Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Dan. 10:10-14, Luke 11:1-13

Some years ago I did a wedding for a good friend's son. As we waited for the ceremony to begin, the groom's father shared a story of answered prayer and healing.

When Ron's son was five years old the child was diagnosed with Perthes Disease. The continued disintegration of the hip joint was causing the boy to limp. Doctors reviewed the options with this single father. He could put his son on strict bed rest and hope it would heal by itself. He could have hip replacement surgery for the child. Or he could make the boy wear a newly designed special brace that would keep his legs spread until the hip joint grew healthy. The boy would have to wear the brace for years and even then the medical professionals were not certain it would cure him.

Ron asked the pastor of their little Methodist church to call a special prayer meeting for his son. The pastor learned of another child needing prayer so the congregation surrounded the two families with prayer. Ron recalls an electric moment when the other family's daughter was suddenly miraculously healed. However, they concluded the prayer time with his son still limping.

Over the next two years they put Ron's son into the experimental leg brace. The congregation continued bathing his son in regular prayers. Two years later when they removed the brace the hip was healed. I celebrated as that young man, now a groom, walked down the aisle without a limp.

Why do some prayers get answered miraculously and instantly while other prayers take time? Most of us are familiar with the traditional answers. God's timing is not our timing. God wants to teach us patience. While these are true, let me suggest another possibility. Could it be that our prayers are sometimes hindered by the spiritual cosmic battles taking place between angels and demons?

Daniel 10 tells the story of persistence in prayer involving a battle between an angel and one of the devils. Daniel had received a vision that he did not understand so he sought God in prayer. In fact, Daniel fasted and prayed for three weeks, asking God to reveal what the vision meant. Finally, after three weeks, an angel appeared and proceeded to explain the meaning of the vision. The angel said that on the first day of Daniel's fast and prayer, he had been sent to Daniel by God with a message. Unfortunately, the angel had been delayed due to an unseen battle between himself and a demon. The battle had necessitated God's sending a second angel to fight the demon and win release for the first angel to carry the message to Daniel.

Lest someone wonder whether this idea of angels and devils is unorthodox or unusual, let us remember that this viewpoint is consistent not only with the Bible, but also with the great Christian thinkers of every generation. Martin Luther identified battles between angels and devils as part of reformed Christianity. Martin Luther's famous reformation hymn, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," includes a reference to devils. The third verse says, "And though this world with devils filled, Should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God has willed His truth to triumph through us."

I am convinced by scripture and Christian history that devils and demons as well as angels are real. In fact, the existence of devils is one of the principle reasons we are to remain persistent in prayer. We must be vigilant in praying for God's will in our lives since these devils will attempt to hinder God's will from occurring.

Jesus referred to these cosmic battles among the angels. He was aware that simply asking for something does not automatically or easily make it happen. When we realize the Bible's view that there are unseen cosmic battles going on as we pray, it helps us clarify what we mean when we pray the words, "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." Let's explore Jesus' teaching not only of the familiar Lord's Prayer, but his follow up teaching about persistence in prayer.

He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.' He said to them, 'When you pray, say:

Father, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

Give us each day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.

And do not bring us to the time of trial.'

And he said to them, 'Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him." And he answers from within, "Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything." I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

'So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.

Luke 11:1-13

A five-year-old boy asked his daddy, "Can I have a baby brother?" His father smiled and said, "I'll bet if you start praying every night for the next three months, God will answer your prayers." (I think the dad knew something the boy did not know!) That night little Bobby prayed, "Oh God, please give me a baby brother." The next night he repeated his prayer for a baby brother. For three weeks he continued to pray. Finally, he grew weary of asking, so he gave up. One day, two months later, Bobby's mother came home from the hospital. His dad called him into their bedroom. "Mom has a surprise for you!" As Bobby watched, his mother pulled the sheets back to reveal two twin baby brothers. The dad turned to Bobby and asked, "Aren't you glad you prayed?" The little boy replied, "Yes, and aren't you glad I stopped praying?!"

A few months ago the latest study on the effectiveness of healing prayers on recovering heart surgery patients disclosed that there was no medical improvement experienced by those being prayed for. In fact, 59% of those prayed for suffered medical complications compared with only 52% of those who were not prayed for. This study seems to imply that prayers may make the recovery situation worse rather than better. There are many aspects of this study that are worth taking time to understand, but let me limit my thoughts to the aspect of prayers only counting when they are answered within a short time frame. This study only monitored the patients' recuperation for thirty days following surgery. Must God answer prayers according to our time frames?

