The beginning of this year is a time of fasting and prayer. One key element of prayer the Spirit is inviting me to learn is prevailing prayer.
Walking through some times of meditation and study, the Spirit is beginning to open up different aspects of prevailing prayer.
There is the WAITING.
There is also the WRESTLING.
Gen. 32:22-32 is the story of Jacob coming to the end of his scheming life. He will have a life after “Jacob” when he becomes Israel. To this point, he has manipulated his way through life.
At this turning point, he has nothing left. Esau is coming for him and he has sent everything on ahead trying to slow Esau down. He is left alone.
By the time the night of wrestling is over, Jacob is now Israel and he can’t physically run anymore. His hip joint is thrown out of place. He has to rely on his staff from that point on.
Prevailing prayer is about persistence. It is not a “one and done” proposition.
The “wrestling” in prevailing prayer can come in a couple of places. The first place it comes is when we haven’t really walked in prevailing prayer and a lot of junk has to get tossed out in our lives. We wrestle with old habits. We wrestle with sin. We wrestle with laziness.
Prevailing prayer tests us. It stretches us. We can’t stay lazy in prevailing prayer. We can’t manufacture a solution. It is us and God. It’s engaging in a battle for an answer, for victory, and new habits have to be formed. Wrestling the old junk out of our lives is a tough place. This is a place where prevailing prayer fails the most. We just give up.
Another place wrestling will show up is in getting to the answer to our prayer. Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 10 has the element of wrestling in prayer. It wasn’t to get junk out. It was to get the answer IN.
One of my personal goals for 2017 is to STAY in the gym. I am putting out money to GO to the gym. My challenge has always been staying at it. It is a wrestling. I get sore. I lack accountability… by March I’m pretty much done.
Right now I wrestle in this personal goal because of laziness. There will be other times, if I make it through this phase of “wrestling”, where my wrestling will be with increasing my goals.
Prayer is much the same way. We get spiritually lazy. Junk accumulates. We are too comfortable.
Wrestle through the junk. Push through in prayer to find a level of prayer you may not have known before.
Apprentice 2 Jesus 