Sustainable Hope: Audacity

Shameless Persistence

by J. Oswald Sanders

Reprinted by permission from his book

 

 

 

Prayer Power Unlimited

A Teaching Quarterly for Discipleship of Heart and Mind

C.S. L

 

 

 

EWIS INSTITUTE

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2004 issue of

 

 

Knowing & Doing.

K

 

 

 

NOWING & DOING

...because of his importunity.

Luke 11:8 KJV

2

thing but it came at some time—no matter at how

distant a day, somehow, in some shape, probably

the last I would have devised, it came.”

 

 

1

Why Is Importunity Necessary?

Since God is a loving heavenly Father who knows

all our needs better than we do, why should He require

us to importune Him? Why does He not just

grant our requests, as He is well able to do?

This is somewhat of a mystery, and the answer

does not appear on the surface. We can be assured that

there is no reluctance on God’s part to give us whatever

is good for us. He does not need to be coaxed, for

He is not capricious. Prayer is not a means of extorting

blessing from unwilling fingers. The “how much more”

of Matthew 7:11 affirms this with emphasis. The answer

must be sought elsewhere. The necessity must lie

in us, not in God. It is not God who is under test, but

our own spiritual maturity.

Dr. W. E. Biederwolf makes the interesting suggestion

that importunity is one of the instructors in

God’s training school for Christian culture. God does

not always grant the answer to prayer at once because

the petitioner is not yet in a fit state to receive

what he asks. There is something God desires to do

in him before He answers the prayer.

There may be some lack of yieldedness, or some

failure to master some previous spiritual lesson. So

while He does not deny the request, He withholds

the answer until, through persevering prayer, the

end He has in view is achieved.

May this not be in part the explanation of some

of God’s seeming delays? His delays are always delays

of love, not of caprice. “Men would pluck their

mercies green; God would have them ripe.”

An Athletic of the Soul

Canon W. Hay Aitken refers to prayer as “an athletic

of the soul” that is designed to render our desires

more intense by giving them adequate

expression, to exercise the will in its highest functions,

and to bring us into closer touch with God. It

will also test the reality and sincerity of our faith,

and save it from being superficial. Importunity

rouses the slumbering capacities of the soul and prepares

the way for faith.

 

 

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There may be other reasons why the divine response

tarries and importunity is needed. Here are

some suggestions.

1. We may be asking without greatly caring about the issue.

If we are not in earnest, why should God bestir

Himself? We shall find Him when we seek with all our

hearts.

Shameless Persistence

2. We may be asking for selfish reasons, and the discipline

of delay is necessary to purge us of this. Selfish

motivation is self-defeating in prayer.

3. We may unconsciously be unwilling to pay the price

involved in the answering of our prayers, and our Father

desires us to face up to this fact.

4. We may be misinterpreting what God is doing in our

lives in answer to our prayers. This was the case with

John Newton, the converted slave-trader. He gives his

testimony in verse:

I asked the Lord, that I may grow

In faith, and love, and every grace;

Might more of his salvation know,

And seek more earnestly his face.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I hoped that in some favoured hour,

At once he’d answer my request;

And by his love’s constraining power,

Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, he made me feel

The hidden evils of my heart;

And let the angry powers of hell

Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with his own hand he seemed

Intent to aggravate my woe;

Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,

Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

Lord, why is this, I trembling cried,

Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?

“’Tis in this way,” the Lord replied,

“I answer prayer for grace and faith.

“These inward trials I employ,

From self and pride to set thee free;

And break thy scheme of earthly joy,

That thou mayst seek thy all in me.”

God’s dual method with His servant was to reveal to

him the inherent evil of his heart so that he would be

motivated to claim importunately from God the blessing

he was then fitted to receive.

5. Another possible reason for God’s apparent delay or

denial of an answer is put forward to Dr. D. M.

McIntyre: it secures our humble dependence on God.

