Prayer of Importunity

Prayer of Importunity is the book’s central rule for refusing spiritual passivity. It means continuing to ask, seek, and knock when prayer feels unanswered, resisting disappointment and shame rather than withdrawing from God. The rule treats persistence not as mechanical pressure but as determined fellowship: the believer keeps returning to God until the need is met, the bondage is broken, or the desired change becomes visible.

Definition and Biblical Pattern

In Luke 11, Jesus presents importunity as continual asking that does not quit. The language of asking, seeking, and knocking describes three sustained movements: coming to God with a request, pursuing Him day after day, and continuing to knock even when heaven seems closed. The rule therefore joins petition to relationship. God is not portrayed as someone believers should avoid disturbing, but as One who looks for people willing to press into His kingdom and remain engaged with Him.

The midnight-neighbor story gives this principle its most concrete image. A friend goes to a neighbor at a late hour because an unexpected guest has arrived and he has no bread to offer. The neighbor initially objects, telling him not to trouble him, yet the petitioner continues until the door is opened and the needed bread is supplied. The scene teaches that persistence can continue beyond ordinary social restraint; the friend risks inconvenience because the need is urgent, and his refusal to accept an apparent refusal leads to provision.

The book defines importunity through a cluster of qualities: shamelessness, boldness, determination, pressing forward, entreaty, and persistence. Jesus’ instruction to pray and not faint in Luke 18 is interpreted in the same light. Prayer protects the believer from spiritual weakening, whereas abandoning prayer leaves the person vulnerable to discouragement, inconsistency, and distance from God.

Personal Practice and Spiritual Resistance

Prayer of Importunity begins with refusing to let disappointment become a reason to flee. The book observes that Christians often give up after failing repeatedly in prayer. Some feel embarrassed, while others imagine that God is angry with them; instead of facing the possibility of failure again, they run away from prayer and therefore run away from God. Against this retreat, the rule directs believers back toward God even after sin or discouragement. The example of Adam and Eve hiding after their disobedience illustrates the danger of covering shame rather than seeking renewed fellowship.

The practice is made concrete through regularity. Believers are urged to establish a definite meeting time and place with God, treating that appointment as important rather than praying only when circumstances become unbearable. Distraction and weariness are acknowledged as ordinary obstacles: the mind wanders, the clock becomes conspicuous, and discouragement interrupts concentration. The proposed response is not surrender but a renewed decision to remain present. The book even recalls a divine appeal, "Please don't leave," and connects it with the call to watch and pray rather than restricting communion with God to a narrowly measured interval.

Importunity also includes resisting spiritual opposition. In Luke 11:20-28, the struggle is described as binding the strongman or enemy whose forces seek to separate people from God. Persistence consequently has a confrontational dimension: believers resist temptation, fight for their time with God, and refuse to yield the connection that prayer sustains. The rule is paired with the use of the Word of God and the name of Jesus, standing firm, remaining in an anointed church, and refusing to abandon deliverance before freedom is experienced.

Intercession for Others and the Wider Community

The rule is not limited to private requests. The midnight friend is also an image of intercession, because his persistence secures bread not merely for himself but for a guest. Prayer for another person becomes an act of responsibility: one person continues knocking because someone else’s need has entered the house. The book later recounts persistent prayer for a neighbor whose life was unexpectedly preserved after a fall from a highway overpass. The man survived the plunge, received an opportunity to hear the gospel, and some members of his family became believers. The narrator interprets the survival and ensuing witness as the fruit of prayers offered on another person’s behalf.

At the level of cities and nations, importunity becomes collective action. The book argues that silence allows destructive influences to continue, while persistent prayer can confront violence, profanity, corrupt wisdom, defiled sanctuaries, iniquity, and terror or fear. The believer troubled by crime in a town is told not to remain at the level of complaint but to continue praying until the conditions change. The cry of righteousness must become louder than the cry of evil, because the book understands spiritual influence as something that can be challenged through determined intercession.

A national example centers on prayer for the United States. During prayer, the narrator describes sensing God’s presence and receiving the message that the nation was being given another chance, as Nineveh had been spared, because its history of prayer was not finished. This experience leads to the conviction that believers can stand for a people as Moses stood for the Israelites. Importunity thus becomes an argument for responsibility: national decline is not treated as a reason to anticipate destruction, but as a summons to remain before God until mercy and purpose prevail.

Persistence, Storms, and Changed Circumstances

The book illustrates the rule through successive accounts of prayer concerning hurricanes in Florida. In 2004, a prophecy announced two back-to-back storms and said that prayer could keep them away. People prayed, but the hurricanes still came, suggesting that the first response had not reached the level of determination the narrator considered necessary. The following year, a further prophecy identified a storm expected to rise from the Atlantic in a particular month and arrive just before a conference. This time hundreds prayed fervently and collectively decided that the storm would not be accepted as inevitable; it failed to hit them.

The narrative extends the claim into 2006, after the narrator says the Lord spoke of a year without storms like those of the previous seasons. People throughout the United States prayed and declared peace over the storms, and no major hurricane struck the country that year. The decisive contrast is not between prayer and no prayer, but between insufficient persistence and a united refusal to accept defeat after an earlier disappointment. The story presents importunity as a practice that grows in intensity, coordination, and determination.

The same logic appears in the account of a church facing a situation intended for evil. Because the church refused to abandon prayer, the situation was said to become an occasion for expansion and blessing. In Acts 12, the early church faces a sharper crisis: Herod has killed James and imprisoned Peter, who appears to be next. Rather than relying on natural tactics, the church turns to prayer and does not let go of God. The account establishes persistent prayer as the means by which a threatened community responds when an apostle’s life is at stake.

Worship, Deliverance, and the Final Call

Prayer of Importunity overlaps with worship when bondage is the problem. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fall in the furnace, but their posture is interpreted not as submission to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue but as prostration before the Son of God. Their convictions remain unchanged under extreme pressure, and they emerge without singed hair, scorched clothing, or even the smell of smoke. Their worship functions as a cry for deliverance because it places God above the king, the fire, and the pressure to quit.

Paul and Silas provide the parallel prison scene. At midnight, in their darkest hour, they pray and sing praises; an earthquake shakes the prison foundations, the doors open, and the prisoners’ bonds are loosened. The account insists that they did not remain bound because they worshiped when they did not feel like worshiping. Praise becomes a form of importunity, an act that refuses to leave God alone in the middle of pain and that exalts Him above personal failure and spiritual bondage.

The book’s final movement turns the rule into an evangelistic invitation. Readers are encouraged to begin a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, spend quality time with Him daily, ask for His presence, and pursue Him until blessing comes. The offered prayer commits the speaker to seeking God, believing in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, receiving forgiveness, asking the Holy Spirit to fill the heart, and choosing to remain a follower of Jesus Christ. Prayer of Importunity therefore ends not with a technique for obtaining isolated answers but with a public decision to make persistent pursuit of God the pattern of a new life.