Persistence in Prayer

Persistence in Prayer is the governing discipline of refusing to leave God alone. It means more than occasional requests made during crisis: it is a sustained relationship in which a believer sets apart regular time and a definite place for fellowship, speaks honestly to God, prays with faith and purpose, and continues seeking until circumstances change or the promised answer appears. In the book’s theology, persistence is not an attempt to force an unwilling deity but a response to God’s desire for connection and intervention.

Definition and Spiritual Foundation

Persistence begins with a deliberate meeting place and a dependable habit. The believer is urged to establish a set time and place to meet God, to verbalize the desire for fellowship, and to remain committed until prayer becomes a permanent part of life. This regularity distinguishes the principle from prayers offered only when trouble arrives. The book treats God as one who wants time with people, not merely emergency attention, and presents consistent prayer as the means by which a personal relationship becomes deep enough to move His heart.

The discipline also addresses insincere and distracted prayer. Hank Kunneman recalls praying quickly over a meal and then sensing the Lord ask whether he had meant the words from his heart. He recognized that he had neither truly meant nor properly heard what he had said, and afterward felt convicted whenever he prayed without sincerity, even when hunger made him eager to eat. The incident turns persistence inward: continuing to pray is not enough if prayer has become empty speech. Devotion must include attention, truthfulness, and a genuine desire to be with God.

The opposite of persistence is withdrawal. After believers fail in prayer, they may feel embarrassed, assume God is angry, or decide that avoiding prayer is safer than facing another failure. The book compares this reaction with Adam and Eve hiding after they sinned. Their attempt to cover themselves and avoid God repeats the central danger of separation: shame produces distance, while the proper response is to return, confess, and seek forgiveness. Persistence therefore includes coming back to God after moral or spiritual failure rather than allowing failure to recreate separation.

Faith, Precision, and the Refusal to Quit

The principle requires a targeted request rather than aimless desperation. Kunneman illustrates the contrast through an archery class in which he had already assumed he would fail, shot without determination, and fired arrows into the air for amusement. The arrows landed beyond a hill where another gym class was running, bringing the lesson to an abrupt and troubling end. Prayer, he argues, can likewise be misdirected when people either do not pray or pray vaguely and halfheartedly, asking without a clear aim.

Targeted prayer identifies a specific request, searches the Bible for a promise related to that need, and treats worship as part of the preparation. Written prayer requests are described as prepared arrows; the believer is encouraged to place a hand on the list each day and thank God for the bull’s-eye answer. This practice gives persistence a concrete rhythm. It is not passive waiting but repeated attention to an articulated need, joined to scriptural confidence and thanksgiving before the visible result arrives.

The book distinguishes a cry of faith from the mere volume of distress. God hears the cries of the oppressed, but shouting, screaming, or crying by itself is not presented as the force that changes circumstances. The effective cry contains three elements drawn from Hebrews 11:6: faith that God will do what He has said, belief that God truly is who Scripture declares Him to be, and trust that He rewards those who diligently seek Him. The decisive sound is therefore a refusal to go away empty, not desperation without expectation.

Jesus’s teaching supplies the principle’s clearest sequence: ask, seek, and knock. Persistence, or importunity, is defined as shameless, bold, determined, pressing, entreating, and continuous requesting. The friend who keeps knocking at midnight and Jesus’s command to pray without fainting present refusal to accept an initial no as the end of the matter. The desired posture is endurance: continue pressing in prayer without growing weary, confident that an answer will come when the seeker refuses to quit.

Moses and the Intercessory Model

Moses provides the book’s central biblical example. In Exodus 32, God asks to be left alone while judgment threatens the people, but Moses pleads with the Lord instead of withdrawing. The book emphasizes the force of his intercession through the words “Moses besought the LORD” and the alternate rendering “Moses pleaded with the LORD his God.” Moses’s action interrupts what the narrative presents as the enemy’s anticipated triumph: the devil’s plan depends on separation between God and humanity, whereas intercession reconnects them.

