American culture has conditioned us to expect results quickly. I’ll be the first to admit that patience is one of my greatest weaknesses. In fact, I’ve been known to pace in front of the microwave as my food cooks. In our society, repairmen deliver quick fixes, restaurants promise fast food, and the pharmaceutical industry advertises instant relief. If they fail too often on these promises, they usually go out of business.
We’ve come to believe that if we are forced to wait, then something has surely gone wrong. The trouble is, significant progress in any sphere of life is seldom rapidly achieved. Almost anything worthwhile requires a great deal of perseverance, and if you come to acquire it, there’s a good chance you’ve traveled down a long road to get it. But our daily routines have taken our eyes off this reality. We want things quickly, and when we have to wait we often lose heart.
Many of us have unwittingly taken this instantaneous mindset into our prayer lives. We’ve come to believe that God should respond as quickly to our request as the barista at Starbucks. It’s tempting to become discouraged when God doesn’t seem to be answering our prayers. Sometimes the stakes are high. You might be:
- Facing an impending financial disaster.
- Worried sick over a wayward child.
- Trying to save a marriage that is on life support.
- Desperately looking for a job.
- Searching for a reason to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
When the stakes are high and God doesn’t respond as quickly as we are accustomed to, we are prone to quit praying and simply give up. But prayer demands persistence. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines perseverance as, “the quality that allows someone to continue trying to do something even though it is difficult.”
When Paul was instructing the church at Ephesus on how to persevere in prayer he wrote, “Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.” (Ephesians 1:18, emphasis mine).
As people of faith, we are called to persevere in prayer even when we see little or no results. I want to possess a faith that sees beyond the current reality and believes God can and will intervene. I bet you do too. For reasons I don’t fully understand, God uses the prayers of His people to move His hand. Wouldn’t it be a tragedy if we gave up in the eleventh hour? I’ll leave you with a passage from Matt. 7:7-8 that the HCSB translation says so well. Pay special attention to the verb tenses.
“Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
