Story
13th November 2024
Brian Heasley – 24-7 Prayer
Isaiah 62:6–7 says, “I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give Him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.”
When it comes to years of prayer, I have always found Isaiah 62 to be an incredibly helpful and encouraging scripture. When we lived in Spain, we used to go to the same spot every couple of weeks and pray over a particular part of the place we found ourselves in. Sometimes it was challenging, sometimes it was even boring, but we kept going. Over the years, we saw breakthroughs, sometimes tiny changes, and at other times, amazing answers to prayer.
One commentator says this of Isaiah 62, recognising that the prophet is urging us to ‘Keep not silence yourselves, nor let him rest in silence. Pray without ceasing; and do not intermit your efforts until the desires of your hearts shall be granted, and Zion shall be established, and the world saved.’ Wow, I love that. We don’t let God rest in silence. Throughout the Bible, God exhorts us through his prophets and teachers to be a people who persevere and pray. It’s almost like he is looking for it; he expects it. But I don’t know if you have noticed, it’s hard to practice perseverance in a culture of immediacy! We live in a time where we can get what we want when we want, pretty quickly. The idea of non-stop night-and-day persistent prayer is counter-cultural.
If we are going to see transformation in our nation and see a generation survive and thrive, we need to learn the art of perseverance in a culture of immediacy.This means we can’t be conformed to a pattern of immediacy in our prayer times. We achieve real depth and see real breakthroughs when we learn to persevere. To be very clear, I am not saying I don’t believe that God can do things instantly and immediately. Most of the time when I pray, I am asking for and expecting his immediate intervention; we must never stop praying in this faith-filled expectant way. But we must pray this way, persistently.
I love Alexander Moyter’s observations on the children of Israel trapped by the Red Sea. There is a moment where the Egyptians are behind them, and the Sea is in front of them; all they can see is impending disaster. So often what is before us is often not great and doesn’t look promising. Yet at the moment of what looked like their greatest crisis as a nation, the situation before them was going to become the day, after 400 years, in which ‘the Lord saved Israel from the hand of the Egyptians’ (Exodus 14:30). The miracle happens after 400 years of travail, of sorrow, pain, and perseverance. In one moment, Moses raises his staff, the sea parts, and they are free!
‘Let us learn the lesson: It is the will of God that gives purpose to life. There is always the ‘bigger picture’ of which he is aware of and we are not’ (Moyter). Perseverance is about us recognising we are part of a bigger picture; there is more at play than we often realise. Every time we pray, something happens. We may not see the results instantly, but by persistent night-and-day prayer, we sow into the bigger picture for the land. What we pray over this year could shape our nation for years to come.
A man once told me that behind every history that is seen, there is always a secret history. The secret history of any breakthrough, any revival, any transformed town, or nation would appear to be a secret history of prayer.
As this year nears its end, as we continue to pray, let us embrace the art of perseverance even beyond 2024. In doing so, we will not let God ‘rest in silence’, take our place in the bigger picture for our nation, and become those who see a nation changed as we engage in the history-changing act of prayer.