Persistent prayer

A few things have happened recently that made me think and reprioritize prayer in my life. A few weeks ago, I had a great conversation with a dear friend about the nature and purpose of prayer. And... the balance of persistence in prayer vs. not whining and badgering God over and over like a spoiled kid, as if God doesn't hear us. There are some verses that suggest we should present our requests to God and move on, believing that we have already received what we've asked for. In others, we're called to persevere, to keep on knocking at the door and to keep on asking.

I decided that I wanted to make those "stretched out" prayers of extreme fervency a priority in my life. I guess you could call it a New Year's resolution, but I hate that term. It carries the connotation of intention to not follow through. My intention is transformation, and have a new, regular discipline.

As I drove home from work today, I thought of someone that has bugged me recently, but truly needs prayer. I thought to myself, I've prayed for this person already. I think a bit of bitterness started to creep in, because I didn't want to be bothered. I justified to myself, God isn't deaf. He heard me the first time, and He doesn't have a short memory. Just name it and move on, and I've moved on.

For some reason, I was then flooded with compassion for this person, and I started to pour out my heart in intercession. I wept and belted out words for this person as I drove. I can only describe it as getting a sense of how the heart of Christ bleeds for this person. And I felt the Lord telling me that it takes time and work, and sometimes a lot of it, but find the heart of God in prayer for another person.

That may be why we persist in prayer and maybe repeat ourselves a lot. It's not as if God has a short memory. He has promised that we will have anything we ask for in prayer. The privilege of having a prayer answered is for those who are seeking to unite their hearts with God's for a cause. And if we think we can just turn on pure intentions and full discernment in our hearts like it is nothing, we're fooling ourselves.

In Romans, it says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groans. That sounds like a woman in the pains of labor, doing the hard work of giving birth to new life. Even for the Holy Spirit, it is hard work! And now I believe that the hard work of prayer is sometimes needed to find the pure and loving heart of God for a situation. Maybe we've got the right outcome, but are the intentions right? Maybe we've got all of that right, but do we burn with real faith, or are our words empty? Do we hope like gamblers hope for a Blackjack, or do we have the Biblical notion of hope in a promise-keeping God.

Prayer can and should be persistent... it's been a while since I've been so desperate in prayer. It was intense, and at times brutal. But I felt the blessings and desires of the spritual realm slowly descending upon earth ("Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.")