Day Sixty-one

I have been praying for you, dear sister, and I have been praying for me. You see, God has handpicked us to go before Him in prayerful obedience, making way for Him to infiltrate Freedom Hall with His Spirit on June 10-11. I have to confess that I do not always feel like praying, nor do I do it as I should. Yet, I want to. Let me clarify that--I don't just want to, I want to want to. So I have been praying for you and me, that we have the want to want to. That He would burden us--even gut-wrenchingly burden us--with the desire to pray for this conference.

E.M. Bounds in The Necessity of Prayer, writes, 'If it be discovered that desire is honestly absent, we should pray, anyway. We ought to pray. The 'ought' comes in, in order that both desire and expression be cultivated. God's Word commands it. Our judgment tells us we ought to pray--to pray whether we feel like it or not--and not to allow our feelings to determine our habits of prayer. In such circumstance, we ought to pray for the desire to pray; for such a desire is God-given and heaven-born.'

Thus, certainly we can ask God to give us a desire to pray and a want to want to; truly, He does want to answer this prayer with a resounding 'Yes!' Yet, we must also be humbly willing to ask the Lord to search our hearts and show us why we don't have such a desire to pray in earnest...to search our hearts and show us why we are so luckwarm. The Lord has a somber message to the Laodiceans in regards to lukewarmness: 'because you are lukewarm--neither cold nor hot--I am about to spit you out of my mouth! You say, "I am rich: I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.' Rev. 3:16-17

As we go before His throne, let's contemplate this question: Are we investing in the unseen--the eternal--or are we investing in that which moths and rust destroy?

Dear Merciful and Gracious Father,


I humbly bow before You, asking you to give me the 'want' to want to pray. I also ask that you raise up women all around Louisville as prayer intercessors for the Deeper Still conference. Give them and myself the gut-wrenching desire to plead and beg our case before you for the next ninety days. Lord, I do not want to be a lukewarm Laodicean. I want to have a red-hot passionate desire for You and You alone! I know that if my focus is on You, than my purposes will line up with Your purposes. Help me to weed out those things in my life that are timewasters and have no eternal value. May I not seek after that which moth and rust destroy! Instead, may I find more and more time to spend before Your throne. May I not just find time, but yearn for and run hard after the time! Give me a steadfast and earnest devotion to prayer that the people of the first church in Acts had: 'They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer' (Acts 2:42). May I devote myself entirely to the job of intercession. Oh, Lord, your eyes search the whole earth in order to strengthen those who are fully committed to You (2 Chron. 16:9). I fully commit myself this day; strengthen me to persevere in this task!


In Jesus' honorable name I pray,

Amen.