Devotion - Day 28

Pursuit: Pressing on for Change

David Wells published an article in Christianity Today titled, “Prayer: Rebellion against the Status Quo.” Did you ever think of prayer in this way? As Jesus observed in Matt 11:12, the Kingdom of God is forcefully advances as forceful men lay hold of it. Does this ever happen through prayer? Sure it does! In fact the victory is first won in the place of prayer.

God has assigned us the specific responsibility of pursuing Him relentlessly until His will is carried out in full. In so doing we are saying to Him, “Father the time has come for you to act. You have convinced us that you are ready. Accordingly we will press on in prayer until you bring the change.”

Some people talk about having a ‘burden in prayer’. Maybe this is what others mean by ‘the prayer of faith’. God gives us the faith to believe that He is ready to move. So much so that we cannot stop asking Him to do it until it happens.

David Bryant describes pursuing prayer as: “pursuing prayer is prayer on a mission. It is diligent, fervent, constant, persevering, determined and convinced. This praying comes closest to the Greek words used for praying in the New Testament that translate “to petition”, “to beg”, “to express with a cry”.”

Whenever George Müelller and his wife faced a lack of resources to service the children in their orphanage, hey moved into pursuing prayer. This is what Müeller said in that regard: “Would it have been right to charge God with unfaithfulness? Would it have been right to distrust Him? Would it have been right to say, it is useless to pray? By no means. This, on the contrary I did: I thanked God for all the help He had given me; I thanked Him for enabling me to overcome so many and such great difficulties. Instead of distrusting God, I looked upon this delay of the full answer to prayer only as a trial of faith, and therefore resolved, that, instead of praying once a day we should now meet three times daily, to bring this before God”