Praying With Deep Desire

A pastor recalled being in a prayer meeting in a small room with about 60 others who were earnestly calling out to God. As he listened to them pray for two hours, he thought, they have something I don't.

As he pondered that prayer meeting the next few days, the word "desperation" kept coming to him. These people, desperate for God to answer their prayers, prayed with fervency that his prayers often lacked.

Desperate praying will be shown in many ways. It may mean praying with others for two hours or praying the same request consistently over weeks, months, or even years. It will be prayers that flow out of a deep desire for God to act.

For six years a missionary to China has been asking, seeking, and knocking for an open door to the closed country of North Korea. He wrote of his passion for this country. "Deep feeling brings fervency to prayer like dry wood supplies flames to fire. The understanding that never-dying souls in North Korea are perishing daily because of the obstructive leadership there should wring out of our hearts urgent and heated prayers of intercession to God...Let's pray until God's spiritual forces victoriously make their way onto the streets of Pyongyang!"

Isaiah wrote, "Oh that you would burst from the heavens and come down!" Let's join in "desperate" praying that God will do awesome things beyond our highest expectations.

Thank You, God, that Your ears are open to desperate praying.

"'Even now,' declares the LORD, 'return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning'...Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing" (Joel 2:12, 14).