Prayer Requires Perseverance

1986

Number twelve prerequisite is perseverance. I’m sure there’s been times when we’ve felt like Habakkuk, “How long, how long, oh Lord, will I cry out to you, and you hear me not?” Anybody ever felt that way? Habakkuk 1:2, also Psalm 22:2. Jesus’ answer to that is in Luke 11:5-8, Luke 18:1-8, Matthew 15:28. Over and over again He says, “Pray and don’t faint. Pray and don’t faint!” In Luke 11:8, He said, “Because of this man’s shameless perseverance (shameless perseverance is literally what it says) his prayer was answered.” You need to be shameless in your perseverance in prayer.

In Luke 11:9 He said literally, “Ask and keep on asking, and it will be given. Seek and keep on seeking, and you will receive. Knock and keep on knocking, and the door will be opened.” Jesus said, “Be persistent if you really want to have an answer to God’s prayers.” I think a lot of times we’ll pray a couple of times, and we won’t get an answer. We’ll say, “Well, it must not be God’s will.” And really all that is is spiritual laziness because we didn’t have the perseverance and the intensity of heart to keep on praying. We just didn’t pray anymore.

Now Jacob was a guy that wasn’t a quitter. He kept on going. He wrestled with God. We’re living in an age of quitters. And I’m asking you not to be one of those because Jesus taught that it’s the ones that aren’t quitters that are going to receive an answer to prayer. Daniel prayed for three weeks, for twenty-one days. If he’d stopped a day early, he might not have got an answer to that prayer. But there was a spiritual warfare going on, and he had to pray through that. Elijah prayed after three and a half years that the drought would end and the rains would come. But you remember, he had to send his servant seven times to the seashore in order to look for that little cloud to rise up from the sea. Seven times. What if he had stopped at six? Would the drought have gone another three and a half years? See, it takes perseverance in prayer even from a person that is deeply in love with God.

Now, those were twelve prerequisites. I want you to understand that God said, “Whatsoever things you ask for in prayer.” We don’t need to make excuses for God and say, “Well, He really didn’t mean that.” What we need to do is follow the prerequisites that He gave us for answered prayer. And realize that God doesn’t need any excuses—that they’re not God’s failures, they’re our failures that keep us from finding that answered prayer.

If you’re not involved in supernatural answer and intervention by God, then it’s probably because there are some things in your life that need to be worked out. There are very few people in the church today that really believe that God supernaturally intervenes. And you know why? Because so few people pray. So few people are holy. So few people are persistent in their prayer. So few people abide and live in Jesus and in His word. So few people care for the poor. So few people have that faith that can throw a mountain into the sea. They’re not God’s failures.

You can be different than that though, and I wanted to just quickly give you those things to ponder and to pray over because that’s the nature of the supernatural answers. Those are the things that are required for us to really be different and to really find God’s presence. And as Jesus said in John 13, He said, “Now that you know these things, if you do them, you will be blessed.” Carefully ponder those things.