May 7, 2026 – Finish
When we start on a road trip, barring unforeseen circumstances, we press on to the end. It should be the same with prayer.
Streams – Luke 18:1 – “He spoke a parable unto them… that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” Cowman gives us a wake up call from The Practice of Prayer, “No temptation in the life of intercession is more common than this of failure to persevere. We begin to pray for a certain thing; we put up our petitions for a day, a week, a month; and then, receiving as yet no definite answer, straightway we faint, and cease altogether from prayer concerning it.” I have been diligent in prayer at times in my life and have gotten to see the answers, but I am definitely guilty of letting other petitions lapse at times.
The devotion with this strong truth, “This is a deadly fault. It is simply the snare of many beginnings with no completions…. The man who forms the habit of beginning without finishing has simply formed the habit of failure. The man who begins to pray about a thing and does not pray it through to a successful issue of answer has formed the same habit in prayer. To faint is to fail…. “
The devotion asks a questions and then answers it, “But someone says, ‘How long shall we pray?’ …There is but one answer. Pray until the thing you pray for has actually been granted, or until you have the assurance in your heart that it will be…. In the first case we stop because we see. In the other, we stop because we believe…. More and more, as we live the prayer life, shall we come to experience and recognize this God-given assurance, and know when to rest quietly in it, or when to continue our petitioning until we receive it.”
Utmost – Luke 14:28 – “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?” Chambers explains, “Our Lord refers not to a cost we have to count, but to a cost which He has counted…. Men are not going to laugh at Him at last and say – ‘This man began to build, and was not able to finish.’ …Our Lord implies [in verses 26-27 and 33] that the only men and women He will use in His building enterprises are those who love Him personally, passionately and devotedly beyond any of the closest ties on earth. The conditions are stern, but they are glorious.” Our petitions and intercessory prayers are part of how He uses us to help with His mission.
Simpson – “I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. iv. 19). Simpson encourages, “Let us live, under the power of the inspiring thought, incarnations of Christ; not living our life, but the Christ-life, and showing forth the excellencies, not of ourselves, but of Him who hath called us ‘out of darkness into His marvelous light’; so our life shall be to all the re-living in our position of the Christ life, as He would have lived it, had He been here.”
Power – 1 John 4: 16 – “God is love, and he who dwells and continues in love dwells and continues in God, and God dwells and continues in him.” Joyce tells about preparing for her first meeting when she began in ministry and asking “the Lord what He wanted me to say and what came to my heart was, Tell My people I love them. ‘They know that,’ I said…. The Lord reminded me that if people really knew how much I loved them, they would act differently than they do…. The love of God is meant to be a powerful force in our lives, one that will take us through even the most difficult trials without our ever doubting God’s love.”
[When I chose the title I didn’t even think of how it relates what today is for me – my last day in Italy (for now!) Il mio viaggio e finito….]
