Earnest Prayer

I would imagine everyone who has grown up in church has also been taught how to pray at some point. We may have begun with “Now I lay me down to sleep” and graduated with “God is good, God is great, thank you for this food, amen.”

Hopefully, as we spiritually mature our ability to communicate with the Lord grows in the same way our communication with our peers grows. I remember when our oldest son was first learning to communicate, we couldn’t get him to speak. He would just point and grunt. We were novices at being parents, but we knew that by then he should have been able to start forming words. We decided to take him to speech therapy, and we learned that it was okay to withhold from him what he wanted until he at least attempted to form the word. It didn’t take long, and the little guy started talking up a storm and from that point on we could never get him to be quiet.

This is true when it comes to prayer. In Acts chapter 12 we see that Peter was thrown into prison and was probably going to be put to death by Herod. Here is what verse 5 tells us, “So Peter was kept in the prison, but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God.” I would like to point out that the prayer that was being poured out on Peter’s behalf was done so fervently. The word “fervently” speaks of a muscle being pushed to its limits. It speaks of maximum effort.

This was not a simple prayer in a moment of remembrance. No, this is being on their faces before God and crying out endlessly. They poured all they had into their prayers. Why? Because they knew that the Lord could do anything they asked of Him. This confidence gave them the stamina to continue to pray and to never give up on seeking God.

I wonder, is there anything in our lives that we are desperate for the Lord to intervene upon? Is there something so greatly important that only God can fix, that we need Him to step into our lives to conquer on our behalf? Question: does our prayer life illustrate that need? Do we pray like the church did on Peter’s behalf? They understood that Peter’s life was on the line and that if the Lord did not remedy this situation Peter would die. So, they prayed earnestly, and they stretched their spiritual muscles to the point of agony because it was that important to them.

Could it be that we do not see God move in many situations because we pray in our spare time and not earnestly? What would happen if the church got serious about prayer? What if we took seriously the lostness around us and cried out to God earnestly? What if we prayed and stretched out to God as the woman with the issue of bleeding did with Jesus? “If only I could touch His garment, then I could be made whole.”

Let me challenge all of us to pray earnestly, stretch our spiritual muscles, and let's see what the Lord does in 2024.