Jesus concluded his teaching on the Lord's Prayer by reminding people to be persistent in prayer. As an example, he used a parable about a person who is embarrassed when a guest shows up late at night and he has no bread to offer the visitor. In order to appreciate how serious this matter would be in Jesus' culture, we need to recall that hospitality was highly important. Jesus performed the miracle of turning water into wine in order to keep a wedding host from being embarrassed.

Jesus implied that some situations are so important that they warrant waking up your neighbor in the middle of the night. Granted, not everything is this important. We would quickly wear out our welcome if we constantly awakened our neighbor with little requests. However, hospitality was seen in Jesus' day as important enough to justify waking the neighbor.

Jesus then took that example and drove home the point that some things are so important that they warrant persistence at the throne of God. There are a few things about which we are justified in asking over and over ¬ a few things that warrant seeking constantly. In fact, Jesus tells us specifically what he is thinking of that deserves persistent prayer. Jesus concludes this teaching by saying, "If you . . . know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Luke 11:13).

We are instructed by Jesus to persistently beseech God for the Holy Spirit. With our natural tendency to grow cold in faith, we constantly need the Holy Spirit to revive us.

In the late 1600s the colonies of America were experiencing a waning of interest in spiritual concerns. Churches that had been thriving were seeing attendance drop. Pastors were having greater difficulty stirring interest in Bible study and prayer. The Reverend Cotton Mather, a Boston pastor, became so concerned that he began praying regularly for revival. He asked God to pour out a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit on the churches. He asked persistently throughout his life, but he died in 1728 without seeing the answer to his prayers. Six years after his death God poured out a revival throughout the colonies. It began with an ordinary sermon by the Reverend Jonathan Edwards.

Jonathan Edwards must have been a very boring preacher. He wrote his sermons in manuscript form and then read them practically in a monotone. The congregation saw only the top of his head as he read his carefully worded, theologically detailed sermons. One Sunday, Jonathan Edwards was the guest preacher in a neighboring village church. The sermon was one he had already preached to his own congregation. As he read his carefully prepared manuscript about the danger of God judging unrepentant sinners, there was movement and a distracting noise among the worshipers. He glanced up from his text and discovered that men were literally holding onto pillars of the church and crying out for God to forgive them lest they fall into hell.

A revival of interest in God, known by historians as the Great Awakening, swept across the colonies over the next two years. It had such a profound effect that the American Revolution might never have happened had it not been for that revival forty years earlier.

Cotton Mather prayed persistently for years before the Holy Spirit brought revival. Some things are so important they warrant persistently asking. One of those things is the revival of God's people and a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Some of us may recall the story I used about Andrew Murray, Jr. experiencing a revival in South Africa more than a hundred years ago. Pastor Murray walked into his youth room and discovered the Holy Spirit had moved in a dramatic way among the youth and it became the beginning of a revival.

There is a part of that story that I did not highlight back in June. I mentioned that Andrew Murray was the son of a missionary pastor. Andrew Murray, Sr. was part of a pastors' prayer group that met every Friday evening to plead for the Lord to send revival among the churches of Africa. They prayed for thirty years! Then his son experienced the revival the father had been praying for. Are we willing to be this persistent in prayer? Are we asking now for the blessing and outpouring of God on a generation thirty years from now?

The Reverend Bill Vaswig, a Lutheran pastor, tells the story of persistent prayer in the lives of a Norwegian family. These godly, devout, farming parents reared their boys in the knowledge of the Bible. They prayed regularly for their sons to know Jesus Christ and follow him. However, when the boys left the farm to attend college in the city, they wandered away from their spiritual roots. As adults, neither of the sons attended church. Their values were those of the surrounding secular society. It grieved the parents but they continued to pray regularly for their sons. The parents died never having seen an answer to their prayers.

When the boys got the news of the last parent's death, they returned to the farm to settle the estate. They determined that it would be best to simply tear down the old farmhouse in order to sell the fertile farmland. So they tore the old house apart, beam by beam. As they worked together, they began retelling their memories of childhood and teasing each other as in past days. Finally, they got down to the old wood flooring of the house. As they began to rip it up, one of the sons noticed four worn places in the floor of the parents' bedroom. At first they thought it was where their bed had stood but then realized the worn spots were in the wrong places for the bedposts. Suddenly one of the sons realized what it was. The four worn places were grooves formed by their parents' knees as they faithfully knelt in prayer each night. The two sons decided to kneel one last time in memory of their parents. As they knelt, they both found themselves praying, asking Jesus to be their Lord and Savior.

Are we willing to start now and continue to persistently pray for God to touch the lives of our grandchildren and great grandchildren?