Perseverance in Prayer with Lettie Cowman

Lettie Cowman was a master of perseverance in prayer.

She spent hours a day in prayer.

Why?

She explained in Streams in the Desert‘s May 7 devotional.

Perseverance in Prayer starts with the Scriptures

Lettie scoured the Bible every day as part of her prayer time.

She routinely wore them out from page turning, marking, and occasionally, cutting them up.

She took her call to prayer from the gospels and used it for her May 7 devotional.

He spoke a parable unto them… that men ought always to pray, and not to faint (Luke 18:1).

As Lettie explained, using thoughts she’d read or considered over the years:

“No temptation in the life of intercession is more common than this of failure to persevere. We begin to pray for a certain thing.

“We put up our petitions for a day, a week, a month. And then, receiving as yet no definite answer, straightway we faint, and cease altogether from prayer concerning it.”

As she compiled Streams in the Desert in 1924, she explained a common attitude many of us have while praying. (Look, all the fingers are pointing back at me in this post!)

We want an immediate answer. When God doesn’t “give” us the answer we want at once, we feel discouraged and give up.

Does that honor God? Do we stop to wonder if something else might be going on?

Lettie chides us to persevere!

So, when we don’t get an immediate answer, we give up?

“This is a deadly fault. It is simply the snare of many beginnings with no completions. It is ruinous in all spheres of life. 

“The man who forms the habit of beginning without finishing has simply formed the habit of failure.

“The man who begins to pray about a thing and does not pray it through to a successful issue of answer has formed the same [failure] habit in prayer.”

Streams in the Desert May 7 U-Version

Two grim thoughts–giving up without an answer means you’ve got a habit of failure. Continuing in this way can ruin your life in general.

Perseverance means “a continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition: steadfastness.”

Choosing not to persevere, according to Lettie, indicates an attitude that “To faint is to fail.”

Once you give in, “defeat begets disheartenment. Unfaith in the reality of prayer, which is fatal to all success.”

That feels harsh, but Lettie is trying to encourage us not to give up hope.

But, how long should we pray?

But someone says, “How long shall we pray? Do we not come to a place where we may cease from our petitions and rest the matter in God’s hands?” 

For it is faith from, yes, the faith of God, within us.

There is but one answer. Pray until the thing you pray for has actually been granted. Or until you have the assurance in your heart that it will be. 

In the first case we stop because we see. In the other, we stop because we believe. The faith of our heart is just as sure as the sight of our eyes.

Streams in the Desert May 7. (One Place).

She asks an excellent question. Don’t we reach a place where there’s no point anymore?

Death, obviously.

I’m involved in a prayer ministry where we say, “where there’s life, there’s hope.”

As long as someone has a mustard seed of faith, we’ll pray.

Perseverance and Prayer = Battle

The Bible is full of military allusions and battle descriptions.

Paul tells us to “put on the armor of God” daily so we can stand and fight–often in prayer.

(The word battle is used 189 times in the New King James Bible.)

Prayer is not only a calling upon God, but also a conflict with Satan.

God is using our intercession as a mighty factor of victory in that conflict. He alone, and not we, must decide when we dare cease from our petitioning.

So we dare not stop praying until we receive the answer or are assured it will come.

Streams in the Desert, May 7.

What does it mean to battle?

Praying for long periods of time can feel like a fight.

It helps to check these things:

• What does God say about this type of situation in the Bible?
• Do these words I’m praying sound like words Jesus would use? (As in, not complaining?)
• Has God ever done what I’m asking Him to do in the Bible?
• How am I praying for this situation?
• Does it honor God this way: Praise, Repent, Ask, Yield?
• Am I willing to accept that the answer might be ‘no?’

Remember what happened to Moses when he got tired of holding up his arms?

Two men joined him and held up his arms the rest of the day.

And the battle was won.

Praising God is a weapon for Perseverance in Prayer.

Lettie spent many hours praying in her Oriental Mission Society office.

Whenever a perplexing issue in the ministry arose, she went to prayer.

Sometimes that prayer involved playing her office piano and singing hymns.

Hymns built her faith and encouraged her on.

Mighty works of God came from those hours of prayer and singing.

I wrote about Lettie praying 91 times in my 216-page Overflowing Faith.

Who’s counting, though?

Amen.