Persistent and Repetitive Faith

Luke chapter 11. Let’s go to the Gospel according to Saint Luke, chapter 11, verses 5 through 10. And in these days, what subject have we been talking about? Faith. The subject of faith. This year is a year in which we are going to be continually meditating on themes and considerations that guide us toward faith, toward living lives of faith. Lives of authority in the Lord. Lives that reflect the use of the resources of the Spirit. The use of the truths of the Word of God. That is a life of faith, a life that can provision itself, take advantage of... lay hold of the instruments God has given in His Word because it believes that they are true, that they are useful, that they are trustworthy, that they are real, and that they are for this time, that they are for you and me. That is faith.

Faith is the attitude, the posture... that enables us to connect with the resources of the Kingdom of Heaven. With the truths of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is that openness to what God has declared and that simplicity of heart that enables us to believe that if God said it, if the Word of God says it, it is real and I can take it to the bank. Amen. That is faith. It is an attitude of receptivity toward God’s promises and declarations.

And one of those elements... Up to this point I have spoken, for example, about how, in these three characters—the paralytic and his friends, Bartimaeus, and the woman with the issue of blood—we have spoken about what I was saying... that bold faith, that faith which forcefully advances like the Kingdom of Heaven, that faith which can sometimes be violent and even a little discourteous, as though it imposes itself upon things. That faith which accepts no barriers, that faith which does not obey fear, that faith which refuses to be intimidated because the undertaking seems unlikely, uncertain, and even impossible. That faith which does not allow obstacles, no matter how great they may be, to prevent us from pursuing our objectives, because we believe that God is powerful enough to level the mountains that stand behind us.

And these characters exemplify that kind of posture. We have also spoken, in passing, about King Jehoshaphat and his battle, and that precious message—two messages—which I know will greatly bless your life; they are there on the Internet. Many people have written about those passages, those sermons. Before that, we began with the passage about Mary. How will this be? Faith always asks: How will it be possible for this miracle to happen? God says it will happen; God says... God has called me. In my life, I feel a... a vision that I want to fulfill. How... how will it happen? What is God going to do to make it possible? It may seem impossible to us, but God always has a solution, and God’s solutions are always simple but powerful.

And now I want to address another very important aspect of faith, and please listen to this. Faith is... we have already talked about this a little, but now I want to isolate this point. Faith is persistent; faith is persistent. Say with me: Persistence. “Persistence.” What does the word persistence mean? It means staying focused on the objective; it means insisting. It is the sister or friend of the word insistence—persistence. The word repetition is in there too. It is repetitive. Faith is a machine gun that keeps firing and firing until it hits its target. It is a mechanical hammer that keeps pounding and pounding and pounding until it drives the nail into the hard surface.

Faith is that stream of water which, little by little, keeps licking away at a surface with many sharp points and many rough patches, and as time passes, that little bit of water—which seems as though it would do nothing—wears the surface down and makes it smooth. Because it persists through years and years and years, little by little—one... two or three atoms here, two or three tiny grains there—it keeps stripping away at the surface until it leaves it smooth, because it is persistent; it insists. I could call this sermon exactly that: faith insists, faith is persistent, faith keeps insisting until it achieves what it sets out to do. And I am also going to use—in these days I also want to speak a little about prayer. In other words, you will actually have two subjects within the great theme of faith: persistence and prayer. Because prayer, brothers and sisters, is the vehicle God uses to bring down His power.

Faith is connected to prayer. I would say that faith... or prayer is faith expressed. Prayer is faith expressing itself, okay? So these two themes—prayer and persistence—will be circulating through my comments during these days. That is why, for example, the passage in Luke 11 is a very appropriate passage, verse 5. Eleven, five. There you will see Jesus’ parable of the friend at midnight. The friend at midnight.

And so the Lord offers His listeners a parable and says to them, “I also say to you, which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, because a friend of mine has come to me on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And the one inside answers him, saying, ‘Do not bother me; the door is already shut, and my children are in bed with me. I cannot get up and give them to you.’” And this is where the element of persistence comes in. He says, “I tell you that even though he will not get up and give them to him because he is his friend, nevertheless—” Why? “Because of his importunity...” “Because of his importunity, he will get up and give him everything he needs.”

