Earnest & Fervent Prayer | Submitted by Ken Roth

Petition and intercession can be hard work. Certainly, Jesus experienced that as He sought the confirmation of His Father’s will for Him, the strength to walk it out and the desired outcome from doing so as He agonized in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. As I recently read that account what stood out to me were the words, “in anguish He prayed more earnestly”. I saw how anguish moved Jesus to more earnest prayer and His earnest prayer moved His Father’s heart to answer Him in the following ways (at least):
• While praying like this an angel from heaven was sent to
strengthen Him (Lu.24:43)

• He became confirmed in His heart that this was His Father’s
will for Him (Mt.26:45, 46)

• He was delivered from death and raised to life (Heb.5:7)

There is a principle here that we need to grasp to help us pray the kind of prayers that moves the heart of God – earnest and fervent prayer is developed in the fires of trials. An example of this is found in Ex. 2:23 where it says:

“During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelities groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning, and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.”

God is moved when we turn to Him in our desperation and sense of complete helplessness, and cry out to Him day and night, like the parable of the widow who persistently appealed to the wicked judge for justice. Our good God is even more moved by this kind of persistent and desperate faith and He promises to answer us quickly according to His time frame (Lk.18:1-8). Let us not grow weary in prayer as we press into the just Judge to answer the cries of our hearts, including our cry for the renewal of our movement.