Persevering in prayer

I preached on Nehemiah 1 last week, and was struck with how Nehemiah, when faced with an enormous challenge, wrestled with God in prayer long and hard. The text suggests four months of weeping and fasting and praying before God about the people of God and the mercy they needed.

Then yesterday I got this great email from a member of the congregation, telling me a story about faithful persevering prayer. It went like this:

A godly guy (now 60+) at our church (in the town where I grew up) still prays through the list of kids he had in Sunday School in the 1970s. He's had trouble trying to work out how to make the list more manageable now that we have all married and had kids! The kids were really treasured in that church and encouraged to start volunteer ministry early eg. kids talks @ 14. God's grace in all that is that 8 of those kids are now theologically trained and in full time ministry. Pretty amazing for a town of 4000!

How faithful is our God!