Greg Laurie - Friday, August 31, 2018

Don't Give Up

One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up.

—Luke 18:1

I prayed for more than thirty years for my mother to come to Christ. I was beginning to wonder if God would ever hear my prayer. But He did. It was all in His timing. The Bible says, 

“God has made everything beautiful for its own time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 nlt).
We don’t want to rush things. We don’t want to run ahead of the Lord, and we don’t want to lag behind Him. We want His perfect will in His perfect timing. But we have to be persistent in prayer.

Jesus said, 

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7 NKJV) 

Notice the ascending intensity Jesus used with the words ask, seek, and knock.
We start by asking God. Then we go to the next level: We’re seeking. We’re not going to give up on it. Finally, we’re knocking. We’re pounding on the door. We’re not taking no for an answer. We have to be persistent in our prayers. We don’t want to give up.

If the request is wrong, God says no. If the timing is wrong, God says slow. If you are wrong, God says grow. But if the request is right and the timing is right and you are right, God says go.

We don’t always know what the will of God is, but I think when we’re praying for the salvation of a loved one, when we’re praying for our country to have a spiritual awakening (we urgently need that), when we’re praying for God’s will in our lives, we can’t back down. We can’t give up.

We have to keep asking. We have to keep seeking. We have to keep knocking. 

Then, the Bible says, the door will be opened.