Keep at it

Steve Stewart, our pastor, said in a recent sermon that he decided a short time ago to pray persistently for three things that were on his heart.

Within days, he had an answer for one of those prayers.  He intended to continue praying for the other two.

His comments reminded me of how important it is to "keep at it" when I pray.  I should not stop just because the answer doesn't come immediately.

It's easy to get discouraged when God doesn't instantly answer the way we wish.  But, as God says in Isaiah 55:9: "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."  He has good reasons why he answers when he does.

A good example is Zechariah the priest in Luke 1.  Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth had clearly been praying for a child for many years, but both were now old.  So Zechariah was astounded when the angel said he had come in answer to that prayer and that his wife would have a child.  He had evidently stopped believing God would say "Yes" to their prayers.

But God had great plans for Zechariah and Elizabeth's son, John the Baptist.  He was born to herald the coming of Jesus.

When I think of persistence, I think of George Muller, a man who built a string of orphanages in Britain in the 1800s and fed thousands of orphans without making a single public appeal.  He prayed.

In his book George Muller: Man of Faith and Miracles, author Basil Miller says that Muller started praying in his 20s for the conversion of five young friends of his.  In the following decades, each became a believer - the last at Muller's graveside.