Persistence

Jesus taught his disciples to take up the prayer instrument of persistence.

Luke 11, verse 5 through 8, and he said to them,

Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him,

Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey,

and I have nothing to set before him.

And he will answer from within and say, Do not trouble me, the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot rise and give it to you.

I say to you, though, he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him

as many as he needs.

In other words, you keep on knocking, letting your friend know he is not going to get

any sleep that night until he gets up and gives you the bread.

Jesus commanded that kind of persistence.

So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you, seek, and you will find, knock,

and it will be open to you, for everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks, finds, and to him who knocks, it will be opened.

This is quite different from the prayer of petition, which receives the thing being prayed

for, even though it often requires perseverance to keep the plug-in.

In that case, you pray, you receive, you say, thank you, Lord, that is it.

In this kind of persistent prayer, you go on knocking, knocking, knocking,

continue to ask for the thing you desire until

the door is opened. Acts 12 gives us an example of persistent prayer by the early church.

King Herod had the Apostle James, the brother of John, executed. Then he proceeded to arrest Peter and hold him

for execution immediately after the Passover. At this point, the church in Jerusalem

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