Continuing in Prayer
God exercises our hearts and our faith by sometimes delaying giving the answers to our prayers. The earnestness of our prayer will be according to the depth of our need and the consciousness that He alone can give the answer. The heart is exercised and kept in dependence, waiting on Him for the reply. Faith is kept alive. Other sources are not looked to when the soul has learned that He alone can do what is needed. God’s mighty power is called on through prayer. Prayer is a fitting expression of the newborn soul’s dependence on God, in contrast to that nature that always wants to be independent of Him, though it cannot escape His righteous judgment.
Daniel had to wait in fastings and mournings for three full weeks at one time before he received the reply (Daniel 10). At another time, “While I was speaking,” he says, “the answer came” (Daniel 9).
We are not indifferent to the result when the heart can in earnest entreaty wait upon God.
We may find, like Paul, that it is better for us that our desires are withheld. He learned the reason why they were withheld after his thrice-repeated prayer; thus he could boast in that which was the taunt of his enemies and the trial of his friends (2 Corinthians 12).
We need to be “filled with the Spirit.” We need to have our faith grow. Many are the needs of our hearts, and if God is pleased to bless His people, He exercises their hearts in prayer. Paul was indebted to some praying sister, perhaps, who could agonize in prayer before the Lord for those gifts with which he carried on his service in the gospel field. He could agonize in prayer for those he never saw (Colossians 2:1), and Epaphras too could labor earnestly in prayer for those he knew and loved (Colossians 4:12).
In the midst of our cares and conflicts we have “to be careful for nothing,” but let our “requests be made known unto God.” God, who has no cares, keeps our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. But we need to “continue in prayer.” We also need to “watch in the same” and “with thanksgiving” for His ear which is always opened. One of the exhortations in Romans 12:12 is “continuing instant in prayer,” that is, to persevere in prayer.
The very “importunity” of the man at the unseasonable hour of midnight was the occasion of his obtaining the loaves (Luke 11:8). One can lay down no rules in such cases. The truly exercised heart gets its own answer from God. At times we can with simple confidence “make known” and commit the request to God. At other times the heart is conscious that it cannot but cry to God until the heart is at rest as to the petition. He will not give it till His own time, and meanwhile the soul is kept in earnest exercise; faith is tested, and patience tried, and the heart watches and waits on Him. Again, such is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us, and if we know that He hears us, we know we have the petitions that we desired of Him (1 John 5:14, 15). He listens to everything which is in accordance with His will. He cannot fail in power, and we get the reply. The true heart would ask nothing contrary to His mind and will.
