Persevering Prayer Points Us Closer to God

Jesus said, If you abide in Me (believe in Me and humbly yield to my purposes in your life), and My words abide in you (to guide how you think and pray), ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you (John 15: 7).

To me, this is an amazing promise from Jesus to His disciples (obedient, though imperfect Christ-followers).  This means He has entrusted spiritual and material resources to His sincere followers just as a master of an estate would entrust the affairs of the estate to his servants.  In turn, the requests made to the master by His loyal servants (or stewards) would only be in accordance with the interests of the master and His purposes. With this humble understanding, the stewards will also anticipate the master's responses to their requests and respond accordingly.

God’s plan is that every person would serve Him as a steward loyally serves his master.  When we respond by faith as repentant sinners to God’s plan of salvation through Christ (John 1: 12-14) we become His “adopted children (Romans 8: 15).”  So, when we pray, God wants us to ask as children who know and understand their “Daddy’s” wishes.  We bring our requests in a way consistent with what “Daddy” believes is best for us (Romans 8: 15).   Also, as both faithful stewards and as children of a loving Father, we ought to recognize and understand His answers to our prayers even if the answer is “wait” or “no.”

When our Master and Heavenly Father answers our prayers, we ought to be quick to thank Him and give glory to Him.  Like me, you may have experienced answers to prayer that have come, seemingly in spite of all odds.  But what about those prayers we have lifted to our Heavenly Father and continue to lift year after year without receiving an apparent answer?

This morning, I believe God provided me with a new insight; namely, that He is still my Master and loving Heavenly Father, even when He appears not to be answering me.  I had just finished expressed several of my “perennial prayer requests” to Him; requests that I’ve expressed many times according to God’s instructions on prayer:  (a) I asked in faith (James 1: 5-6; 4: 2), (b) in a way consistent with what I believe would be His purposes for the people and situations involved (John 14: 14), and (c) with a pure heart  and motives (Psalm 66: 18; James 4: 7-10).  Then, as if in an inaudible reply, God answered me something like this,

“Am I any less your Master and Loving Father if it appears to you that I am not answering? Though the way seems long and though My answer seems absent from the horizon, I am Almighty God.  In fact, if you will hold onto Me by faith, I will show you more of my sovereign purposes for you and for those persons and situations that concern you—and concern Me.  If you doubt, realize that is not a sin.  But instead, please cast your doubt and cares upon me because I care ever so much for you.  When you want to pray to Me in words but have only groans, let my Spirit carry your groanings to my throne (Romans 8: 26).  For there at my right hand, My Only Son, Jesus also prays for you (Romans 8: 34).  And I will hear Him!   After all, He is the One who offered to Me His loud groanings and tears while He suffered for you during His days on Earth (Hebrews 5: 7).  His suffering on the cross while being mocked by people and by the spiritual forces of darkness was a hellish and eternal suffering.  My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me, He said (Matthew 27: 46).  But His faith held strong, and now that you have died with Him and have been baptized into His death and raised to new life in Him, you too have the faith to wait upon Me (Romans 6: 3-4).  Your faith in Me and my Word will help you to keep looking up to Me while you wait.  Then, you will say as did My Son Jesus, ‘Not my will, but Your will be done (Luke 22: 42).’

Although I thank God for ‘speaking’ to me this morning in my time of prayer and through His Word, I am sure you would agree that we all still have many questions and struggles regarding our prayer life.  Kelly Kapic has written a book, Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering (InterVarsity Press, 2017).  I am encouraged by Kapic’s insights on how to pray in the face of seemingly inalterable situations like chronic illness or relational challenges.

In a brief excerpt from the book posted in the WORLD Saturday Series, Kapic cautions us against succumbing to “Enlightenment thinking” in our prayers—i.e  believing we can “understand transcendental realities in contemporary terms and sensible formulas.”  Instead, he points us to the psalms “which are full of struggle, [but] do not point us to answers and formulas…The psalms orient us to God. Our hope is in him who made and redeemed heaven and earth, not in our own intellectual acuity.”  Kapic instructs us to direct our prayers to God as did the psalmists and Job through their prayers of lamentation.  He writes,

In the third chapter of Job, for example, the sufferer responds to his situation with heartfelt lament. And his lament is not in isolation but in the context of his closest relationships, namely, with his wife and friends. In their presence he turns this lament toward God in a way that shows his ultimate trust in his Creator-Redeemer. The other laments we read in the Scriptures present this same combination of detailed realism regarding discomfort, pain, and complex fears, and the conviction that God is present, powerful, wise, and good… They see God not as removed from the earthly details of their lives but intimately and interestedly involved in them.

How About You?
May God help us to keep asking, seeking, and knocking (Matthew 7: 7).  And, in the process of praying and abiding in Him and His Word, may we recognize that our Loving Heavenly Father will always answer in either a “yes” or a “please wait” or a “no.”  How will God answer us?  And, more importantly, will we recognize the answer when it comes?  Will we use this time of delay and waiting to draw closer to God.  Will we offer our lamentations in fellowship with spiritual accountability partners who share our burdens (Galatians 6: 2)?  Will we ask God for eyes to see Him even more glorious and lifted up as the awesome God He is? 

Thank you for reading and reflecting with me on what it is to persevere in prayer and to keep trusting and pursuing the God who answers prayer.  Please feel free to “Comment” (below) from your own experience, or send me questions you have about prayer.  In conclusion, take time to pray and meditate over the following adorations of God, one from the psalms and the other from the Apostle Paul:

For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
The LORD gives grace and glory;
No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.
                                                                                       -- Psalm 84: 11

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!  For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR?  Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.  -- Romans 11: 33-36