John always prayed for his unbelieving son – regardless of what people thought. His prayers involved tears, and his voice would tremble as he implored God to intervene. Yet sometimes I could detect something of an unspoken “tut” in the prayer meeting.
For some people such persistence in prayer showed a lack of trust in the Lord, while for others such demonstrations of emotion were unseemly, and certainly slightly awkward for us British!
Yet, I suspect John’s relentless hammering on the doors of heaven for the lost was closer to the kind of prayer that Jesus taught, than some of the more arid prayer meetings I have been part of.
Twice in Luke’s Gospel, the Lord encouraged persistent prayer. The parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18v1-4) in which a woman bangs on the door of a reluctant judge until she gets justice, was given to “show them that they should always pray and not give up”. In Luke 11, someone who pounded on a friend’s door in the night until they got bread was commended for their “shameless audacity”. Perhaps surprisingly, this too is held out to us as an example of how we should pray.
I am ashamed to say that there have been times when I have excused my coldness in prayer for the lost, and sought to placate my conscience with the thought that I am not panicking because I hold a high view of the sovereignty of God. In truth I should have been repenting of my apathy. Jesus commends persistence and shameless audacity – as it comes from the kind of heart for the lost that caused him to weep over Jerusalem, Nehemiah to mourn the exile, or Robert Murray McCheyne to cry for the lost people of Dundee. Dispatching a heavenward instant message, and moving on trusting that it has been received like a spiritual WhatsApp, doesn’t seem to be what Luke or Jesus wanted us to do.
More recently I have got to know another John. He shares the gospel faithfully and prays – with a rare kind of audacity and persistence – for a gospel church to be planted in his town. I cannot count the number of times I have heard John pray to the Lord of the harvest to send workers to his particular field. No doubt some of the more cynical characters among us in the prayer meeting might think “there he goes again” – but I am convinced that when the Lord moves, the first thing he does is stir his people to pray in the Spirit, persistently. We know that our own efforts will soon peter out and that true persistence in prayer can only come when we are carried along by the wind of the Spirit. I believe that John’s prayers will result in a gospel work in his town one day, and I long to see it.
Who are the lost people who don’t know Christ who are on your heart? Write down five names and pray for them today. Pray until they believe, and don’t give up. Ask the Lord to give you a burden for them in the Spirit that will compel you to pray with a godly persistence and audacity. If you are reading this online, please switch off your screen and pray for someone who is lost. If you are holding Evangelicals Now in your hand, put it down and ask the Lord who you could pray for.
The doctrine of the sovereignty of God should never make us fatalists, who shrug at the unbelief and sin of our world as if it were not our concern. Rather, the fact that we can appeal to the Lord of all should inspire us to persist in prayer, as even the hardest heart is not beyond His power to soften.
I recently asked a very fruitful pastor-evangelist what his core mission strategy was. He simply replied: “The prayer meeting”.
Coffee, cardboard boxes and the Kingdom of God
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