Generally, when I pray through the Fellowship Prayer I will pray a little slowly through each on and when a certain one strikes my heart, I'll camp there. What I mean by striking my heart is that my heart will get a little tender, maybe even emotional, and yes, sometimes tears are involved. The one that I can honestly say I camp out on the most... Endurance.
Recently I wrote about Endurance, (you can check that post out here), and that came out of spending time asking God for endurance for the race. I am still challenged in my faith, challenged by the opposing forces of apathy and dullness, that I must fight everyday to win this battle of consistency. I don't know if consistency is natural. Everything in me wants to lay back in bed, numb away the challenges of life, and seek pleasure rather than endure the pain of growth. This passage of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane causes my heart a bittersweet clinging to the cross of Jesus again.
“And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
I am challenged by this. To persevere through seasons, I mean years and years of not seeing fruit, to keep going, steady, with your "hand on the plow" as it were. Oh how weak my faith is! In just a few months I begin to lose my resolve saying, "Lord! I don't see any fruit in this! Did You really call me to this (or that)?" Maybe you can relate? How quickly we lose our zeal and when the passion runs dry and apathy creeps in, we are presented with a choice, really. The choice to embrace the dullness, believing, "this is as good as it gets", or to press in, persevere, and hold fast to the Word of God over our lives.
I am challenged, by my dullness, to cry out, no, to BEG God to revitalize my soul with hunger and desire for the secret place, to hunger for His Word, to thirst for His presence! Oh God! Remind us once again of the greatness of You! Give us endurance in our weakness to press through the dry seasons!
“Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ ”
PRAYER
"Father, strengthen my spirit with endurance that I may do Your will with zeal and diligence and that I not quit pursuing the deep things of God. Impart endurance for fasting. Direct my heart into the endurance in which Jesus walked. Help me, to follow through in my commitments to God and to fulfill my ministry calling when it is difficult.