Here the word importunity, in the context of this passage, indicates precisely that... that insistence. That attitude of, “I am not leaving until you attend to me.” And if you do not get up, well, you are not going to sleep tonight. So you had better get up and give me what I need, so that you can go back to bed and sleep peacefully for the rest of the night, right? How interesting!

Many of the characters we see in Scripture possess that quality of persistence and also of discourtesy. That is why I tell you that this is like a continuation of the themes we have addressed up to this point, but with a slightly different twist. It is like this discourtesy that insists, insists, and insists until it finally achieves its objectives. And that, brothers and sisters, is a very powerful principle of the Christian life and the life of faith. Let me tell you, I am not talking about little birds in the air or pretty things; this is something very powerful for our spiritual lives.

If you want to be a victorious man or woman in the Christian life, persist. Persist even in connection with your prayers and your petitions before God. And that is what the Lord wanted to isolate here. Then He says, “Because of his importunity, he will get up and give him everything he needs.” And now comes the conclusion: Why does the Lord say, “I am offering you this parable”? And what can you draw from this parable? Well, “And I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you...” Notice the dynamic image here. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you...” It is as if one can see people asking, asking in different places.

You see one person knocking there so that the door will be opened, and you see another searching like that woman in the parable, right? Until she found the coin she had lost. When the Lord says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you...” I see people persisting in that action. The Lord wanted to project an image of dynamism, insistence, and continuity in the action. And then He says, “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” May the Lord bless His Holy Word.

But do you know what? Let’s go to another passage. I feel it is... driving the nail home, so that you can see that this was not an isolated teaching of Jesus Christ, although there are so many lessons throughout Scripture that tell us the same thing about persistence. Look at chapter 18 of the Gospel according to Saint Luke, beginning with verse 1. This was not an isolated idea in Jesus’ mind. Rather, He who knew the Father’s heart, He who knew the mysteries of life in the Spirit as no one else did, He who knew better than anyone else how to reach the heart of God and obtain what is needed—if He is God Himself, He had to know how one obtains things from God. So if He is giving us, brothers and sisters, a teaching like this, would we not do well to lay hold of it, put it into practice, isolate it in our minds, and make a bookmark? To put a check mark beside it and underline this truth.

Look here at Luke, chapter 18, verse 1. “Then Jesus told them a parable...” About what? “...about the need always to pray,” and what else? “...and not lose heart.” Do you see here, once again, the relationship between prayer and persistence? “About the need always to pray and not lose heart.” Do you remember what the apostle Paul says? How should we pray? Without ceasing; pray without ceasing. Okay, here it says that we need always to pray and not lose heart. And then He tells a... He relates it in a parable: “Once there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was also in that city a widow who kept coming to him...” Do you see? “Kept coming to him”—that is the imperfect tense in grammar. It means that she insistently came again and again. It does not say that she came to him, which is the perfect past tense. No. She kept coming. The action has not been completed; that is why it uses the imperfect, because it has not been fully accomplished.

She kept coming to him, saying, “Give me justice against my adversary...” As you know, a widow... every day—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday—at nine in the morning, she was at the courthouse door. And every day she would say to the judge, “You have not heard my case. You have not been willing to attend to my case. You have not given me justice.” And the judge, with his briefcase tucked under his arm, would keep going inside. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday... Three weeks pass, four weeks, and the woman is always there. And every time he sees that blessed woman in the morning, his whole day turns sour; she ruins this judge’s day. Right? And then it says here, “And he would not for some time; but afterward he said within himself, ‘Although I neither fear God nor respect men, nevertheless, because this widow bothers me...’” In other words, so she will leave me alone, so she will stop bothering me, “...I will give her justice, lest by continually coming she wear out my patience.”

Again, returning to my point, this woman achieved her objective through her insistence, through persistence. She overcame the obstacle; she overcame a reluctant heart that did not want to attend to her, and we will talk about that in a moment. And the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge said.” But here is the punch line; here is the key: “And will God not give justice to His chosen ones who cry out to Him...” How? Day and night. It does not say that they cry out to Him one day and then go to bed, forget forever what they said, and become tired because they did not receive an immediate answer. “...who cry out to Him day and night? Will He delay in answering them? I tell you that He will speedily give them justice.”

