Dharius Daniels - You MUST Be Persistent

My Bible says that Jacob wrestled all night, which means he fought in the dark. Jacob didn’t even know why—he was just fighting for his life. Watch this: when the man saw he couldn’t overpower Jacob, he said, «Let me go; it’s daybreak.» In other words, we have been doing this all night—enough! You’re not tired? After all these years, you’re not tired of all those no’s? You’re not tired of all that disappointment? Jacob said, «I don’t get tired. I will not let you go!» Listen to me—here it is for my notetakers: what you get out of some struggles is what you refuse to leave without. I’m going to let it sit right there. Jacob said, «No way in the world am I going to do all this fighting and not get anything out of it. I will not let you go until you bless me.»

Okay, so watch what the man says. The man is wrestling with him and asks, «What’s your name? I’ve got to go.» Jacob said, «I won’t let you go until you bless me. What’s your name?» Jacob asks for a blessing; he asks for the man’s name. The man responds by saying, «I’m not going to give you a blessing; I’m going to bless you.» What he means is, «Your name shall no longer be Jacob—the swindler, trickster, con artist, or scammer. It shall be Israel, which means 'Prince with God'.» He says, «What I’m going to do is make you a version of yourself that doesn’t have to ask me for the things the old version did because this new version of you will go get it for yourself.»

I don’t know who this is for, but you are in your green light season because when you become Israel, the things you used to ask for, you will go get for yourself. I’m Don Tario, and here’s my question: Jacob didn’t even know what was on the other side of his persistence, which means if he had let go in the middle of the night, he would never have known what he missed. That’s the scary part about settling: you never get to see what you miss. There are things that God said, «Yeah, I wanted to do that for you, ” but you are going to live your whole life not knowing what could have been. That’s the scary part about settling; you don’t get to see what you missed.

So, his wrestling is a metaphor for our wrestling in prayer. It is the principle of persistence that Jesus talks about in Luke 11. When the disciples asked him how to pray, he didn’t just give them a practice of prayer—the Lord’s Prayer—he gave them a principle for prayer. He told a parable and said, „If somebody needs food and they wake up in the middle of the night and go to their neighbor’s house and knock on the door, the neighbor will say, ‘Come back in the morning; I’m asleep! ’“ They may have a relationship, but that relationship isn’t enough to get them to open the door.

The neighbor will say, „No, come back in the morning.“ So, the request isn’t enough to open the door. But Jesus said, „Because of their shameless audacity, because they keep knocking, what a relationship won’t do and what a request won’t do, resilience will.“ He literally teaches them the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11 and then gives them a parable on persistence. It’s his way of saying that this doesn’t work without persistence. He’s saying this doesn’t work if you don’t persist.

You have to pray through. You don’t pray and quit because that’s the equivalent of letting go in the middle of the night. What have you stopped praying for? That’s an area of your life where you’ve decided to settle. When you make a decision to stop praying, you’ve made a decision to settle. So, you’ve got to persist—persist through the passage, persist through panic, persist through pondering, and wrestle when you’re grappling with what you don’t have an explanation for. You’ve got to push through the pain, because the cheat code within the cheat code is persistence.

So, let’s say, „Lord, give us the strength to endure. I pray that you resurrect resilience in your people. I pray for dangerous prayers. I pray this in the name of Jesus. If you receive it, say Amen!“