The Unexpected Adventure: Prayer

Day 22 Adventure ~ Praying Persistently
LEE STROBEL

I’m not sure why I asked the question. Maybe it was natural curiosity. Or perhaps it flowed from my years of experience as an inquiring reporter. Either way, it also seemed to have been prodded by the Holy Spirit.

The day started out as a celebration of God’s grace. Hundreds of new followers of Jesus had flocked to our church to publicly affirm their faith through baptism, while their friends, families, and members of the community looked on. Baptism candidates each wore a corsage or boutonniere, and they were told they could invite someone — perhaps a family member or the person who led them to Christ — to accompany them as they walked onto the platform.

I was one of the pastors performing the baptisms, which is always a highlight for me. Few things are as inspiring as looking into the eyes of someone freshly redeemed by God’s grace and hearing them affirm their decision to follow Jesus. Sometimes their voice catches as they choke back tears; other times, they can’t contain their smile and their face simply radiates gratitude.

A sixty-something woman, wearing a corsage, walked over to me to be baptized. Next to her was a brawny, tough-looking man who appeared to be a few years older. He looked like a construction worker, his leathery skin deeply etched with lines. I bet he didn’t even need a hammer to pound in a nail — he could probably use his fist. I noticed he wasn’t wearing a boutonniere.

I turned to the woman. “So, you’re here to be baptized,” I said.

She was brimming with joy. “Oh, yes, I am,” she declared.

I smiled at her answer. “Have you received Jesus Christ as your forgiver and leader?” I asked, although the inquiry seemed merely a formality after I had seen Jesus so clearly reflected in her eyes.

She nodded with enthusiasm. “With all of my heart.”

I was just about to baptize her when I glanced at the man at her side. He had been listening intently to what was being said. “Are you her husband?” I asked.

He straightened up. “Well, yes, I am,” he said matter-of-factly.

That’s when the question popped into my mind. In all of the hundreds of baptisms I have performed, I had never done this before. But for a journalist, this would have been the obvious inquiry to make. So I asked him in a sincere and concerned tone, “Have you given your life to Jesus?”

He looked surprised and offended. For the briefest of moments, he glared at me. Then his face screwed into a pained expression, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. I thought he might hit me. But suddenly he burst into tears, weeping uncontrollably, his shoulders bobbing as he tried to catch his breath.

“No, I haven’t,” he managed to say between sobs. “But I want to right now.”

My knees almost buckled. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I glanced around the auditorium, looking for some sort of guidance about what to do next.

“Well, okay then,” I finally said. And with that, as thousands of -people watched, he confessed that he was a sinner, he received forgiveness through Christ, and I had the privilege of baptizing him and his wife together.
It was a glorious moment in the midst of a soaring celebration. He hardly looked like the same man moments later as he stood next to his wife amidst scores of others who had been baptized as we all sang “Amazing Grace.” His smile was as broad and enthusiastic as hers.

Then at the end of the service, just after I stepped off the platform, another woman I didn’t know came bounding up and threw her arms around me. As she sobbed on my shoulder, all I could hear her say was, “Nine years, nine years, nine years . . .”

As you can imagine, I was a bit flustered. “Excuse me, but who are you?” I asked. “And what do you mean, ‘Nine years’?”

She looked up at me, her eyes red from tears. “That’s my sister-in-law you baptized up there, and that’s my brother who you led to Christ and baptized with her,” she explained. “I’ve been praying for that man for nine long years, and the whole time I’ve never seen one hint of spiritual interest. But look what God did today!”

Instantly, a thought popped into my mind: Here is a woman who is glad she didn’t stop praying in year eight.

Yet even as you read that, you might be saying to yourself, Well, she was only getting started. Because you’ve prayed for a wayward son for ten years, or a spiritually confused parent for fifteen years, or a best friend from high school for twenty years. All that time you haven’t seen any evidence whatsoever of a spiritual awakening in them. A thousand times, you’ve been tempted to stop praying for them. What’s the use? Nothing is happening. This woman, however, would tell you to never give up. Never cease praying. Never stop lifting up those you care about to the throne of grace.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand everything about prayer. I know that God lets each person decide whether or not to follow him, and we can’t impose our will on someone else, as much as we’d like to. But I’m just naive enough to believe the Bible when it says, “The prayer of a righ-teous person is powerful and effective” (James 5:16 TNIV). In fact, I like the quote popularly attributed to Mother Teresa: “When I pray, coincidences happen. When I stop, they don’t.”

“Coincidences” such as an inquisitive former journalist baptizing a woman and not being able to resist asking one pivotal question of her husband.

Action Principle
After getting tired of praying that a spouse, friend, neighbor, or family member would put their trust in Christ, we often give up and go looking for some sort of “evangelistic trick” that might work better. But if the Bible is right when it says that prayer can be “powerful and effective,” then our best course of action is to always prioritize prayer, continually asking God to intervene in that person’s life.
 
Stepping into the Adventure
Have you ever stopped to think that Jesus’ prayers for spiritually lost -people continued right up until his final breath on the cross? As British pastor John Stott observed in The Message of the Sermon on the Mount:
Jesus seems to have prayed for his tormentors actually while the iron spikes were being driven through his hands and feet; indeed, the imperfect tense [of the biblical account in Greek] suggests that he kept praying, kept repeating his entreaty, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”13

If Jesus prayed for his enemies all the way through the torture of the crucifixion, then isn’t it the least we can do to pray for the -people we love and care about but who are living in quiet rebellion against God? When we stop praying for -people, it’s as if we have made up their mind for them. In effect, we’re deciding the individual will never commit his or her life to Christ. But how can we possibly do that when so many unlikely -people — myself included — have unexpectedly ended up in God’s family? I’m sure some of my Chris-tian friends had given up on me, but I’m thankful that my wife and God never did.

I remember talking with a man who received Christ as a teenager at an early Billy Graham rally. He tried to convince his stubborn older brother to follow Jesus, but he was continually rebuffed. His brother went on to get a law degree from Harvard and become a highly successful attorney in Los Angeles, steadfastly refusing to consider the claims of Christ. The man told me how he prayed for his brother for forty-eight years and three hundred and forty eight days. He actually counted!

He finally gave his brother a copy of my book The Case for Christ on Christmas one year; soon after that his brother was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. God used the book to appeal to his legal mind, and he ended up committing his life to Christ on his deathbed.

“Did you ever feel like giving up on your brother?” I asked the man who had been praying for him for almost half a century.

The question took him aback. “No. Of course not. He was my brother. I loved him. What else could I do but pray for him?”

So let me ask you a question: Who have you stopped interceding for? What person in your life did you once pray for fervently, consistently, and specifically, and yet through the years you’ve simply stopped? Here’s an exercise: bring that individual’s face into your mind. Take some time right now to bring him or her to God in prayer, and then commit to regularly intercede for them.

After all, prayer isn’t just one more thing we can do. It’s the very best thing we can do.
 
Inspiration for the Journey
The prayer of a righ-teous person is powerful and effective. James 5:16 TNIV

Taken from The Unexpected Adventure by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg. Copyright © 2009 by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg. Used by permission of Zondervan.