Now there is a question there: When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? One of the most terrible questions I believe the Lord Jesus Christ ever asked. The truth is that many of us hear these things, but I assure you that some of us will forget them. I should not even say that, because I am prophesying negatively. In the name of the Lord, we are not going to forget, and we are going to leave here blessed, and we are going to leave here... But the Lord understood how difficult it often is for people to receive these truths and apply them in their lives, how easily people become discouraged, how slow we are to put the truths of the Spirit into practice. And the Lord wondered, Goodness! The truth is, when I return, will there be people who... who apply these truths?

Brothers and sisters, once again, there you have two passages that speak to us precisely about this aspect of persistence. And notice that in both places—returning, let us say, to Luke chapter 11, where this friend arrives at his friend’s house at midnight—we see several elements here that remind us of ourselves. The first thing I see in this passage is this man with a very pressing need. It might seem almost insignificant, but to him it was profoundly important. We have to... The Lord was a master at taking themes from the culture in which He was ministering, from the time in which He was ministering, and using them to illustrate eternal truths that still speak to us today.

One has to go back to the culture of the Middle East in the first century, when the Lord was speaking, to understand how what He was saying was perfectly understandable and how they could identify with the predicament in which this man found himself. His situation of very pressing need, because, first of all, in those first-century times there were no means of communication like the ones we have today. There was no Internet, no telephone, no cell phones... There was not even a telegraph. You simply knew that a relative was coming because someone had arrived three months earlier from the village where he lived and told you that your relative had said he was going to come visit you at your home one day. He left when you were little; you were separated and have not seen each other again for 10 or 15 years, and he says he wants to come see you. But you do not know when he will arrive because he lives far away on another mountain, and there is no very good transportation, there is no...

And people live that way there, right? When they can, well, they do things. And one day, when you least expect it, it is midnight, you have already gone to bed, blown out the candle, and are sound asleep, and bang, bang, bang—a very loud knock at the door—and there is your cousin with his wife and seven children, and the maid too, and the two mules they hired to bring all their things, and they have come to stay for a few days. And what happens? It happens to be the very day when you do not have so much as a teaspoonful of coffee in the pantry; you have no sugar; there is nothing in the pantry. You forgot to do the shopping, or things are a little tight.

And you feel the… you invite your friend—or your relative—into the house, seat him, and you begin talking about things, while you are thinking as you speak and smiling, “Where am I going to get coffee for these people who have come from so far away?” Even just a little orange juice or something so they can go peacefully to sleep while I straighten things out tomorrow. And finally it occurs to you: “Oh, you know what? So-and-so next door, my neighbor—I am sure he has coffee, or I am sure he has a can of frozen juice in there, Minute Maid brand, and so… I am going to borrow it from him until tomorrow, when I can go to the supermarket and buy something,” right? So notice this: to me, this man’s moment of fragility, this moment when he does not want to be embarrassed, when he does not want to put those poor people to bed just as they arrived and also does not want to tell them, “Look, the truth is that I have nothing to offer you.”

How embarrassing is that? And I know that sometimes we suffer more over very small things than over big things. And the issue of honor was involved there—so important in Middle Eastern cultures—along with hospitality, caring for people when they arrive at your home, offering them your protection, and all those kinds of things. The truth is that it seems like something simple, but it is a predicament, and it is something drawn from daily life with which the people listening at that time could identify. And I think, brothers and sisters, that many times this man, in his extreme need and his fragility, is a picture of you and me in life. We have moments of fragility and need. We are people subject to circumstances; we do not know when a time of need will come, and sometimes we find ourselves in a predicament; we find ourselves in need. And we do not have the resources with us; we have no way to solve the problem.

