It Is Important That Our Prayers Show a High Degree of Intensity, Commitment, and Focus

In the sixteenth century, the great Scottish reformer John Knox cried out to the Lord in one of his prayers for his nation: “Give me Scotland or I die!” That is the kind of desperate prayer God has been pleased to honor through the centuries, and that has always drawn power from the throne of grace. Sometimes God allows us to find ourselves between a rock and a hard place

so that a posture of focused faith may arise in us and call forth from heaven the answer we await. Often, God’s delays and silences are part of His work in our souls, purging us of everything that contaminates our petitions and robs them of strength and intensity.

In Jeremiah 29:12, God promises the Hebrews exiled in Babylon that, at the end of seventy years of discipline and spiritual treatment, their prayers will finally reach His throne, because they will have acquired that quality of total surrender and concentration: “Then you will call upon Me, and come and pray to Me, and I will hear you; and you will seek Me and find Me, because you will seek Me with all your heart. And I will be found by you, says the Lord.” It is precisely that passion, that state of clarity and certainty about what we are asking for, that enables us to be clear and precise in presenting our petitions. When our passion reaches white-hot intensity, our actions and our petitions will possess that definite quality that so pleases God! Throughout Scripture, we see time and again that it is precisely this kind of passionate action that brings about a favorable decision from heaven.

In the case of blind Bartimaeus, in Mark 10:46–52, we see those three elements of passion, action, and petition clearly illustrated. When Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is passing near him, he instinctively knows that he will have only one opportunity to receive the miracle he so desperately needs. All the pain he has accumulated through decades of blindness and poverty pours out in a cry of passionate petition to the Lord: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” At that moment, Bartimaeus does not care about people’s rebukes or criticism. He does not care that he is making a fool of himself by shouting like a madman at a Jesus who, at first, does not seem to pay him any attention. He lets himself be guided only by his passion, his burning desire to escape his sad condition as a beggar and a blind man. This drives him to desperate action: to break every rule of etiquette and propriety, to shout until he is heard, and to impose himself on Jesus’ agenda despite the disciples’ rebukes, as they repeatedly told him to be quiet.

When the Lord stops and calls for him, moved by Bartimaeus’s persistent and daring action, He asks him an intriguing question: “What do you want Me to do for you?” Why does He ask that unnecessary question? It is obvious that what Bartimaeus needs is to receive his sight! As we said in an earlier meditation, God likes to hear us put our petitions into words, stated clearly and specifically, born of a heart that has nurtured and refined them over time, concentrating and reducing them through repetition and cultivation until they become a smooth little stone, super-concentrated and ultra-dense.

When we present to the Lord this humble but powerful product of our tears and sleepless nights, it instantly calls forth a positive response from heaven. Bartimaeus answers the Lord without hesitation, with great intensity: “Teacher, let me regain my sight.” Five words. But more than enough to bring about the longed-for answer from Jesus: “Go; your faith has saved you.” The Word says that “Immediately he regained his sight and followed Jesus on the road.”

Passion, action, and petition—three elements that will always undergird a successful cry to God.