On the surface, the Bible is basically a pessimistic, gloomy book, especially when it relates to prophecy. This is the thing that bothers a lot of Christians when they read the Word.
We keep talking about the day of the Lord, but read those Old Testament Prophets: the day of the Lord is something that makes you shudder because it is all relating to how God must deal with the world, or with His people who have refused to walk on a spiritual plane with Him. I know this has to be explained, because we look to the Bible for all of our hope; we look to the Scriptures for our whole anchor for the future.
Luke 11: 5 And He said to them, ‘Suppose one of you shall have a friend, and shall go to him at midnight, and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and from inside he shall answer and say, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ “I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs. And I say unto you, ask, (keep asking) and it shall be given to you; seek, (keep seeking) and you shall find; knock, (keep knocking) and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened.”
Luke 11:11 “Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
Even in the teaching of Jesus Christ there is a great pessimism. Hardly does He mention anything about the end time but what He conveys, true to the revelation of it, there is pessimism about it.
He gives a parable on prayer, then says, “Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh will He find faith on the earth” (Luke 18:8)? “Few there will be that find it” (Matthew 7:14). That’s pessimistic.
He is talking about principles that trip us up. The Word says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exodus 20:14), but if you look on a woman to lust after her you’ve committed adultery with her already in your heart (Matthew 5:28); “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), but if you hate you’ll be brought into judgment (Matthew 5:22).
All of the books of the Bible have a way of nose diving. Look at the historical books. The book of Genesis begins with beautiful promises and ends with God letting the tribes of Israel wind up in slavery. A lot of books are like that. Jeremiah—amazing, blazing prophecies, yet he sits beside the road crying while a few bloody victims are led off into captivity; that’s the way that book ends. The prophets in the Old Testament warned people and repeatedly they failed and the judgments hit. You have to look a long time (it’s like finding a needle in a haystack) to find those glorious little glimpses of the future that point toward the Kingdom. This is the reason people who do not know how to read the Scriptures do not know how to draw the life from them, and a general pessimism hits them. Why? Because unless they understand the way to read the Scriptures and the message behind them, they find a great pessimism.
The book of Revelation is a revelation of Jesus Christ, and blessed is the man who reads it (Revelation 1:3), but by the time those beasts with all those heads and horns, etc., have almost gored you, all the vials are poured out and the trumpets have blown, you miss the impact of the whole book; all you get out of it is general pandemonium. Only the Holy Spirit can take the saint and direct him toward the optimism that is underneath the surface of the Word. We have to dig through the layer of dirt and rock, but we will find gold underneath.
We’re looking for solutions. It isn’t enough to know situations in the world. We must prophesy against them until God exposes the things behind them. God said to prophesy against them and we shall prophesy against them.
We want solutions, solutions to circumstances, but the Bible doesn’t always offer solutions—on the surface it doesn’t. “If any man comes into Christ while he’s a slave, he’s to go on and be a good slave.” No revolution there! There’s no answer to his circumstance, there is no solution to his problem. Let every man abide in the same state wherein he is called (I Corinthians 7:20). If he finds the Lord and his wife doesn’t find the Lord but is content to go on with the marriage, (I Corinthians 7:12) he will be unequally yoked with the unbeliever, or vice versa.
There aren’t any nice, pat solutions to circumstances and relationships in the Bible. And sometimes when someone wants to know how he can reach a certain destination, you feel like the old farmer who said, “You can’t get there from here.” A stranger, looking for a certain town, stopped by a field and asked directions from a farmer. He said, “I know how you get there, you go down this way a piece; no, you better go up…No,” he said, “you just can’t get there from here.”
That’s the way you feel sometimes with people who are looking for honest solutions to problems. You wish that they had stayed sinners a little while and worked it out for themselves before they became Christians, because once they become Christians there are principles that hold them steadfast under certain situations. For instance, a couple may need a divorce, because there is nothing between them but open hostility. After one of them becomes a Christian, that’s out. If he had gone ahead and gotten the divorce before he became a Christian, no one in the church would have said anything. Do you see what I’m trying to say? That’s on the surface, but actually underneath the surface are the great principles and the leverage whereby you can move the world.
Circumstances, problems, financial needs, character traits, habits, everything can be changed. And while the Lord lays down certain principles, these are not necessarily pessimistic. Because underneath, if you look for them, are the principles by which all kinds of change can be wrought. And here is one that I’m intrigued with, and I’m going to follow it.