Moses’s prayer is not portrayed as a vague appeal for relief. He argues that the Egyptians might interpret Israel’s deliverance as a malicious act intended to kill the people in the mountains and erase them from the earth. He calls God to turn from fierce wrath and remember the agreement made with His people. His persistence is therefore both relational and covenantal: he refuses to let anger prevent him from approaching God, and he appeals to God’s own purposes rather than merely presenting a private preference.

The reported consequence is explicit: the Lord changed His mind about the harm He had said He would do to His people. The book consequently states that Moses changed God’s mind and extends that possibility to readers. It imagines the historical consequences had Moses failed to intervene, including a people renamed around Moses rather than Israel, but uses the speculation to underline the stakes of intercession. When God appears to request solitude, the book interprets that moment as an occasion in which God is looking for someone willing to plead for mercy.

Speech, Worship, and Spiritual Resistance

Persistence is expressed not only through continued requests but also through authoritative speech. The book connects Moses’s refusal with declarations such as “No, God, You are not going to do this,” and with the angel’s challenge, “Who art thou, O great mountain?” before Zerubbabel. The mountain is expected to become a plain, accompanied by repeated cries of “Grace, grace unto it.” These words model a holy attitude of victory: intimidating circumstances are not accepted as final, and faith speaks to the obstacle rather than merely describing it.

The same logic is applied to Elijah. He declares that there will be neither dew nor rain for years except according to his word, and the book treats the subsequent drought as evidence that words can affect the course of nature when God honors them. A later overseas conference testimony develops the pattern. An area had gone months without rain, no rain was forecast, and Kunneman prophesied during worship that the drought would end within twenty-four hours, that rain would signify blessing and answered prayer, and that thunder would carry God’s voice in the heavens. For hours the sun seemed to contradict the declaration, but clouds eventually formed; heavy rain followed, thunder shook the buildings, streets flooded, and news of the drought’s end spread across the nation.

The rule is joined to a warning against fear-filled speech. Words are presented as a rod of authority only when they arise from the heart and are spoken in faith. The book invokes Jesus’s teaching that faith can command a mountain to move and that words flowing from the heart carry more than merely intellectual repetition. Persistence thus continues through the period when nothing appears to happen: the delay between declaration and visible change becomes a test of whether the speaker will retract the word or continue trusting God.

Worship supplies another form of refusal. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fall into the fiery furnace rather than bow before the king’s image; the flames are heated seven times hotter, and the soldiers who throw them in are killed. Yet the three men are described as falling prostrate before the Son of God in the fire, not before a man-made statue. Their clothing is not scorched, their hair is not singed, and they do not smell of smoke. Worship in the middle of pressure becomes an act of spiritual resistance, and persistence is shown as remaining aligned with God when the immediate circumstances appear designed to make surrender inevitable.

Practice, Deliverance, and Final Invitation

The book applies Persistence in Prayer to deliverance through a practical set of commitments: refuse to leave God alone, use the Word of God and the name of Jesus, believe that the Lord wants freedom, stand one’s ground, refuse to give up on deliverance, and remain in a church with an anointed pastor who can help. Jesus’s promise that those whom the Son sets free are truly free gives the practice its stated goal. The believer is told to cry out like Samson, take hold of the pillar, and worship like the three Hebrew youths, trusting that enemies will turn back and freedom will follow.

The principle culminates in an evangelistic appeal. Readers who have never known Jesus Christ personally are invited to begin a new life of intimate fellowship, spending quality time with Him every day and asking for His presence. The supplied prayer commits the speaker to pursuing God, confessing belief that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead, asking forgiveness, repenting, requesting the filling of the Holy Spirit, and identifying as a Christian and follower of Jesus Christ. Its final vow extends the book’s central discipline into a public declaration of identity: the new believer chooses not to leave God alone until blessing is received.

Persistence in Prayer therefore operates simultaneously as habit, relationship, intercession, speech, worship, resistance, and conversion. It begins with a scheduled meeting and sincere attention, survives disappointment and shame, gains direction through Scripture, and reaches its strongest expression when a person continues to seek God despite apparent silence. The book’s final promise is that freedom and blessing are found not through abandoning prayer when it seems ineffective, but through remaining present before God until fellowship, faith, and action open the way for change.