Persistent Cat and Prayer

From Established in Grace blog post

My cat, Hana, has this super annoying thing she does.  She pounds on doors to get what/where she wants.  In the day, it is annoying and sometimes I ignore her for a while, but eventually I give in and get up or go over to where she is and open the door she desires to go into. If she is where carpet is, and the pounding is not working then she takes her little kitty claws and tears up the carpet with a sound that is like nails on a chalk board to me. Between the door pounding and carpet tears she is pretty persistent and gets her way.

Especially at night.

Seriously.  There is not one part of me that wants to get up and open a door for her at night but she won't give up.  And as a parent, what really makes me get up is that I am afraid that if she is not quiet she will wake up our toddler.  And seriously--seriously--who wants to deal with a crying toddler because the cat woke him up?  Not me.  So I will drag myself out of bed open doors.

I have been learning a lot about prayer recently.  In very practical ways that I hadn't before. 

 Many of you have heard the parable that Jesus told about in Luke 11:5-10.

Here is the setting.  The family is all in bed.  Snuggled in, warm and asleep.

Then at midnight. Midnight. A friend comes knocking.  Asking for bread for a friend who is on a journey.

The man in the house says what we all would say.  Go away.  I am in bed with my family. I cannot help you.

But the man is persistent.  Keeps knocking.  At midnight.  If I was the man I would be thinking about my family and how I don't want to have this friend knocking and knocking and wake them up.  The Bible says that the man gives his friend the bread, not because they are friends, but because the friend's importunity.

The word importunity comes from importunate.  Importunate means: persistent, especially to the point of annoyance or intrusion.

Then Jesus ties that parable into a famous quote: "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."

Persistent prayer.

This story reminds me of my cat.  I do love her, but it's not because I love her that I get up at midnight to open doors.  I get up because she is persistent and won't give up.

How often do I pray things and then just let it go?  A lot.  I have called it faith.  Praying and then trusting God.  But what if God is really asking for prayer to be faith filled to ask and ask and ask? Always believing? I am learning to pray differently.  And honestly it is because some really hard things have happened.  Things that make me realize that now is the time to fight spiritually and that prayer is a sword of faith.

I want to share bits of my prayer journey here because it is tied directly to our daughter we are adopting.

We have been praying about our dossier.  Praying for the documents to get here to us, and to China.  The dossier could not arrive in China before I was thirty (which was on 2/20 a Sabbath).  Our dossier was mailed to China on 2/19.  China received the dossier 2/23.  That timing is incredible.  I don't believe that it just happened like that.  I believe that it is because of our prayers.  God had it leave the USA the soonest it could have without risking it get there before my 30th birthday.  And it got there the Monday after I turned thirty.  That was the soonest China could have received it. On 2/25 we were logged-in.  The emails from our adoption agency said that being logged into the system could take around 2 weeks.  God did it in a few days.  Chance? No.  Persistent prayer?  Yes.

I want to be honest.  It is scary for me to boldly proclaim this to you.  Why?  Because I know that I have so much to grow in my knowledge of prayer.  And because there have been times in my life where I have prayed persistently and the answer has been not what I wanted to hear.  But I feel that God is calling me to walk this path. To ask, seek, and knock over and over and over.  Not giving up.  Not when I am tired at midnight, or worn out from asking, or afraid.  But to ask full of faith and belief.

I want you to join me in this persistent prayer journey.

What are areas of your life that you want radical change?  What are areas that you want to see the power of God working?  He doesn't promise things to be quickly resolved but for you to knock, knock, knock...

Keep knocking and seeking and asking.  He will answer.  Everyone who asks receives.  The one who seeks finds.  The one who knocks, the door will be opened.

Those aren't my words--they are Jesus' and He is true and faithful.