And that, to me, is the essence of prayer. It is when you recognize and know that you do not have the resources you need to resolve a situation, and you recognize your fragility and know that you are going to have to go to someone who has what you need—and that someone is called God, is called Jesus Christ, is called the kingdom of heaven. And you recognize your fragility. Brothers and sisters, I believe that the origin of every prayer is a man or a woman who says, “You know what? I do not have what I need for this situation, and I have to go to my Heavenly Father, and I have to humble myself, and I have to acknowledge that I need Him.”

As long as you are self-confident, full of your own resources, certain that “I can get out of this; I can solve it,” or “I can go to a doctor,” or “I can go to someone who will lend me money”… or “I can use that technique I used last time”…. As long as you try to seek help only on the human level, you are looking somewhere that is not truly where you need to go. First of all, I believe that prayer is born from a man or a woman who has recognized weakness, who has recognized insufficiency.

I have been studying the passage about Jehoshaphat a great deal—the life of Jehoshaphat—and one of the subjects we looked at some time ago, when we dealt with Jehoshaphat finding himself in that terrible time of need, with this army coming to Judah to destroy Judah and take its land, was that Jehoshaphat prayed a prayer. And there are some words of his that somehow summarize what prayer is and what the posture of prayer is. They are in verse—you do not have to look it up—in verse 12 of chapter 20 of Second Chronicles: “And Jehoshaphat, after describing his need before God, praying to Him, and crying out before a national assembly, said, ‘O our God, will You not judge them?’” Referring to that multitude coming against them: “…for we have no power….” Listen to that. “…for we have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us.” There lies the root of all powerful prayer before God: recognizing that there is no strength in me. And there is indeed a great need in me.

It says, “…we do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.” “…we do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.” That, brothers and sisters, is the essence. If you ask me, “What is prayer?” there it is. I would give you those words from… King Jehoshaphat: “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You.” Prayer is when a person does not know what to do, turns his eyes toward God, and asks the Lord for an answer. The psalmist asks, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills; from where will my help come? My help comes from Jehovah, who made heaven and earth.” So remember that, brother: you and I always depend on God. And we have to cultivate a sense of fragility. I believe that when you cultivate that sense of fragility, you will always be praying to the Lord. I do not know about you, but I have to pray to the Lord dozens of times a day, and I do not pray long prayers. But I think that sometimes, when I am driving, people must think I am crazy. I am always saying things to Him, “Lord…” and sometimes I have to hide if I look over and there is a car very close to mine, so that… they will not think I am crazy.

Because you are always talking to the Lord; you are always in dialogue: sometimes a prayer, two phrases… uh, two phrases, three thoughts. You are washing the dishes and you pray to the Lord; you are working on something at the computer and suddenly remember something and cry out to the Lord. You get up in the morning and have your time of seeking God, because you are always conscious that you are in need. With every passing day of my life, I recognize that I am more fragile and more in need of God’s mercy and intervention in my life. Every day I more deliberately cultivate that sense of absolute dependence and fragility before God. As time goes by, instead of feeling stronger and more self-confident, it is exactly the opposite: I feel weaker, more adrift, and more in need of God’s grace. But you know something? How interesting that when I am weak, then I am strong, as the Apostle Paul says.

When the man or woman of God cultivates weakness in God, that person becomes stronger than… because then the person empties himself or herself of every sense of self-sufficiency, and it is into that empty vessel that God can pour His oil. What did Elisha tell the widow? Go find many empty vessels. And when she had gathered all the empty vessels she could—because if they had been full, what would have happened? God would not have been able to fill them with oil, would He?

So we have to empty ourselves of every sense of self-sufficiency and reach the point where—look—in everything, you know that you need God. For every undertaking in your life, every errand, every financial situation, your family, your health, your emotional condition, a difficult conversation you have to have with someone, the workday awaiting you… Going out into the street—how many know that it is very often a tremendous trial? I do not know; you do not know what you may face out there in the street, what risks you may run, what things may happen. And at every moment you are like that man: fragile, in need of something. And it is good for us to understand that, that we have to come before God again and again and again. That is why the Word speaks about that, right? Always to pray and not lose heart.

