The phrase used to describe the widow’s persistence, “she is wearing me out,” is boxing terminology. Praying hard is going twelve rounds with God. A heavyweight prayer bout with God Almighty can be excruciating and exhausting, but that is how the greatest prayer victories are won. Praying hard is more than words; it’s blood, sweat, and tears. Praying hard is two-dimensional: praying like it depends on God, and working like it depends on you. It’s praying until God answers, no matter how long it takes. It’s doing whatever it takes to show God you’re serious.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and there is no more desperate act than praying hard. There comes a moment when you need to throw caution to the wind and draw a circle in the sand. There comes a moment when you need to defy protocol, drop to your knees, and pray for the impossible. There comes a moment when you need to muster every ounce of faith you have and call down rain from heaven. For the persistent widow, this was that moment.
While we don’t know what injustice took place, we do know that the persistent widow wouldn’t take no for an answer. That’s what made her a circle maker. Maybe her son was falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Maybe the man who molested her daughter was still on the streets. Whatever it was, the judge knew she would never give up. The judge knew she would circle his house until the day she died if she didn’t get justice. The judge knew there was no quit in the persistent widow.
Does The Judge know that about you?
How desperate are you for the miracle? Desperate enough to pray through the night? How many times are you willing to circle the promise? Until the day you die? How long and loud will you knock on the door of opportunity? Until you knock the door down?
If you aren’t desperate, you won’t take desperate measures. And if you don’t pray like it depends on God, the biggest miracles and best promises will remain out of your prayer reach. But if you learn how to pray hard, like the persistent widow, God will honor your bold prayers because your bold prayers honor God.
Like Honi the circle maker, the persistent widow’s methodology was unorthodox. She could have, and technically should have, waited for her court date. Going to the personal residence of the judge crossed a professional line. I’m almost surprised the judge didn’t get a restraining order against her. But this reveals something about the nature of God. God couldn’t care less about protocol. If He did, Jesus would have chosen the Pharisees as His disciples. But that isn’t who Jesus honored. Jesus honored the prostitute who crashed a party at a Pharisee’s home to anoint His feet. Jesus honored the tax collector who climbed a tree in his three-piece suit just to get a glimpse of Jesus. Jesus honored the four friends who cut in line and cut a hole in someone’s ceiling to help their friend. And in this parable, Jesus honored the woman who drove a judge crazy because she wouldn’t stop knocking.
The common denominator in each of these stories is holy desperation. People took desperate measures to get to God, and God honored them for it. Nothing has changed. God is still honoring spiritual desperadoes who crash parties and climb trees. God is still honoring those who defy protocol with their bold prayers. God is still honoring those who pray with audacity and tenacity. And the persistent widow is selected as the gold standard when it comes to praying hard. Her unrelenting persistence was the only difference between justice and injustice.
The viability of our prayers is not contingent on scrabbling the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet into the right combinations like abracadabra. God already knows the last punctuation mark before we pronounce the first syllable. The viability of our prayers has more to do with intensity than vocabulary. That is modeled by the Holy Spirit Himself, who has been intensely and unceasingly interceding for you your entire life.
Psalm 32:7 is a must-circle promise. I like the King James Version: “Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.”
Long before you woke up this morning and long after you go to sleep tonight, the Spirit of God was circling you with songs of deliverance. He has been circling you since the day you were conceived, and He’ll circle you until the day you die. He is praying hard for you with ultrasonic groans that cannot be formulated into words, and those unutterable intercessions should fill you with an unspeakable confidence. God isn’t just for you in some passive sense; God is for you in the most active sense imaginable. The Holy Spirit is praying hard for you. And supernatural synchronicities begin to happen when we tag-team with God and do the same.
Chapter 8
Persistence Quotient
In standardized math tests, Japanese children consistently score higher than their American counterparts. While some assume that a natural proclivity toward mathematics is the primary difference, researchers have discovered that it may have more to do with effort than ability. In one study involving first graders, students were given a difficult puzzle to solve. The researchers weren’t interested in whether or not the children could solve the puzzle; they simply wanted to see how long they would try before giving up. The American children lasted, on average, 9.47 minutes. The Japanese children lasted 13.93 minutes. In other words, the Japanese children tried about 40 percent longer. Is it any wonder that they score higher on math exams? Researchers concluded that the difference in math scores might have less to do with intelligence quotient and more to do with persistence quotient. The Japanese first graders simply tried harder.
That study not only explains the difference in standardized math scores; the implications are true no matter where you turn. It doesn’t matter whether it’s athletics or academics, music or math. There are no shortcuts. There are no substitutes. Success is a derivative of persistence.
