I remember the days when my children were younger and would ask me to give them something—then ask me again, and ask me again. At that age, they had no ability to gain or purchase these things for themselves, so they were entirely dependent upon their parents to grant their requests (which were usually for cell phones when they were in their tweens and then for cars once they were old enough to drive). I remember growing weary of the repeated pleas that could eventually devolve into nagging.
Praying can feel like that, at times, can’t it? It can feel like trying to bend the arm of an unwilling God, influence the will of an unyielding Father, or eke the funds out of an impoverished parent. It can feel like badgering, especially when we pray for days, weeks, months, or even years without receiving the thing we desire. It can feel like pestering God when we long for something that to us seems very good, yet God has not seen fit to grant.
Of course, there are many differences between human parents and our God, not the least being that God commands us to persevere in prayer. He tells us to make our requests known to him and to persist in giving him every reason to grant what we ask. Jesus told an entire parable “to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1), a parable in which a needy widow continually bothers and beats down the will of a judge until he finally relents and grants her petition. The point, as you know, is that if even an unjust judge will eventually grant a good petition, then most certainly too will our God. This means that we can and we must persevere in prayer, confident that God has told us to do so.
But there is another reason to persevere in prayer, and I find this one particularly encouraging and motivating. As human beings, we exist within a fixed moment in time. We experience our lives as a succession of moments and a sequence of experiences. When we pray, time necessarily elapses between our first request and every subsequent one. It is this elapsing of time that we find so difficult, for we know how much time causes us to grow weary, to get hardened, and to become forgetful.
But God is not beholden to time in the way we are. God existed before time began and he remains entirely outside of its bounds. He does not grow, age, or mature. He experiences time concurrently rather than sequentially, which means he does not experience a succession of moments as we do. Moses says poetically, “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:4). God has a very different relationship to time than we do.
In that way, there is no difference to God between the prayer you prayed last week and the prayer you prayed yesterday. There is no difference between the one you prayed ten years ago and the one you prayed this morning. They never fade or grow old, but are all fresh in his mind, all equally relevant. Your prayers do not build in succession and do not come to him one by one. The elapsing of time may cause you to grow weary or lose heart, but it has no bearing on him and on his ability or willingness to answer your prayers.
Only in eternity will you see how the petitions you lift to him today were answered a hundred years after you lived and died.
Consider this: God may still be answering prayers that were prayed by the very first Christians, for the two thousand years that have elapsed since then make no difference to him. Twenty years after you die, your first and last prayers will still be equally fresh in his mind. You will eventually run out of time to pray, but God will never run out of time to answer. Only in eternity will you see how the petitions you lift to him today were answered a hundred years after you lived and died.
The light of the sun takes eight minutes to reach the surface of the Earth, and the light of some distant stars takes decades, centuries, or even millennia. But eventually, all that light reaches us so we can look up at night and see a billion blazing stars all at a glance. And in much that way, all of the prayers of all of God’s people reach his ear and come before his throne in a great and beautiful chorus. And just as God knows each star and finds pleasure in them all, he knows your every prayer and delights in each one. They are all before him, and not one has been, can be, or ever will be forgotten.