The idea Paul expresses, “pray without ceasing”… is not saying that we should spend 24 hours a day, 60 seconds of every minute, praying, praying, praying. No, the idea is that you always move within an atmosphere of prayer, that you always present your petitions to the Lord repeatedly and insistently. First, this idea of persisting means that prayer forms a continual part of your life. Prayer is what you continually breathe; prayer is what comes out of you from the time you get up in the morning until you go to bed. It is continually talking with God, continually repeating to the Lord, persisting before the Lord about this: “I need You, Father. You are my helper; You are my strength; without You I can do nothing. I need You in this situation. This problem at work, this financial crisis, this fragile place in which I find myself in my emotional life, with my children, my wife, whatever it may be—Lord, I remind You of my cause.”

And you are like that, just as you learn to breathe. How many times do you breathe each day? Thousands of times, and you no longer even notice it because your autonomic system has taken control of that task. You know what? I say that something like that should happen, so that even at night we are praying to the Lord, even while we are asleep. How many times do you wake up like that and have a period of consciousness during the night? Right? It may be a few minutes; sometimes we do not know how long…. You know what? It is a good time: take advantage of it and shoot three or four prayers up to the Holy Spirit. Instead of lying there tossing and turning and sweating bullets from the anxiety that comes over you. Hey!

Take advantage of it to throw three stones at the devil right there, with three or four well-aimed prayers. Right? And you will see how, before you even realize it—whoosh!—you go back to sleep. Before you know it, you have even slept past the time when you were supposed to wake up. Because You will keep in perfect peace the one whose mind is stayed on You… what? Perseveres. Amen.

You will keep in perfect peace the one whose mind perseveres in You. Listen, and what does persevering mean? Staying attached. When does a person persevere? When that person sticks to a task and does not let it go until it is completed, isn’t that right? So many times, brother, to maintain peace in our hearts, we have to persevere in God. We have to move that rebellious animal, grab it by the rope, and put it back on the path of prayer; because otherwise, the mind begins to wander, to worry, to fill with anxiety and everything else. No, no. Get back on the path again; you have to get it back there. Cry out to the Lord, seek His face, ask Him. From that sense of needing God, which we cultivate, we must move into a life of persistent prayer: continually coming before God, making prayer your daily bread, our continual habit.

Why? Because we are fragile. Now, when this man realizes that he is in a predicament, he goes to the person whom he knows has what he needs. That is very important, because first there is the human being in tremendous need. But there is a God who has what you need. He has the resources. God has what you need. This man knew that his friend’s house had coffee, sugar, bread, even a little butter. And he goes to his friend. How important it is for us to know God! How important it is to know that God has what I need! This man must have spent time in this friend’s house. This man must have known enough about his financial circumstances to know that this friend had what he needed.

You know what? That is why it is so important, brothers and sisters, that we not wait for crises to come into our lives before having contact with God. I encourage you to make your life one of continually and deeply knowing God, so that you may know what God has and know what God is willing to do for you; so that you may know how to approach God; and so that you may know how to draw from God what you need for your life. Amen.

It is very important for us to know God’s heart, for us to know these rules of the spirit, like the ones the Lord is stating here. If you persist, if you insist, if you persevere, if you repeat your request before God… God will respond to your need. There you have an insight, a teaching, an intuition about the character and resources of heaven. And that is why it is so important for us to study the Bible, to have dealings with God through prayer, to attend church, and to take discipleship classes. Let us not waste opportunities to study the secrets of the manufacturer’s manual, which is the Word of God.

Because when you know the heart of God, you will know. When needs arise, you will not have to ask, “Now where should I go?” Your heart will go directly there: “I will go to my father,” as the prodigal son said, right? When he saw that everyone had abandoned him: “Oh, wait—I will go to my father, because he has what I need. How many hired servants in my father’s house eat all they want, while I am here eating carob pods? What is this? I am heading back to my dad; I am going to ask him for what I need.” So when you know the heart of God, when you have had dealings with God, you will instinctively know where to go.

