Prayer or Perseverance Luke 10:27

" 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,' and 'your neighbor as yourself.'



Prayer is not something that just happens in the life of a child of God. Powerful prayers are the product of a life that has been tried in the fire and is still standing. Loving God with all our heart, soul and mind requires a relationship with God that has stood the test of time and temptation.

God wants us to learn to stand with Him. We learn this by persevering and by prayer. When we pray, God gives us the strength and the stability that we need to weather the storm. When we fail to pray, we usually fail to stand. The storm more often than not, sweeps us off our feet and we end up crying out Like Simon Peter, "Lord Save me!"

God does reach down and He does pull us out of the storm just in the nick of time in a lot of cases. This is where persevering comes in. We persevere when we find out that even though the storms are dangerous and destructive, there is deliverance. God wants us to realize that He is the source of that deliverance. If we think, "It was tough but I finally made it" or "I sure am glad I had my education to fall back on or that money in the bank" then we are indeed in deep trouble. For the day will come when there will not be a human solution to the storm that we will be forced to face. The only solution will be the solution that comes to us from God Himself.

At some point, prayer has to replace perseverance. The whole purpose of persevering is to get us to the point where we reach up and take God by the hand because we have learned that God is more than able to give us life and give it to us more abundantly. We learn that prayer is a better sustainer than persevering! We learn that standing with God is so much better than facing the storms and being dragged out by the collar with nothing but the shirt on our backs.

Love God with "all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind." Love Him with all you have and all you are. Let Him be all in your life. Let Him mold and shape you through the privilege of prayer as He helps you learn to love Him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind."

Let prayer be your guide instead of the storms. Let God use you through the practice of prayer instead of the promise or perseverance and holding on through the storms that force us to look to Him.