A Day Off From Praying

After Michele had been praying for a friend for years, she complained to the Lord, "I've invested all this heartache and burden praying for this person, but I wonder if anything is happening. Are my prayers making any difference? I want a day off from interceding."

Despite that prayer, she specifically prayed for her friend's physical protection. She later learned that on that day he was involved in a dreadful accident in which he could have been killed.

"The Lord showed me that He's working via my feeble attempts at intercession. It was as if the Lord put a billboard in front of me and said, 'I am doing a work in this friend, and you need to keep praying.'"

Elijah climbed to the top of Mt. Carmel and began to pray for rain. "Go and look toward the sea," he told his servant hoping for a sign of rain.

"There is nothing there," the servant said. Six times the servant gave the same report.

Have you ever prayed and there is nothing? No sign that God heard? If Elijah had stopped praying then, there would have been no rain.

A stone cutter hammered away at a rock ninety-nine times and didn't make even one crack in it. But after one more blow, it split in two. It was not the one blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

Every prayer counts. Don't stop on the 99th prayer.

Dear Jesus, help me to be faithful so I will have no regrets.

"So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised" (Hebrews 10:35, 36).

Aletha