More than a decade ago, Anders Ericsson and his colleagues at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music did a study with musicians. With the help of professors, they divided violinists into three groups: world-class soloists, good violinists, and those who were unlikely to play professionally. All of them started playing at roughly the same age and practiced about the same amount of time until the age of eight. That is when their practice habits diverged. The researchers found that by the age of twenty, the average players had logged about four thousand hours of practice time; the good violinists totaled about eight thousand hours; the elite performers set the standard with ten thousand hours. While there is no denying that innate ability dictates some of your upside potential, your potential is only tapped via persistent effort. Persistence is the magic bullet, and the magic number seems to be ten thousand.
Neurologist Daniel Levitin notes:
The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again … No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.
Is prayer any different?
It is a habit to be cultivated. It is a discipline to be developed. It is a skill to be practiced. And while I don’t want to reduce praying hard to time logged, if you want to achieve mastery, it might take ten thousand hours. This I know for sure: the bigger the dream the harder you will have to pray.
A Small Cloud
Several centuries before the drought that threatened to destroy Honi’s generation, there was another drought in Israel. For three long years, there was no puddle jumping in Israel. Then the Lord promised Elijah that He would send rain, but like every promise, Elijah still had to circle it via persistent prayer. So Elijah climbed to the top of Mount Carmel, fell on his face, and prayed for rain. Six times he told his servant to look toward the sea, but there was no sign of rain. And this is when most of us give up. We stop praying because we can’t see any tangible difference with our natural eyes. We allow our
circumstances to get between God and us instead of putting God between us and our circumstances.
Like Honi who said, “I will not move from here,” Elijah held his holy ground. He stood on the promise God had given him. I think Elijah would have prayed ten thousand times if that is what it took, but between the sixth and seventh prayer, there was a subtle shift in atmospheric pressure. After the seventh circle, Elijah’s nearsighted servant strained his eyes and saw a small cloud the size of a man’s hand rising from the sea.
I can’t help but ask the counterfactual question: What if Elijah had quit praying after the sixth circle? The obvious answer is that he would have defaulted on the promise and forfeited the miracle. But Elijah prayed through, and God came through. The sky turned black; heavy winds blew across the barren landscape; raindrops fell for the first time in three years. And it wasn’t a light drizzle; it was a terrific rainstorm.
It’s easy to give up on dreams, give up on miracles, give up on promises. We lose heart, lose patience, lose faith. And like a slow leak, it often happens without us even knowing it until our prayer life gets a flat.
I recently realized that I had stopped circling one of the seven miracles I had written on my prayer stone during the ten-day Pentecost fast I did years ago. I once believed that God would heal my asthma, but I got tired of asking. It felt like God had put me on hold, so I just hung up. Then a conversation with a friend reactivated my faith, and I’ve started circling that miracle again.
Is there some dream that God wants to resurrect? Is there some promise you need to reclaim? Is there some miracle you need to start believing for again?
The reason many of us give up too soon is that we feel like we have failed if God doesn’t answer our prayer. That isn’t failure. The only way you can fail is if you stop praying.
Prayer is a no-lose proposition.
Live Unoffended
John and Heidi have experienced amazing answers to prayer. They are part of the prayer circle that prays for me while I’m in a writing season. They were also part of the prayer circle that prayed for the $2 million miracle. God has given them amazing answers to their prayers for others, but many of their own prayers for their own challenges have gone unanswered. A step of faith into the world of filmmaking resulted in the loss of their life savings because financial backing didn’t materialize as promised. Their family had to move out of their home because of a fire. They lost three of four parents in four years. And a rare genetic condition has taken a toll physically, emotionally, and financially. It almost seems like God answers every prayer they pray, except for the prayers they pray for themselves.
There have been moments when they’ve been tempted to throw in the prayer towel, but one promise has sustained them through the toughest times: “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Here’s the context of that promise.
Jesus is doing miracles right and left. He is healing diseases, driving out demons, and restoring sight to the blind, but John the Baptist misses the miracle train. It seems like Jesus is rescuing everybody except His most faithful follower, who is in prison. And John is His cousin, nonetheless. It seems like Jesus could have, and maybe should have, organized a rescue operation and busted him out before he was beheaded. Instead He sends a message via John’s disciples. He tells them to tell John about all the miracles He is doing, and then He asks them to relay this promise: “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Have you ever felt like God was doing miracles for everyone and their brother, but you seem to be the odd man out? It seems like God is keeping His promises to everyone but you?
I wonder if that’s how John the Baptist felt.
What do you do when you feel like God is answering everyone’s prayers but yours?
In the words of my friends who have experienced their fair share of unanswered prayers, “We try to live our lives unoffended by God. Jesus promises that we will be blessed if we aren’t offended. Obviously we aren’t in prison about to be beheaded, but we have seen many answers to our prayers for other people when we have prayed for their finances, their health, and their kids. Yet in our own lives, well …”
That’s where most of us live most of the time — in the triple-dot punctuation known as an ellipsis. The ellipsis indicates a pause in speech or an unfinished thought. When we’re waiting for God to answer a prayer, it’s a period of ellipsis.