You know what? A soldier has to repeat the same actions so many times that when the moment of war comes, amid the panic and the rushing around, with the enemy firing bullets and those bullets whistling past his head, the soldier will have practiced the same actions so much that he will already do them naturally. He will know immediately whether he has to throw himself to the ground or whether he has to shoot, and how to do it. Or, if his weapon jams, how to take it apart and put it back together quickly, because he has repeated, repeated, repeated something so much that it has become second nature; the reaction is instinctive. And I believe that this is how our life has to be. We have to... it is in times of peace and tranquility that we continually immerse ourselves in the word of the Lord, that we stay in shape, that we continually seek God, have persistent dealings with God, and repeat the same actions again and again and again.

We have read the same verses. Why can I quote, “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast on you”? Because I have recited that verse more than 450 or 500, 600 times throughout my life. Why can I say, “Do not be anxious about anything, but rather let your requests be made known before God with thanksgiving, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your minds and hearts in Christ, Jesus our Lord”? Why can I repeat that? Because I have said it about 700 times throughout my life, to remind myself: Roberto Miranda, instead of becoming anxious and instead of screaming in panic when the enemy comes, lift your eyes toward God, pray to the Lord, cry out to Him.

And that has already become part of my life and part of my heart; it is inside my veins, it is flowing through my pores, and I do not need someone to come and tell me, “Roberto...” No, no, it is already in there; I have repeated it, I have said it so many times. That is why it is so important, brothers and sisters, for us to repeat the word of God. If we are going to talk about persistence, persist in understanding the word of God. Persist in repeating those verses. Persist in knowing the Bible. Persist in practicing prayer, even if only briefly, because when the moment of trial comes, your superego, your brain, will not be able to act as you want it to, and it has to be something instinctive. It has to be a shot that springs from the depths of your heart because it is already part of your life; you have continually trained yourself in it.

And it is important for us, in this way, to cultivate power in times of peace for times of war. Do not be a crisis Christian; do not be a Christian only in times of trial. Do not... do not go to God only in those isolated moments when you are in need. Go to the Lord every day of your life. Brothers and sisters, I believe in preventive faith. I believe in a proactive Christian life, storing things up there in your pile, in your storage room, in your storehouse for when the day of trial comes. We have to be like Joseph: during the days of the fat cows, brother, store wheat, store flour, store vegetables and dry them or freeze them; can whatever you can. In times of blessing and prosperity, pray to the Lord, cry out to God, serve God. Give to God. Seek the Lord. Read the word. Store things up so that when the time of the lean cows comes, you can go to your storehouse and draw out... draw out the blessing for your life.

That is why we have to be Christians who continually repeat the same actions, preparing ourselves, training ourselves, every Sunday. I believe there is no shame in saying, “I need to go to church.” Ultimately, you might say, “I can do it at home”; but you know what? There is something beautiful about coming to the house of the Lord, something that strengthens you when you see your brothers and sisters. You are encouraged, you gain strength from seeing one another, from knowing that you are part of a family, that you are part of an army. We are all engaged in the same thing; we are all moving forward toward Canaan. Glory to God. I even turned Pentecostal for a moment there.

We are moving forward and we have to... those things have to be repeated continually. How many times a day do you eat? Often more than you need. How often do you bathe? I hope at least once a day. We are continually repeating things, and you know what? In the same way, I continually need to repeat certain things in my life to sustain myself, and I have to be like a soldier—disciplined, practicing the same disci... Why are they called spiritual disciplines? Spiritual disciplines refer to fasting, prayer, reading the word, serving the Lord, and the fellowship of the saints; they are what have been called throughout the centuries “the spiritual disciplines.” Why? Because you have to do them whether you feel like it or not. Whether you like it or not, you have to do them at all times so that your life may gradually be forged and acquire the mettle of a warrior of God, whether a man or a woman.

And when the time of trial comes, you had better be like this man who knew exactly where there was food and how to approach the person who had it. The last element here is very important, and it is this: We have talked about inherent frailty, and we have to cultivate that awareness; we have to acknowledge it. Number two, we have to know where the resources are. God—He is our provider, our helper—and we must know how to cultivate a life that enables us to go to Him in times of need. But there is a third thing, and you know what? It is this: We have a God who wants to answer and who invites us to come to Him.

