Why do we think we have developed a heightened level of spirituality when we give up on praying and stifle our love of Christ in a muffling "your will be done"? Nothing so marks the carnal mind like the indifference to praying and "keeping on" praying. It is passive aggressive bitterness that stops at the point of impassioned interceding for all the needs that come to our mind. The great purpose of intercessory prayer is simple; to bring each and every one of those things that disturb us to the mind of Christ and there with the Holy Spirit working in our heart learn to love God with the type of love Mary had not many minutes after she wondered aloud why Jesus had waited too long to save Lazarus. The pagan determination to pray for the dead is not so far off the mark as we think. In Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega all at once, who is to say our praying cannot reach back before us and alter even what has happened in the past. Where is the justification for giving up on everything that seems hopeless to us if God can pull the dead from the grave on the last day? The praying of one believing Christian can change the course of events miraculously and in stunning fashion, not because she is worthy of it but because the love of God is poured out in the interceding and that love is a healing fire. Nothing in the spiritual realm is quite so intoxicating as the determination to quit on a matter because it seems hopeless. It is the morphine of Satan, this resolve to let go of the thing when the Holy Spirit is pressing us forward in prayer. Who among us has not quit on a matter just as arrogantly as the mourners who laughed when Jesus informed them that the little girl was not dead but merely sleeping? The opportunity to pray at any given moment for each part of a day is a privilege won for us at the Cross and we should not quit on it so carelessly.
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:24 NIV
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