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TOPIC: Torrey, R A - Keep Praying Until God Answers (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 05 - It Is Spiritual Laziness to Give Up Too Soon
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There are many who, when they pray for a thing once or twice and do not get it, stop praying. They call it "submission to the will of God" to pray no longer when God does not grant their request at the first or second asking. They say, "Well, perhaps it is not God’s will." They call that submission to the will of God.
But as a rule, this is not submission to His will, but spiritual laziness and lack of determination in that most all-important of all human lines of effort-prayer.
None of us ever think of calling it submission to the will of God when we give up after one or two efforts to obtain things by our lack of strength of character.
When the strong man of action starts out to accomplish a thing, if he does not accomplish it the first, or the second, or the hundredth time, he keeps hammering away until he does. Just so when the strong man of prayer starts to pray for a thing, he keeps on praying until he prays it through and obtains what he seeks.
How fond we are of calling bad things in our conduct by good names. We call our spiritual inertia and laziness and indifference "submission to the will of God."
We should be very careful about what we ask from God; but when we do begin to pray for a thing, we must never give up until we get it, or until God definitely makes it very clear that it is not His will to give it.
I am glad that the first time we ask, God does not always give us the things that we seek from Him. There is no more blessed training in prayer than that which comes through being compelled to ask again and again and again, even through a long period of years, before one obtains that which he seeks from God. Then when it does come, what a sense we have that God really is and that He really does answer prayer!