as a mighty factor of victory in that conflict, He alone, and not we, must decide when we dare cease from our petitioning. So we dare not stay our prayer until the answer itself has come, or until we receive the assurance that it will come.

In the first case we stop because we see. In the other, we stop because we believe, and the faith of our heart is just as sure as the sight of our eyes; for it is faith from, yes, the faith of God, within us.

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More and more, as we live the prayer life, shall we come to experience and recognize this God-given assurance, and know when to rest quietly in it, or when to continue our petitioning until we receive it.  --The Practice of Prayer

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Tarry at the promise till God meets you there. He always returns by way of His promises. --Selected

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At the beginning of my faith walk, I believed that if you prayed for something once and then returned and asked again, that it was representative of a lack of faith. I could not have been more wrong. We are to persevere in prayer. We are to travail in prayer. We are to proceed in prayer until until we receive the answer or confirmation that the answer is inevitable.

Look at what Jesus had to say on the matter:

2 He said, In a certain city there was a judge who neither reverenced and feared God nor respected or considered man.
3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, Protect and defend and give me justice against my adversary.
4 And for a time he would not; but later he said to himself, Though I have neither reverence or fear for God nor respect or consideration for man,
5 Yet because this widow continues to bother me, I will defend and protect and avenge her, lest she give me [b]intolerable annoyance and wear me out by her continual coming or [c]at the last she come and rail on me or [d]assault me or [e]strangle me.
6 Then the Lord said, Listen to what the unjust judge says!
7 And will not [our just] God defend and protect and avenge His elect (His chosen ones), who cry to Him day and night? Will He [f]defer them and [g]delay help on their behalf?
8 I tell you, He will defend and protect and avenge them speedily. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find [[h]persistence in] faith on the earth?

Think about it, continuously coming to God in prayer about a particular issue is not indicative of a lack of faith, it is expressive of great faith. Who continues to do something over and over again that they feel will never work? No one. The repetition says that I will keep coming until I get that for which I came. It is called perseverance. God does not grow weary of your coming before the throne of Grace. I want to take you to a very important truth about why perseverance in prayer is paramount.

4 On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank(F) of the great river, the Tigris,(G) 5 I looked up(H) and there before me was a man dressed in linen,(I) with a belt of fine gold(J) from Uphaz around his waist. 6 His body was like topaz,(K) his face like lightning,(L) his eyes like flaming torches,(M) his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze,(N) and his voice(O) like the sound of a multitude.

7 I, Daniel, was the only one who saw the vision; those who were with me did not see it,(P) but such terror overwhelmed them that they fled and hid themselves. 8 So I was left alone,(Q) gazing at this great vision; I had no strength left,(R) my face turned deathly pale(S) and I was helpless.(T) 9 Then I heard him speaking, and as I listened to him, I fell into a deep sleep, my face to the ground.(U)

10 A hand touched me(V) and set me trembling on my hands and knees.(W) 11 He said, “Daniel, you who are highly esteemed,(X) consider carefully the words I am about to speak to you, and stand up,(Y) for I have now been sent to you.” And when he said this to me, I stood up trembling.

12 Then he continued, “Do not be afraid,(Z) Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble(AA) yourself before your God, your words(AB) were heard, and I have come in response to them.(AC) 13 But the prince(AD) of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael,(AE) one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. 14 Now I have come to explain(AF) to you what will happen to your people in the future,(AG) for the vision concerns a time yet to come.(AH)

Very few people had the connections to the spiritual realm the way Daniel did. Daniel was used to answered prayer, yet in this particular instance he had prayed and fasted two weeks, but no answer had come. Then a man (an angel, most likely the messenger angel, Gabriel) came to Him and told him that from the moment he set his heart to humble himself and understand (to come humbly before God to seek clarification), his words were heard. This meant that the first prayer was heard, God hears all and sees all. Then the angel tells Daniel your words were heard and I have come because of your words, but the Prince of Persia (a demon angel assigned to a certain part of the spirit realm by Satan) withstood me. This means that the demon angel was able to delay Daniel getting his answer by intercepting the messenger.

Dr. Rick Wallace

It is extremely important to understand the dynamic of what happens here. Daniel prays, God sends the messenger angel with the answer, Satan's demon angel intercepts the messenger and a 21 day battle ensues in which warriors angels (most likely led by the chief angel, Michael) came to insure victory. Here is the dynamic. Daniel prayed, God answered, but the prayer was delayed. Daniel kept praying, the war continued until warrior angels came to the rescue the messenger. It was Daniel's incessant prayers that brought the back up that won the battle that ultimately provided Daniel with his answer. Do you see how the power of incessant prayer encapsulated by faith insures the victory? As a matter of fact, why was Daniel thrown in the lions den? Prayer!

So don't grow weary in calling out to God when seeking a specific answer. The only time that it is okay to stop praying before the answer arrives is when you have received an assurance from God that the answer is eminent and settles your heart on the matter.

Pray until prayer accomplishes what it desires. ~ Dr. Rick Wallace

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