In the parable about the man who came for some food, and he said, “Loan me three loaves of bread.” “No,” he said. “Don’t bother me, I’m in bed, I’m asleep, my children are asleep. Don’t wake me.” Yet because of his persistence, he rises and gives to him. And Jesus says, “That persistence is the thing that counts.” (That’s why He gives this word in the Greek tense which means to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking.) He wouldn’t do it because he was his friend, but he would do it because of his persistence.
There is a means by which change can come in our lives, and we’re going to have to use it.
After the Lord gives the pattern for the disciple’s prayer where we pray to our father, he teaches us a higher principle than our relationship to the Lord, the principle of persistence.
The Lord says that there is one thing that is honored by God above the relationship you have with Him, and that’s your persistence with Him. That persistence takes priority over relationship. And even if God won’t meet you because you’re His born again believing child, He will meet you because you are persistent.
I honor my relationship to the Lord. We look up and we cry, “Abba Father; we’ve been accepted in the Beloved, we’ve been brought in as dear children. We have great privileges.”
But it is also true that we have to be persistent about the thing if we are going to make it work. Keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking. There must be something that God honors in our being a nuisance; it must have something that He respects. Instead of His children being so prone to cry out, “Lord, I’m in so much trouble” one day, and the next day forget all about it, He’s waiting for someone who will say, “I’m not going to let this thing go. I know where I stand; I know what my privileges are in the Lord.”
In order to convince you that the first parable really was a valid principle, He gives another parable that seals it. He said, “Now, if any of you fathers had a son who asked for fish, would you give him a snake? Or if he asked for an egg, would you give him a scorpion? How much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask?
He loves you, He’s going to honor you. You’re His children. When you ask for something, He’s not going to give you the wrong thing.” He has just laid the groundwork by that first parable, which says your persistence is going to get the answer. Then when you get the answer, it will be the right one; He won’t give you a false thing.
If persistence is above relationship, then God forgive us for our prayerlessness, for the instability of our devotional life. God forgive us of it and bring us to the place where we have that consistency.
When the house of God comes together for services, we should have beautiful worship to the Lord, something that challenges us in the word and feeds us, something that stirs us up. And we should have a mild state of revolution going on all the time, something of violence coming up in our heart, “God has something better for me than this.” There should be something within our hearts that does not settle down and accept this state we’re in as being all we’re going to get or all that we can have.
There is something better. And if we have to dynamite a door or a wall down, we’re going to go on; we’re going to be persistent. I believe it happens, over and over again, even on a natural plane.
There are people who have beautiful minds, they could make beautiful inventions, they could write beautiful books, etc., but the ones who finally make it are those who are persistent. God honors the person who never gives up.
God knows that you are going to take a fall if you don’t keep in motion, so He lays down a principle of persistence, and while you’re being persistent and going after it, you’re also continuing to grow and make progress, and you will not take the spills or sense the expression of deep failures in your life that you would if you just “watch and wait”—that’s a dangerous place to be.
In the Kingdom of God it’s a paradox that the man who is moving is the man who is safest. On the highways, the man who is in motion is the man who is in more danger. The man who is parked is considered to be in a safer position than the man who is in the car going down the road. That’s not true in the Lord—the man who is parked is the man who is in trouble; the man who is moving is the man who is safest when it comes to the things of God. Be persistent—move out; try. Knock on a door—if it doesn’t open, yell and wake them up. Do something about it!
This is what changes the complexion of almost everything that you could read that would be basically pessimistic. Even in one of the most pessimistic books of Jeremiah and its sister book, Lamentations, God gives us the assurance, “In the day you seek for Me with your whole heart, you will find Me” (Jeremiah 29:13).
We can have a persistence that is a joyful laying hold—claiming an answer. This will turn our hearts away from the pessimistic attitude we could face at the end of an age, and turn us to something positive.
I exhort you to get hold of this message and realize that no matter what we feel, we are the Remnant of God, and it’s to be our persistence that gets the thing done.
I want to inspire you to get back into a flow of worship and praise, but above all, into that persistent aggressive prayer. It breaks things loose and they start moving—and don’t think that this is irreconcilable to what Jesus said about the man who thought he would be heard for his much speaking in prayer (Matthew 6:7).
There’s a difference between repetition and persistence: repetition can exist in a person who will pray the same prayer over every day of their life. Because they never once touched God they keep praying it; they never feel that their prayer is heard. But persistence can come in a person who prays the same prayer every day, knowing that they are heard, and believing that they are going to have an answer. This is not repetition, its persistence, and there’s a difference.