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Discussion Forum : Articles and Sermons : Praying Through

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followthelamb
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Joined: 2010/12/7
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 Praying Through

Found this to be very encouraging tonight and just wanted to share 🙏 ...

"...The word translated “importunity” in the eighth verse [Luke 11:5-8] is a deeply significant word. Its primary meaning is “shamelessness,” that is, it sets forth the persistent determination in prayer to God that will not be put to shame by any apparent refusal on God’s part to grant the thing we ask. This is a very startling way that our Lord Jesus employs to set forth the necessity of “importunity” and persistence, in prayer.
It is as if the Lord Jesus would have us understand that God would have us draw nigh to Him with a resolute determination to obtain the things that we seek, a determination that will not be put to shame by any seeming refusal or delay on God’s part.

Our Heavenly Father delights in the holy boldness on our part that will not take “no” for an answer. The reason why He delights in it is because it is an expression of great faith, and nothing pleases God more than faith.

We have an illustration of this holy boldness in the Gentile woman in the fifteenth chapter of Matthew, verses twenty-one to twenty-eight. She came to Jesus Christ for the healing of her daughter. She cried, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a demon.”

But our Lord seemed to pay no attention whatever to her. As Matthew puts it, “He answered her not a word. And His disciples came [to Him] and besought Him, saying, Send her away for she crieth after us.” In spite of His apparent deafness to her appeal she kept right on crying.

Then He turned to her with an apparently more positive rebuff, saying, “I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and she was not of the House of Israel. Then she worshipped Him and kept on calling to Him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And then came what almost appears like a cruel rebuff, when our Lord said, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs.”

The word that He used for “dogs” was a peculiar word that meant a little pet dog, and was not at all as harsh as it seems, although it was an apparent refusal to hear her prayer. But, as we shall see, our Lord was simply putting to the test her faith that she might get an even larger blessing. Then she said, “Yea, Lord: for even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table.” She would not take “no” for an answer.

And then came one of the most wonderful words of commendation that ever fell from the lips of our Lord. This is the way Matthew puts it: “Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith, be it done unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was healed from that hour.” That sort of thing pleases God. He would have us have that faith in His loving kindness and in Himself that even when He seems not to hear will trust Him still to hear.

God does not always give us the things we ask the first time we ask them, but then we should not give up; no, we should keep on praying until we do get. We should not only pray, but we should PRAY THROUGH....

...I prayed fifteen long years for the conversion of my oldest brother. He seemed to be getting farther and farther away from any hope of conversion, but I prayed on, and one morning, my first winter in Chicago, after fifteen years of praying, never missing a single day, God said to me as I knelt in prayer, “I have heard your prayer. You need not pray any more, your brother is going to be converted.”

And within two weeks my brother was in my home, shut in with sickness which made it impossible for him to leave my home, shut in for two weeks, and then the day he left accepting Christ over in the Bible Institute in Mr. Moody’s office, where he and I went to talk and pray together.

I told this incident once when I was holding meetings in a certain city. An elderly woman came to me at the close of the meeting and she said, “I have been praying for the conversion of my brother, who is sixty-three years old, for many years, but a short time ago, I gave up and stopped praying. But,” she added, “I am going to begin my prayers again.” And within two weeks of that time she came to me and said, “I have heard from my brother and he has accepted Christ.”

Oh, men and women, pray through; pray through; PRAY THROUGH! Do not just begin to pray and praise a little while and throw up your hands and quit, but pray, and pray, and pray, until God bends the heavens and comes down!"

- R. A. Torrey


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