04/20/2015
Stay Connected Through Prayer
An excerpt from The Grave Robber by Mark Batterson
Since writing The Circle Maker, I’ve heard hundreds of testimonies of miraculous answers to prayer. The common denominator among them is perseverance in prayer. Those who got an answer kept circling their Jericho until the walls fell down.
They didn’t just pray like it depended on God; they also worked like it depended on them. They didn’t just dream big; they also prayed hard. Most of them didn’t get an answer after their first request, but they kept praying through.
Remember the story of Jesus healing the blind man with mud? It’s one of the most encouraging miracles in the Gospels because it took two attempts. Even Jesus had to pray more than once! The first prayer resulted in a partial miracle, but Jesus wasn’t satisfied with 20/80 or 20/40 vision. So He doubled back and prayed a second time for a 20/20 miracle: “Then Jesus laid hands on his eyes again.”
The operative word is again. What do you need to pray for again? And again and again and again? Some miracles happen in stages—even healing miracles. If you get partial healing or partial relief, praise God for it. But don’t settle for half a miracle! Keep praying for the whole miracle to happen. Sometimes we let fear keep us from praying for a miracle because we feel like we will have failed if God doesn’t answer the way we want. That isn’t failure because the answer isn’t up to us.
THE ONLY WAY WE CAN FAIL IS FAILING TO ASK
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve asked God to heal my asthma. It has not happened, but does that mean I quit asking? I’ve resigned myself to the simple fact that healing is in God’s hands. That’s His job, not mine. My job is to keep on asking. After all, God won’t answer 100 percent of the prayers we don’t pray.
On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the synagogue in Capernaum where Jesus performed multiple miracles. We actually held a healing service right there, and I felt prompted to pray for healing once again. If I was writing the script, I can’t think of a more dramatic way of finally answering my lifelong prayer. But the healing didn’t happen. I definitely felt a twinge of disappointment when I had to take my inhaler later that day, but I’m going to continue asking. When and where and how God decides to answer is His call. I might not experience healing on this side of heaven, but as long as God gives me breath to breathe, I’ll keep asking.