Staking a claim is the easy part. Any man can drive four posts into the ground and put his name on a piece of paper at the county seat. What comes after is the part that empties a camp — the long middle stretch where you are standing on ground that has shown you nothing yet, and everybody riding past has an opinion about it.
I have seen more claims walked away from three feet short of the seam than I have ever seen worked out. So when a preacher tells me he knows what makes a man able to stand, I listen.
He is talking about prayer rather than gravel, but it is the same stretch of ground. And the thing he says makes the difference is not grit, which is what I would have guessed.
First, we must be very clear on an important truth. Jesus emphasized over and over that our prayers are answered according to what we really believe. In Mark 11:24 Jesus assures us, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
(ESV) There are no “ifs,” “ands” or “buts” about it. We know this is true because God cannot lie (Numbers 23:19). We must set our minds to this confession: God said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Learning to Stand in Joy
Our ability to stand depends on faith in God’s word. Standing gets the job done, the prayer answered. Okay, we’ve prayed. What do we do after we’ve prayed? One thing is for sure — once we’ve prayed, that’s when all the “stuff” hits!
Many a prayer has failed at this point. The doubts come flooding in. And the questions: did I have enough faith? Did God really hear me? Did I pray right? Why isn’t anything happening? How can it get worse when I just prayed for it to get better?
As if our own doubts and fears weren’t causing us enough trouble, to complicate things, Satan’s minions will be fast at work to get us discouraged and stop believing. With all that coming at us how can there be any joy in standing? What do we do after we’ve prayed? Do we keep on repeating the same prayer over and over?
No. That’s like going back to square one every time. There’s no progress in regress. It just might be that the best thing to do is to add joy to your prayer: “Reckon it nothing but joy, my brethren, whenever you find yourselves hedged in by various trials. Be assured that the testing of your faith leads to power of endurance.” (James 1:2-3 Weymouth)
Adding Power to Your Prayers
Faith
In his autobiography Glenn Clark describes a prayer group he attended. Because they were learners as well as pray-ers they were looking for what added power to their prayers. Three things stood out. The first was their positive Faith that amounted to an absolute knowing. Next, the group noticed that when Clark was there, there was more power in their prayers.
Love
“In what way do you pray?” they asked. Glenn answered, “I just Love them.” “If I had dropped a bombshell into their midst, I couldn’t have startled them more. Now we were led to our second discovery, and that was that Love is the most powerful of all ingredients in all true prayer.”
Joy
The third came from a young lady in the group who annoyed him a little. She always came to the prayer meetings “so bubbling over with lightness and fun that it sometimes delayed our getting down to the serious business of prayer.
But to my surprise it was on the days when she was present that the power of the prayer was always greatest. So, one day I asked her point-blank what it was that she did when we prayed. Instantly she replied, ‘I put a lot of Joy into it.’”
“Do you mean that you put Joy into it when we prayed for the one-legged popcorn man and the poor old lady who had cancer?”
“Sure. It thrilled me to think how happy they would be when they got cured.” (A Man’s Reach, pp. 161-162, Macalester Park)
Standing in Faith With Radiant Joy
RADIANT JOY is the secret to the Joy of Standing. We give our prayers power when we breathe Joy into them. Let every discouragement, every setback, every negative report be an opportunity to pour in Joy. One of the Spirit’s fruits is Joy (Galatians 5:22). Let the Spirit’s Joy fill you if you are low on human Joy. Then send Joy, wrap the person in Joy, picture their Joy.
We learn from Jesus how to be Joy-filled in the midst of the worst that can happen. He endured the cross for the Joy that was set before him (Hebrews 12:2). He focused on the Joy. Knowing that He would soon endure the most agonizing suffering did not diminish His Joy.
He said that He came “that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy and gladness may be of full measure and complete and overflowing” (John 15:11 AMP).
“At present you trust him [trust Him to do what He has promised] without being able to see him, and even now he brings you a joy that words cannot express, and which has in it a hint of the glories of Heaven.” (1 Peter 1:8 Phillips)
That is the Joy of standing.
That is not how I had it figured. I always took standing to be a grim business — teeth set, collar up, outlast it. He says the ones who last are the ones who are glad, and that the gladness is not the reward handed out at the end of the standing. It is the thing that makes the standing work.
And the more I turn it over the more it matches what I have seen. The sour ones quit. The fellow still swinging a pick at sixty is the one who never stopped enjoying the swing.
Till Next Time,
The Rockwell Break-a-Bean
This article is part of Faith and Trust — a guide to everything in this library on taking God at his word before the evidence arrives.
