Keep Praying and Don't Lose Heart

Luke chapter 18 begins with Jesus telling a parable to illustrate how people ought to always pray and not faint.  There was an unjust judge who was approached by a persistent widow who asked him to avenge her of her adversary.  The man had no interest in justice or love of this woman, but he ended up making a judgment on her case in her favour because he wanted to be rid of her.  Jesus said in Luke 18:7, "And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?"  Just because our prayers are not answered immediately should not deter us for praying for God's glory according to His will.  He IS the just Judge who has chosen us, loves us and has promised to take vengeance upon our enemies in His own good time.

In A.W. Tozer's book Going Higher With God in Prayer he made great points about how we ought to be persistent and patient in prayer without losing heart:

"I believe that real faith can afford to wait.  God's grace often operates through natural events.  If you want an ear of corn, plant a grain of corn and wait.  Cultivate it and watch it grow. "For the earth yields crops by itself:  first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head" (Mark 4:28).  That's the way God works.  God does not work with slot machines.

I am on a lonely one-man crusade against slot-machine religion.  Put a nickel in the slot and get anything you want.  That's the way people work, but that is not the way God works.

If God's wants chickens, He makes the old hen sit patiently for twenty-one days until an egg hatches.  I used to pity hens, having to wait all that time.  With some birds, it's twenty-eight days, and with others it's even longer.  If God wants an oak tree, it takes Him twenty years to grow it.  If He wants wheat, it takes all winter and up to July of the next year.  The God of nature is also the God of grace.  Therefore, I think we ought not to rush heaven when we pray.  We ought to pray in the will of God and then watch God work slowly.

I have asked God for things and almost gotten discouraged, and then finally saw them begin to happen.  Americans have brass knockers, and they knock three times and want to go right in.  The kingdom of heaven can wait, and you can wait, and I can wait.  Let us trust God and be patient.  Some people in the Old Testament--even in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the Westminster Abbey of the Bible--died before their prayers were answered." (Tozer, A. W., and James L. Snyder. Going Higher with God in Prayer: Cultivating a Lifelong Dialogue. Bethany House Publishers, a Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2022. page 99)