Persistant Prayer

The Lord has been giving me bits & pieces of a puzzle. He had been telling me to read about the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears (LK 7:36-50). Last Friday at the impromptu prayer meeting He again spoke to my heart about that story, so I read it while I was there. But He also took my attention to Esther 2:15 where when it was Esther's turn to go to the king, she asked for only what pleased the king. Today a friend sent me a Tommy Tenny devotional that she (& I) get. Here's what struck me in that devotional:

Persistence is one of the legitimate forms of "waiting" on God. Many believers in previous generations called it "praying through." Isaiah the prophet called it "waiting on God." Most of us today who have experienced it call it a combination of pure desperation, dogged determination, and holy perspiration. This is the tool the widow used to unlock the hardened will of the heartless judge in Jesus' parable to the disciples. It is the bombshell of a broken heart that Hannah unleashed on heaven from the dim chambers of the tabernacle where Eli the priest presided. It is the essence of the high priestly prayer Jesus poured out to heaven as a drink offering of desperation, sacrifice, and obedience to the Father in the face of death. It is the cry God cannot deny.

Have you ever persevered in prayer until heaven came down to earth? Are you prepared to pray until the foundations of your prison shake and every chain encircling your neighborhood just drop away? Will you become a persistent Hannah on behalf of a nation in need of deliverance? (You may have to pray until the unexpected fires of revival are ignited-and then give it all back to God without taking the credit.)

I believe there are unused keys of power and divine access lying on the dusty shelves of the church that we have forgotten about. Desperate passion of worship or the painful cries of crisis are going to unlock the heavens for somebody …

Frankly it is uncommon for the modern church to press through to this level of divine access. Perhaps it is because a good number of us can barely stomach a seventy-minute prayer meeting, much less a seven- or ten-day interval of intense prayer, worship, or fasting (as when the 120 "tarried" for the Holy Spirit in the Upper Room in the book of Acts). (The God Catchers, p. 149)

What Do You Think?

I believe there are unused keys of power and divine access lying on the dusty shelves of the church that we have forgotten about. Desperate passion of worship or the painful cries of crisis are going to unlock the heavens for somebody. Most of the time, we just say, "Wonder where those keys are?" It is time for us to perceive and seize the secret keys to the heart of God (and maybe clean out our ecclesiastical junk drawer!). (page 149)

Isaiah 40:28-31

28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall,
31 But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.

Prayer:

Lord, teach me the power of the "press," the determination and desire that will take me past the veil and into Your presence. Help me to tarry, wait, persist, and stand in the prayer of faith and the worship of desperation until heaven comes down and Your glory is revealed.