How many times have we prayed once or twice, maybe three times, and then, because there was no immediate answer, we either forgot about our prayer or gave up on it?
We later told ourself we shouldn’t have done this. So we returned to our knees with a determination to repeat our request for as long as it takes.
Were we correct in doing this? Short answer, no. The Bible does say to keep on asking—but not for the same thing! If we ask the Lord a hundred times, for at least ninetynine of those times we were not asking in faith.
Once we do ask in faith, any future reference to our petition should take the form of praise. To praise the Lord for what he’s about to do is to spiritually go forward, but to petition him once again for what you want him to do is to go backward, spiritually.
The Lord’s words about repeated petitioning aren’t sanctioning that. He was simply saying that for each new problem, and each new challenge, we are to go through the cycle of asking, seeking, and knocking again. Each stage is necessary in our lifestyle of prayer.
Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you.” You will notice there is a progression here, with each level increasing in intensity.
Level one: It’s easy to ask. Level two: It requires more effort to seek. However, the boldness and insistency associated with level three, knocking, is more expectant, more determined.
The issue is insistency, not persistency.
The Bible says: “The fervent, effective prayer of a righteous man avails much.” Did you get that? Fervent, not casual!
In the Greek, this word “fervent” means “stretched-out,” as a runner might be when he lunges toward the finish line. To be fervent is to give it all we’ve got!
Thus, Colossians 4:12 speaks of Epaphras as one “always laboring fervently for you in prayers.” The Greek word used for “labor” in this verse actually means to agonize. In fact, it’s the same word Luke used to describe our Lord’s suffering at Gethsemane (Luke 22:44). So the fervency of Epaphras must have been quite intense!
There are at least two reasons God requires insistency in our prayers. First, the actual process of becoming more insistent deepens our desire. The more we stand our ground, praising God all the while with enforcing faith, the greater our desire will be to see our petition fulfilled.
Said E.M. Bounds, “It is only when the whole heart is gripped with the passion of prayer that the life-giving fire descends.”1 Thomas Watson declared that “fervency is the wing of prayer by which it ascends to heaven.”2 Watson also noted why this needed fervency may be absent when he wrote, “Guilt clips the wings of prayer so that it cannot fly to the Throne of Grace.…”3 The more carnal the life, the more casual the prayer.
The feeble uplifting of a lukewarm desire will never do! Especially if passion got reduced by compromised living. This guilt factor, whatever its reason, may partially account for delays to answered prayer—and therefore must be remedied without delay, at once!
The issue isn’t frequency, but fervency. For that reason, to keep making the same petition over and over again won’t help as much as it will hinder. We need to get past square one and ground zero!
Theologian John Calvin wrongly offered this counsel from the pulpit: “We must repeat the same supplications not twice or three times only, but as often as we have a need, a hundred and a thousand times….”
But doesn’t this advice suggest that God is the sleepyhead neighbor who won’t get up, or the unjust judge who is reluctant to do the right thing? And doesn’t it make impossible the “rest” the Christian is supposed to enter?
If the initial request is deemed insufficient, how many are enough—one hundred, two hundred? F.B. Meyer correctly concluded, “We do not need to reiterate our petitions with unbelieving monotony, as though they were not safe in God’s keeping.”4 The Bible never said that that woman who appealed to the unjust judge wore him out by her frequent petitioning. What impressed the judge instead, and therefore brought about his favorable ruling, was his awareness she would not back down!
Had her first petition been made in a limp, lame way, she never would have prevailed, no matter how many times she presented it! It was really her fervency that won the day!
In fact, a closer examination of the biblical record makes it clear this woman petitioned the judge only once.
George B. Peck acknowledged: Whereas Satan “cannot defeat prevailing prayer in the heavenlies”—the prayer of sure purpose and authoritative faith— “he willingly permits the importunity that lacks definiteness and confidence.”5 One can pray that kind of prayer all day long and never see it prevail!
John Henry Jowett declared: The cardinal necessity in prayer is not pleading, but receiving ... I do not believe we have any more need to plead with God to bless than to plead with the air outside to come into a building.6 Perpetual pleading isn’t our assignment; purposeful prayer is: the kind of prayer undergirded by the authority of the believer, the prayer that boldly approaches the throne and does indeed obtain.
Is it now taking on an added significance as to why the Bible speaks of our prayers as being an incense to God? For the only way the pleasing incense aroma can rise is by fire!
And when this fire is from our spirit and not our flesh, this incendiary insistence ignites our prayers in a way most pleasing to God.
Samuel Brengle said, “God loves to be compelled. God wants to be compelled. God will be compelled by the importunate prayer and faith of his children.”7 A second reason prayer insistency is needed has to do with the opposition of Satan. S.D. Gordon said of prayer: It is a fiercely contested conflict. Satan is a trained strategist and an obstinate fighter ... he yields only what is taken. Therefore, the ground must be taken step by step.8 Because prayer can commence a war in the heavenlies, we must ascend to a level of insistence needed for this war.
As a trainee in the school for rulership, God wants us to learn how to win battles like this, at least on some level commensurate with our capacity. He wants us to exercise our authority as a believer, to pray down his power so Satan will retreat and his strongholds will crumble.
P.T. Forsyth said, “The chief failure of prayer is its cessation.”9 Sometimes we stop when we become perplexed and distressed. However, delay doesn’t mean divine indifference. To the contrary, it means God has such an exalted view of our one-day rule in the universe, that he must now deepen our desire, and strengthen our resolve, through the spiritual warfare required for prevailing prayer.
While it is true that prayer finds its answer soon after its request, that which prayer obtained may not manifest for a while longer. E.M. Bounds wrote: …faith is often called upon to wait patiently before God and is prepared for God’s seeming delays in answering prayer. Faith does not grow disheartened because prayer is not immediately honored. It takes God at his Word and lets him take what time he chooses. There is bound to be delay and long days of waiting for true faith, but faith accepts the conditions. It knows there will be delays in answering prayer and regards such delays as times of testing where it is privileged to show it is made of courage and stern stuff.10 Hannah Whitall Smith observed, “… those prayers are most granted which seem most denied.”11 For a while—and sometimes a very long while— there isn’t any indication that God is at work.
Observing this phenomenon, Mathew Henry said, “God’s providences often seem to contradict his purposes, even when they are serving them, and working at a distance towards the accomplishment of them.”12 Andrew Murray reminds us why prayers may not be answered at once and, for a time, may even seem to be refused.
When the Lord is to lead a soul to great faith, he leaves its prayers unheard. So it was with the Canaanite woman. He answered her not one word, and when He did at length reply to her, the answer was still more unfavorable than his silence. This is always the way. If the answer came immediately, how would the soul get acquainted with the Lord himself?13 It is during times like these that optimum faith is necessary, and by design is made possible by the Spirit within us. We should trust the Spirit for this supply.
Often, the faith that trusts is sufficient. But there are those times when the faith that insists is required.14 And when such times occur, it won’t be the frustration of flesh that prompts this insistence. The real trigger will be a surge from our spirit, one so empowered by God that it elevates our faith to the level needed for success.
John Smith, circuit-riding Methodist preacher in England who burned out for the Lord at age 37, said, “We want the faith that cannot ask in vain; a holy panting, laboring, hungering, thirsting— and this constantly!”15