Passionate Desire is the Basis of Unceasing Prayer

Tip! If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and want to know for sure that you are a child of God, then I would like to invite you to earnestly pray and ask Jesus to come into your heart.

Passionate desire is the basis of unceasing prayer. It is not a shallow, fickle inclination; no, but a strong yearning, an unquenchable love, which impregnates, glows, burns and fixes to our hearts. It is the flame of a present and active principle mounting up to God. It is enthusiasm propelled by desire that burns its way to the Throne of mercy, and obtains its plea.

This passionate desire is the belief that desire gives us triumph in the conflict, in a great struggle of prayer. It is the burden of a heavy desire that sobers, makes restless, and reduces to quietness in our soul as we just emerge from its mighty wrestling. It is the embracing character of desire which arms our prayer with a thousand pleas, and robes it with an invincible courage and an all-conquering power.

The Syrophenician woman is an object lesson in desire, settled to its consistency, but secure in its intensity and persistent boldness. The determined widow represents desire gaining its end, through obstacles impossible to feebler desires.

Prayer is not the rehearsal of a mere performance; nor is it an indefinite, widespread howl. Desire, while it kindles our soul, holds it to the object sought. Prayer is an indispensable phase of spiritual habit, but it stops to be prayer when carried on by habit alone. It is depth and intensity of spiritual desire which give intensity and depth to prayer.

Our soul cannot be listless when some great desire fires and inflames it. The urgency of our desire holds us to the thing desired with a tenacity which refuses to be lessened or loosened; it stays and pleads and persists, and refuses to let go until the blessing has been given.

"Lord, I cannot let You go, Till a blessing You bestow; Do not turn away Your face; Mine's an urgent, pressing case."