Sophie wants up on the sofa. She sits at my feet staring at me desperate for me to invite her to come hang out with me. Because she knows she’s not allowed up on the sofa unless she’s invited. Thus it begs the question how she can so quickly forget that she’s not supposed to poop in the house, eat the moss from the plant by the fireplace, or eat Maggie’s food, but I digress.
What captured me today though was when I let her up here she jumped clear across my study books and around the pillow to get over to me to give me some “stinky” Sophie love. Poor thing is like the little guy from Charlie Brown who lives with a perpetual dirt cloud around him. But it was her persistence that got me. She had already paced at my feet until I would recognize her. Then she sat and stared at me until I invited her up here and then she leaped over my books to get to me.
I’ve been that desperate before. Honestly, find that life keeps me in a perpetual place of persistent need of my Father. I demand him to recognize me, notice me, invite me, then love me. And do you know what I’ve found, he is more than desiring of that too. In fact, he has a thing for persistents,
persistent widows, persistent friends, persistent prayers…kind of gravitates to it actually.
What I’ve noticed though in my own life is how quick I am to give up. When the answer doesn’t come quickly I get discouraged, move on, convinced he doesn’t love me enough to answer that anyway. Instead of persistently asking and trusting in the middle of my seeming lack of answers. Because I’ve discovered that often in my seasons of persistence that he is usually doing a much bigger work in me than what I am actually praying for. The “process” of my persisticence is producing something.
Do you remember the story of the friends who lowered their paralyzed friend through the roof. Do you know why they went to the roof? Because they weren’t going to be kept out. The door was blocked, the windows were blocked, the roof was grassed and mudded over, but none of it mattered, they were getting their friend to this healer. Do you know what moved Jesus’ heart for this man? The faith of his friends. The persistent faith of his friends.
Persistent faith moves God’s heart and it changes ours in the process. I have to believe that what He is most after is the posture of our heart during the season of our delayed request. Delays are never about God, his timing is always perfect. Delays are always about us and how persistent we are willing to be with our faith and our heart. Will we trust him in the middle of the delay? Because the reward is always the same…more time with him on the sofa…
