Persistance

Short and sweet.  That's what you can expect from me today.  I have things I would like to do with the short amount of time available to me prior to leaving for work, but I wanted to share with you something that sort of jumped out at me the other day.

In Challenge last Tuesday night, one of our leaders shared a passage that I had read several times, but never actually paid much attention to.  In Daniel 10, Daniel is distraught over a vision he has had, an prays for three weeks to be strengthened.  An angel of the Lord does come to him, and in verses 12-13, he tells Daniel that he had been sent at once upon the utterance of that very first prayer.  However, he was opposed for three weeks by a mysterious entity referred to as the prince of Persia before Michael (a more powerful angel) came to aid him.  The point of us being told this was that spiritual battles are real and constant, but I took something else away from it:  don't give up.  We live in the microwave generation.  We want dinner as soon as we're hungry, we want to get wherever we're going as quickly as possible, leaving a message with someone's secretary isn't good enough, we have to call their cell phone, and our emails shouldn't wait, either, because nearly everyone can respond from their smartphone!  We try to apply this same concept to prayer.  We pray, and we expect some sort of instantaneous response.  It doesn't always work that way.

Try another story from scripture.  At the very beginning of Luke 18, Christ tells a parable about a judge and a widow.  This judge is kind of a grumpy-sounding fellow, who neither fears God nor respects other people.  The widow asks the judge daily for justice against her adversary.  Eventually, he gets tired of her coming to him every day and grants her wish.  Christ's point to the parable is that God actually does love us, so of course he will grant that which we seek, as quickly as fits the master plan.  Think about how long Simeon and Anna waited to see the Christ child in the temple.  Their prayers were answered, but on God's time.

Keep in mind, also, that all prayers are answered.  It might be "yes," "not now," or "no."  God provides us with what we need when we need it.  I know that quoting a U2 song is not scripture.  But I think the quote applies.

"What you don't have, you don't need it now."