You can give up or hang on. You can let go or pray through. You can get frustrated with God or choose to live unoffended.
The thing that sustained John and Heidi during the ellipses in their lives was a fresh encounter with the love of Christ. The Savior’s long-suffering on the cross inspired them, inspires us, to press in and pray through. And we don’t just live in the shadow of the cross; we live in the light of the resurrection, even in our darkest days. So my friends have chosen to live unoffended: “Living an unoffended life is not some Zen-like experience. It’s living a life surrendered to His sovereignty, His mystery, and His love. Jesus promises blessing if we are not offended when He does things for others. And if He does it for them, He might do it for us. I don’t know why God does what He does. I do know that 100 percent of the prayers I don’t pray won’t get answered.”
I love that approach to prayer, that approach to life. It’s the circle maker’s mantra: 100 percent of the prayers I don’t pray won’t get answered.
God’s Grammar
It’s hard to hold on to hope during a period of ellipsis, but whenever I’m tempted to give up, I’m reminded of an old preacher’s sermon titled “God’s Grammar.” I’ve forgotten most of the sermons I’ve ever heard, and that’s a little depressing as a preacher, but this one statement was unforgettable: “Never put a comma where God puts a period, and never put a period where God puts a comma.”
Sometimes what we perceive as a period is really just a comma. We think that God’s silence is the end of the sentence, but it’s just a providential pause. Praying through is the conjunction that allows God to not just finish the sentence but to make a statement.
“Lord, … if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Did you catch the conjunction? This is one of the most amazing statements of faith in all of Scripture because of the little conjunction, but, right in the middle of the sentence. It seems like the sentence should end after Martha says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Why? Because her brother, Lazarus, has been dead for four days! But Martha doesn’t put a period there. She puts a comma. Even though her brother is dead and buried, she is still holding out hope.
The little phrase “even now” is underlined and circled in my Bible. Even when it seems like God is four days late, it’s too soon to give up. Even when it seems like your dream is dead and buried, it’s too soon to put a period there. After all, you can’t never always sometimes tell.
There are two degrees of faith in the two statements that Martha makes. The first statement is first-degree faith: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” First-degree faith is preventative faith. Like the prayer of Martha, who believed that Jesus could have kept her brother from dying, first-degree prayers take preventative measures. We ask God to keep bad things from happening. So we pray for safety as we travel, or we pray a hedge of protection around our children. And there is nothing wrong with that, but there is another dimension of faith that believes that God can undo what has already been done. Second-degree faith is resurrection faith. It’s a faith that refuses to put periods at the end of disappointments. It’s a faith that believes that God can reverse the irreversible. It’s a faith that believes it’s not over until God says it’s over. And it’s epitomized by Martha’s “even now” profession of faith: “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”
Have you ever felt like God was a day late or a dollar short?
That’s how Bill felt after applying
for the same job twelve years in a row! His dream job was working at the State Department, but that dream was denied eleven years in a row. He could have put a period after the second or third or seventh denial, and some of his friends and family thought he should. But when a dream is from God, it has more than nine lives. It was Bill’s second-degree faith that enabled him to pray through the setbacks. He never put a period where God put a comma. Finally, after his twelfth trip around Jericho, Bill beat out twelve hundred other applicants and got the job.
So how do you go from first-degree faith to second-degree faith? Well, there is no easy answer. It’s hard times that teach us to pray hard. Even when the application is denied or the adoption falls through or the business goes bankrupt, you put a comma there. Even then you believe even now. And during those periods of ellipsis, your persistence quotient will increase exponentially.
Hyperlink
Even after three years of drought, even after a severe bout with depression, Elijah believed that God could send rain even now.
I can’t help but wonder if Honi the circle maker was inspired by the story of Elijah praying for rain seven times. I wonder if Israel’s original rainmaker was Honi’s childhood hero. And I wonder if Honi’s persistence in prayer was hyperlinked to this miracle? If God did it for Elijah, He can do it for me. By the same token, I can’t help but wonder if Elijah’s persistence in prayer was hyperlinked to the miracle of raining quail? If God can send a quailstorm, He can certainly send a thunderstorm.
One thing is certain: Our most powerful prayers are hyperlinked to the promises of God. When you know you are praying the promises of God, you can pray with holy confidence. It’s the difference between praying on thin ice and praying on solid ground. It’s the difference between praying tentatively and praying tenaciously. You don’t have to second-guess yourself because you know that God wants you to double-click on His promises.
The Circle Maker_Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears Page 8