There is something interesting here; notice this. In both the case of the unjust judge and that of the unwilling friend—as we could also call this parable, the unwilling friend—in both parables, the people who have the answer do not want to help the person who comes to them, do they? They resist; and what overcomes that resistance? The persistence of the person in need. Well, what the Lord was saying here is even more important, and it is that, you know, the difference between God and these characters is that God does want to help. God does want to respond to your need. God’s heart is willing, but many times, brothers and sisters, you know what? For some mysterious reason, when God tells us, “Come to Me. Pray, seek Me, ask Me,” sometimes we also have to keep asking.

And at some point I will continue talking about that as well. Why does persistence become so necessary in the Christian life? If God wants to bless me, why do I have to ask continually? And that is where something about the interaction between the natural and the supernatural comes in. But I can tell you something: there are many reasons why we have to cultivate the practice of asking God persistently. Although God wants to and desires to, and although He invites us, we have to persist; we have to keep asking the Lord. Look, if you have asked the Lord for something and have not received it, ask Him again. I have learned that even though I know that God loves me, that God is generous, and that He wants to bless me, I cannot rely on that alone. There is the spiritual dimension: God wants me to learn certain things; it is not the proper time; I have to learn certain lessons first—there are many reasons.

And I cannot try to second-guess Him; I do not want to try to guess what is in God’s heart. The only thing I know is that the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, says that God honors those who persist in their petitions. And I have to do the same. If you want to receive, look, gird up your loins, tighten your belt securely, and pray until you prevail; pray until you receive. Come before God. God wants to give it to you; God wants to respond to your need, but sometimes God artificially resists a little in order to draw out of you that cry, that shout, which is what is needed for answers to prayer to come.

And sometimes that cry has to be cultivated; that cry has to be kneaded there. That cry has to be warmed up, prayer by prayer. Day by day, until one day you will see that your cry comes forth with confidence, and you will know that on that day you hit the mark and God received your prayer. And that day you can, look, go to the bank, because the money will be there. You can go back home and know that that... that son who was acting like a demon has already been healed by God, and the blessing and the change in his life have already begun. Because God loves and God honors the person who persists.

That is the lesson of this passage, brothers and sisters: pray until you receive. Persist in your prayer. Keep insisting before the Lord. Live a life of repeating the truths of Bible study, of cultivating the believer’s character. Be a man, a woman of God who persists until reaching the goal. Amen.

May God be pleased to raise up that spirit in us. Let us stand. Glory to the Lord. Glory to God, and again, brothers and sisters, let this be very clear: in this practice of faith, God says, “Persist.” In this practice of faith, God says, “Cultivate persistence.” Do not let yourself... do not let yourself be intimidated because you did not receive the first time. Do not lose heart because you have had to pray several times and still have not received what you asked for. I plead with you in the name of the Lord: make a covenant with God today that you will remain focused on your goal. You will not take no for an answer. You will be like Jacob, who wrestled with the angel and said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”

And you know what? Instead of feeling insulted, God will say, “Wow! This young fellow seems to be learning some things from the word. I am going to bless him; I am going to grant his request.” Brothers and sisters, how many want to be people of persistence? Amen. How many want to be people of faith? In the name of Jesus, let us ask like this: “Father, help us.” Amen, amen.

Keep that in your heart right now. Put a mark there: persistence. Right now, in your spirit, right now, say: “Lord, I receive this teaching from my pastor; I receive this teaching that comes from Your Holy Spirit, and I promise You, Father, that I will be an insistent man, an insistent woman. I am going to learn to practice what a life of faith is. Every day I will repeat my prayer. And, Father, that prayer I stopped praying—you know what? Now I am going to present it to You again, until You answer me. Because I love You and because I know that You are faithful. And because I know that You who call also answer. You who invite do not disappoint. You who open the door do not slam it in our faces. You who promised will be faithful to fulfill it. Amen.” Glory to the Lord. Thank You, Father, thank You. In the name of Jesus, for that word, Father. The prayers we have presented before You. The expectations You have placed within us, Lord, we declare that we will see them, we will see them, we will see them fulfilled for the glory of Your name. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Glory to the name of the Lord, amen.

Sermon by Dr. Roberto Miranda recorded March 29, 2009, at Congregación León de Judá

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