A Lesson Learned: Persistent Prayer

This past weekend I was able to attend a ladies retreat with five other ladies from our church. We all had a good time and it was great getting to know the other ladies better. All of us that attended were married except for one lady. By the time we came home on Saturday, we were all ready to see our husbands again and those that had children were ready to see their kids.

We were in an active cabin. That was the camps way of saying that we were in a loud, noisy, crazy, etc cabin since the other cabin was quiet. We were in the right cabin though since we didn’t go to bed until very early in the morning both nights.

On Thursday night after the session they divided us all up into eight different groups. The way we were divided made it rare for us to end up with someone from our church and that was the point. While getting to know the other ladies that were in our groups, we had to decorate a paper flower in a mosaic pattern. It was a lot of fun.

Friday afternoon they did a craft. The craft was a candy tin where we took 12 Hershey nuggets and wrapped them in a piece of paper. You then arranged them inside of a tin that has a clear front so you could see the pieces all wrapped up. We then placed a ribbon around it with a paper tag that we made that could say a variety of things from "I love you," "Thinking of You," and "Thank You." They were very simple to make and they make a great gift idea.

There were a total of five different teaching sessions. The one that stuck out to me the most is from Friday night. The speaker taught about the woman in Matthew 15 whose daughter was vexed with a devil. The first time she speaks to the Lord he doesn’t respond. The disciples want Christ to send her away. The woman speaks to Christ again and is compared to a dog. The woman then uses Christ’s words when she says that even the dog eats crumbs from the master's table. Christ then answers her prayer by healing her daughter and he even tells that whole world about her great faith.

This is an example of a woman who had a need and she didn’t give up because Christ didn’t respond right away. She was persistent. She kept at it until she got an answer. How often in our lives do we go to Christ in prayer and then we stop praying because we don’t get an answer right away?

This was an encouragement to me to continue praying about the same thing until God answers. If I only pray about something once or twice and then say well God’s not going to answer this so I might as well stop praying, then I lack faith. This is not having faith that God will answer and supply the need. Don’t give up in your prayer life because God didn’t answer in your time frame. Pray consistently and God will answer in his time.


Serving the Master,

Diane Cardot