The Need to Plead

Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street.
(Lamentations 2:19 – ESV)

We need to recover the practice of pleading and prevailing prayer. Not every prayer you say is going to be this way, but sometimes it is right to plead with God, presenting your case as to why you believe He should act. Now some see others just going through some histrionic (theatrical or dramatic) motions and then dismiss the whole idea as simply puerile (childish). However, we swing the pendulum too far and our prayers become models of passivity, they are perfunctory (dutiful, obligatory, unthinking, automatic). We need more passion in our prayers.

No it isn’t the volume or the amount of tears but in true prevailing prayer these are manifestations of the heart. You can have pleading prayer without them, and you can have weak prayer with them, but often pleading prayer will have an increased emotional component, as the heart is agonizing (cf. Colossians 4:12 – struggling, wrestling, agonizing). There is no exact template or pattern for what it may look like, but there will be passion when there is pleading. It isn’t about the fervor alone but pleading prayer shows faith, and it increases faith. This isn’t faith in our fervor, but faith in the promises of God based on His own character. Jesus is the basis of our pleading, His will for His people.

Sovereignty and Means – just because God is sovereign doesn’t mean we are static, God was going to bring a people into the Promised Land, but exactly who those people were depended on which of those people would believe Him and act in faith, and enter in despite the obstacles. The Jewish Christians of the first century were under heavy persecution; they had their own issues to deal with. The “giants” were in front of them and the writer of Hebrews paralleled their situation with Kadesh-Barnea, they were instructed to pray, prayer is how you enter in. The truth is we may have fasted but maybe we haven’t prayed. We don’t enter in when we fall back on passive prayer instead of marching forward in prevailing prayer. The end isn’t in doubt but God uses the means to achieve the ends. The end can be in doubt for us if we fail to use the means.

Often supposedly mature Christians will tell you to just let it go when you press on them the ideas of prevailing prayer or they see your persistence regarding a season of pleading prayer, but they are wrong. We are not supposed to let go we are supposed to hold fast, as we see from Hebrews 4:14-16, this means we are to seize the opportunity and then to hold on tight. The religious crowd will say there is nothing more you can do for others, you have prayed your little prayer, and now it is up to them.

Well, I don’t believe it, and even if that may be; I am going to pray like it was up to me. I am going to pray like there is something at stake, because there is, instead of acting as if nothing is at stake, uncaring, unfeeling. Truth is, for people that pray like that, nothing is at stake, because they don’t actually care all that much about what happens to other people. They think they are just leaving it all in God’s hands when they are just washing their own hands of it all.

“Living For Today With An Eye For Tomorrow”©