Persistence

I’ve always loved the stories in the Bible of persistent people, like the desperate mother who hounded Jesus until he healed her daughter. They give me hope.

This week I’ve seen the fruits of real-life persistence in action. A dear friend wrote me this morning to tell about the amazing changes taking place in her family. She has prayed for one family member for 25 years, since she was 4 years old, and for another (newer) family member for 12 years. All this time, it has seemed very unlikely that any change would take place. Yet now, after so many, many years of prayer, God has brought pressures to bear in the lives of her family members that have caused them to begin a journey back toward God.

I have people in my life I pray for, and I wonder if anything will ever happen. Sometimes it seems like God must not hear, or if He hears he doesn’t care, because we don’t see results in days, months, or even years. Don’t lose heart. He’s listening. Keep pounding on heaven’s door until it opens. I don’t fully understand why it sometimes takes so long to see results; that topic is too big for me. I do know that I can never give up, and that one day light will break through and the answer will come.