“You can give up or hang on. You can let go or pray through. You can get frustrated with God or choose to live unoffended.”- Mark Batterson
In Chapter 8 (“Persistence Quotient”) of The Circle Maker, Mark Batterson note various studies show that persistence quotient is strongly correlated with success. There is no substitute for persistence in achieving mastery.
Pastor Batterson believes prayer is no different. Prayer is a habit to be cultivated, a discipline to be developed, a skill to be practiced. The problem is most of us give up praying because our eyes can see no tangible difference in our circumstances. Giving up allows our circumstances to get between God and us. Instead, we need to put God between us and our circumstances.
Mark describes how easy it is to throw in the towel:
“It’s easy to give up on dreams, give up on miracles, give up on promises. We lose heart, lose patience, lose faith. And like a slow leak, it often happens without us even knowing it until our prayer life gets a flat.”
When you’re tempted to throw in the prayer towel, there is one biblical promise Pastor Batterson suggests will sustain you- Luke 7:23 (ESV): “Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” That’s an important promise during times of waiting, especially when we feel God is answering everyone else’s prayer but ours. Mark says that’s where most of us live most of the time- in the triple-dot punctuation known as an ellipsis (“Yet in our own lives, well . . .). That’s when we need to make the choice to live unoffended.
Today’s question: What has helped you to cultivate the habit and develop the discipline of prayer? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: the new Short Meditation, “If God had a refrigerator”