 

 

3 If

He bestowed our desires as gifts of nature and did not

want our solicitations, we would tend to become independent

of Him. “Otherwise, you may say in your heart,

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‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this

wealth,’” was God’s warning to His people. “You shall

remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving

you power to make wealth” (Deut. 8:17-18).

Our Part Not Yet Fully Done

For our encouragement, we should remember that

the walls of Jericho did not fall until the Israelites

had circled them a full thirteen times and then

shouted the shout of faith (Josh. 6:1-20). We may

have circled our prayer-Jericho the full thirteen

times, and yet the answer has not come. Why?

Could it be that God is waiting to hear the shout of

faith? Perhaps that is the reason the forbidding

walls are still intact. He delights to see us step out in

faith upon His naked promise.

Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say unanswered,

Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done,

The work began when first your prayer was uttered,

And God will finish what He has begun.

Keep incense burning in the shrine of prayer,

And glory shall descend sometime, somewhere.

Unanswered yet? Faith cannot be unanswered;

Her feet are firmly planted on the Rock;

Amid the wildest storms she stands undaunted,

Nor quails before the loudest thunder shock.

She knows Omnipotence has heard her prayer,

And cries, “It shall be done sometime,

somewhere.”

O

 

 

PHELIA GUYON BROWNING

Two Importunate Intercessors

Abraham and Elijah stand in contrast in two prayer

engagements.

Abraham was an intimate friend of God. In one

of his conversations with God, God revealed to him

the impending judgment on Sodom. He interceded

for his nephew Lot and the people of Sodom in a

prayer of mixed argument, audacity, and humility.

It was a most remarkable prayer. Time and again

Abraham enlarged his demand—fifty righteous,

forty-five, forty, thirty, twenty, ten—and then he

stopped praying. There was no reason to suppose

God’s mercy was exhausted. But while Abraham

received a partial answer and Lot was delivered,

Sodom was destroyed. His intercession was unsuccessful

because of failure in importunity.

Elijah pressed his suit on behalf of his droughtstricken

nation, and refused to take no for an answer.

Seven times, strong in faith, he pled with God,

and the full answer came.

Is it without significance that Elijah prayed seven

times, the number of perfection and fullness—while

Abraham stopped at six times, the number of human

frailty? Abraham stopped asking before God

stopped answering. Let us become “seven-times

prayers.”

Faith, mighty faith the promise sees,

And looks to God alone;

Laughs at impossibilities,

And cries, It shall be done!

C

 

 

HARLES WESLEY

1

 

 

E. M. Bounds, Purpose in Prayer (New York: Revell, 1920), p. 54.

2

 

 

W. H. Aitken, The Divine Ordinance of Prayer (London: Wells

Gardner, 1902), p. 118.

3

 

 

D. M. M’Intyre, The Hidden Life of Prayer, rev. ed. (Stirling, Scotland:

Drummond’s Tract Depot, n.d.), p. 120.

Shameless Persistence

A native of New Zealand, the late

 

 

J.

Oswald Sanders

 

 

 

(1902-1992) was a

consulting director for Overseas Missionary

Fellowship, the organization

founded by Hudson Taylor in 1865.

He preached and taught in conferences

in many countries and wrote

over 40 books on the Christian life,

including

 

 

The Incomparable Christ, Satan Is No Myth, and Enjoying

Intimacy With God

 

 

 

. He received the Order of the British

Empire for Christian service and theological writing.

In his preface to

 

 

Prayer Power Unlimited, Sanders writes:

The supreme importance of prayer is tacitly admitted by

most evangelical Christians. It is accepted as an article of

faith. And yet there are few areas of the Christian life in

which there are more regretful confessions of failure and

disappointment.

The author does not pose as an authority

on the subject—only a fellow

student in the school of prayer; he is

very conscious of the heights yet to be

scaled.

Shameless Persistence

 

 

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Used by permission.

© 2004 C.S. L

 

 

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