Consider this: God may still be answering prayers that were prayed by the very first Christians, for the two thousand years that have elapsed since then make no difference to him. Twenty years after you die, your first and last prayers will still be equally fresh in his mind. You will eventually run out of time to pray, but God will never run out of time to answer. Only in eternity will you see how the petitions you lift to him today were answered a hundred years after you lived and died.

I remember the days when my children were younger and would ask me to give them something—then ask me again, and ask me again. At that age, they had no ability to gain or purchase these things for themselves, so they were entirely dependent upon their parents to grant their requests (which were usually for cell phones when they were in their tweens and then for cars once they were old enough to drive). I remember growing weary of the repeated pleas that could eventually devolve into nagging.

Praying can feel like that, at times, can’t it? It can feel like trying to bend the arm of an unwilling God, influence the will of an unyielding Father, or eke the funds out of an impoverished parent. It can feel like badgering, especially when we pray for days, weeks, months, or even years without receiving the thing we desire. It can feel like pestering God when we long for something that to us seems very good, yet God has not seen fit to grant.

Of course, there are many differences between human parents and our God, not the least being that God commands us to persevere in prayer. He tells us to make our requests known to him and to persist in giving him every reason to grant what we ask. Jesus told an entire parable “to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1), a parable in which a needy widow continually bothers and beats down the will of a judge until he finally relents and grants her petition. The point, as you know, is that if even an unjust judge will eventually grant a good petition, then most certainly too will our God. This means that we can and we must persevere in prayer, confident that God has told us to do so.

But there is another reason to persevere in prayer, and I find this one particularly encouraging and motivating.

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