14. Eph. 1:16 Prayers Persistence part 14

Ephesians 1:15-23 Pleasure in Persistent Prayer

Activate in Making Continual Requests v.15-23

  Captivate in a Mark of Perpetual celebration

      Prayers method v.16

          Aggressive                     Cease not

To be ceaseless is not easy.  To cease not means we’re continual, constant, incessant, perpetual and never ending.

If we really accept that God is receptive to our desires and wishes.  If we comprehend that He’s not only accessible but also interested in our heartaches.  Then it would be logical that we would be unrestrained in talking to Him.

In addition, if we really felt He had the power to change things, and that He could impact every detail of our life and surroundings, we would be uninhibited in motor mouthing incessantly too Him.

Now that’s what I would call laying hold of God in prayer.  Now why wouldn’t we seize Him with every bit of our energetic grasp? Isn’t He encouraging us with the idea that He likes us touching Him and even hanging on Him?

I remember reading an article, years ago, on what the writer called “praying through.”  The thought is, if the Lord has placed the burden in our heart to pray, we need to be incessant until the weight is lifted.

So what if the weight keeps pressing in, will it doesn’t take a Philadelphia law degree to figure that one out.  You keep crying out about it, until the Lord impresses otherwise.

Jesus said in Luke 18:1 And he spoke a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.

Gal.6:9 says and let us not be weary in well doing for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.  

What causes us to grow weary really?

Mark 14:38 Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation.  

As we try to live a life of faith, where we look to include the Lord in everything, temptation will jump out to clobber us. It’s only prayer that gives freedom from the defeats of Satan.

There are constant lures to not pray, the pull and attraction to do something else is continual, the enticement and constant appeal to quit praying or get discouraged about prayer, that’s all from wrestling with unseen force.  We don’t know we’re struggling and grappling but that’s why we faint, we get tired and bored, we lie down or do something easier instead of pray.

We are not wrestling with flesh and blood, it’s not human elements that tussle and brawl with us.  It’s the invisible forces of darkness.  Demonic chains of command are fighting against us.  Their invisible and we don’t recognize or know they’re even there, but they do everything imaginable to keep us from prayer.  Why, because prayer is effective.

So when all this stuff clamors for our attention we need to let the uproar and commotion, the turmoil and tumult to not pull us away from the Lord, but to push us into God’s presence.  Disorder and unscheduled hullabaloo exposes our inadequacies and helplessness.

This vulnerability is ultimately what the Lord wants us to be conscious of.  He says without me you can do nothing, so in the vortex and swirl of all this susceptibility, incompetence and insufficiency we need to see ultimately that it is the Lord drawing us, saying abide in Me, stay close to Me, become and stay intimate with me.

We need Christ, and some of us, if not all of us, won’t open up to Him, and cry out to Him, or deepen our trust in Him, without a crisis.  Satan is God’s slave in these unscheduled obstacles; he’s a master of crisis and catastrophe.  But the Lord is master of all and He’s maneuvering us to prayer.   It may seem uncomfortable, and we are so easily lulled into a time warp of lethargy and a stupor of sluggish indolence.

The prophet Elisha is contemporary during King Joash.  Elisha had served as a prophet for over 60 years.  He was in his 90s and sick, he new he would die soon.  As Joash faced the departure and reassurance of having this great man of God nearby, the king wept over him, asking his advice, he could see that all the surrounding enemies were going to explode on his kingdom.

He feared that everything would ignite into chaos and pandemonium.  The insane madness of anarchy and the departure of this true spiritual prayer warrior created insecurity and psychological stress for Joash. 2Kings 13:13-19.

Elisha’s advice was full of symbolic uniqueness on the need of aggressive persistent relentlessly determined prayer.

Now Elisha was fallen sick of a sickness whereof he died. And Joash the king of Israel came down unto him, and wept over his face, and said, O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. 

And Elisha said unto him, Take a bow and arrows. And he took unto him bow and arrows.  And he said to the king of Israel, Put your hand upon the bow. And he put his hand upon it: and Elisha put his hands upon the king’s hands.  And he said, Open the window eastward. And he opened it. Then Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. And he said, The arrow of the LORD’S deliverance, and the arrow of deliverance from Syria: for you will smite the Syrians in Aphek, till you have consumed them.

And he said, Take the arrows. And he took them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon the ground. And he smote thrice, and stayed.

And the man of God was wroth with him, and said, you should have smitten five or six times; then had you smitten Syria till you had consumed it: whereas now you will smite Syria but thrice.

Are we shooting endless arrows of prayer to the throne of grace and are we smiting the ground with our lives and hitting our surroundings with multiplied and relentless prayer.  We will persist in what we believe and if we’re confident it will be heard and responded too we will cry out about everything.

Our existence and experiences need arrows of prayer hitting everywhere and on everything.  Are we shooting enough arrows of prayer, are we trying to hit everything sufficiently and completely?

There is great instruction for prayer in this story.  Elijah and Elisha were men whose lives were examples of greatness and there significance as giants was that they were given to prayer.

The king, Joash, saw Elisha’s life example of prayer power, he realized his influence was coming to a close.  The king felt a need of that power and in his loneliness and insecurity went to Elijah.

In verses 15-16 Elisha gives the king the steps to knowing prayer power.  Then in verse 17 tells him the strategy of prayer power.  Then in verses 18-19 Elisha scorns the stupidity of neglecting the power of prayer and the tragedy of narrowing effectiveness and succumbing to the enemy of prayer.

The bow and arrow were ancient weapons and are symbolic here of power.  The bow is power in distance and the arrow power in directness.  The quantity of arrows would be power in degree or determination.  The smacking of the ground with the arrows could lend the thought of dealings in prayer with every detail of our surrounding territory with a determination of continual slashing and smiting of strokes as we bow to God asking that our arrows of prayer would be efficient for His intervention in our surroundings.

I know that prayer power is not limited in distance, directness, degree or determination or our many details.  We are in touch through prayer with God’s ability.   He is able to answer in infinite ways, but our attitude is vital, and our aggressive anticipation in asking needs to be rejuvenated and invigorated.

We represent the winning side, why would we place limitations on the score of things?  The Lord has placed into our hands, based on human responsibility, and the obedience of faith, multiple issues of His kingdom.

This is the free will issue of His love and His delight.  Prayer is an opportunity to express our adoration and full love for Jesus and others in our prayer determination.  Is it all explainable, no, but it goes beyond just a blind obedience, it’s an interactive communion of affection in the communication of prayer, faith and the committed loyalty of merging our feelings and inner spirit with His.

We get in a hurry, but the Lord would teach us His longsuffering as He doesn’t want any to perish but all to come to repentance in a change of mind, heart, and life.

We need to rouse every fiber of our being to stand in the gap of need and build up the hedge of protective shielding for God’s glory and cause.