Keep Praying

by Andrew Cromwell

Have you ever prayed for something and didn’t see the change you were asking for? We all have. Sometimes this is because God says, “no”. Other times it is because He says “not yet.” Still other times it is because we quit asking too soon!

Far too often, we do not receive an answer to our prayer because we simply quit praying WAY too soon. Think about it, the big things in life -- a family member with an illness, a severely broken relationship, a life-long struggle with an addiction -- these things are so big that they often overwhelm us. We pray about these issues a few times, we might even do it for a week or a month, but soon enough we get tired and stop asking God for His intervention.

Most of my prayers are grenade type prayers. I face a bump in the road of life or hear about a difficulty that a friend is having and I lob up a prayer. I may even pause for a few moments and seek to really connect with God on the issue. But rarely do I carry these prayers throughout the day or into the next day. They are a version of the infamous hail-mary pass in football—a toss up that I’m hoping God can catch and make something out of.

There is nothing wrong with these types of prayers, except if they are the only kind of prayer we know how to do. A more difficult but necessary kind of prayer is one that involves continuous, sustained effort. This kind of prayer really is work. And this kind of prayer is necessary if we are going to see a greater movement of God in our lives.

Jesus told a story (recorded in Luke 18) about an unjust judge and a persistent widow. The widow pestered the judge night and day until he heard her case. At first the judge didn’t want to have anything to do with the widow but because she bugged him so badly, he finally listened to her and gave her the justice her situation demanded. Jesus went on to say, “Your Father in heaven is NOT like the unjust judge and will bring justice to those who cry out to Him day and night.”

The great Charles Spurgeon put it this way: "Prayer pulls the rope below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. Some scarcely stir the bell, for they pray so languidly. Others give but an occasional pluck at the rope. But he who wins with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously, with all his might."

So the next time you’re tempted to give up and stop praying, that is just the time when you need to pray again. Keep asking, keep pressing, and keep praying. Don’t give up the fight!