When we’ve been praying for ages and haven’t seen an answer, or it doesn’t even feel like God’s listening, we can become discouraged and stop praying. But the Bible tells us to ‘never stop praying.’ God wants us to be persistent pray-ers. He may not answer in the way we think He should, or within the timeframe we think He should, but when we pray according to His Word, He’s promised to answer. All through the Bible, we see people coming before God to pray. In Exodus 17, Israel goes to battle against a vastly superior army of Amalekites. Moses climbed a hill, along with Aaron and Hur, and he prayed with his arms raised. Meanwhile, Joshua was down with the Israelite army on the battlefield. Every time Moses’ arms were raised, the Israelites were winning. Inviting God into our situations, however big or small, brings His power, wisdom and perspective. When advisors informed Nehemiah that Jerusalem was in ruins, he built a foundation of prayer under the whole project before he did any rebuilding (have a read of Nehemiah 1:4). Prayer should be our first thought, not our last resort. We should be praying at the start of the day, the end of the day, and throughout the day too. Jesus rose up early to pray, escaped the crowds of people to pray and even prayed all night before He went to the cross. Every word He spoke and everything He did was saturated in prayer. And it should be the same for us too. Our lives should be a cycle of prayer – action – prayer. Even when it gets hard, let’s be persistent pray-ers.

What Now?

Create a prayer wall in your room. Write some prayer points on sticky notes and stick them on the wall. Every morning and evening, go to your prayer wall and pray over those things. Add to it when you think of new ones and only take them down when God’s answered them.