Ever feel like your prayers aren’t working? In this honest exploration of prayer, Scott Savage shares how God responds to persistence, not perfection. Through powerful stories and Biblical insights, discover why adversity might be a gift, how to maintain a spiritual hunger during success, and the surprising truth about what God collects. This 4-day plan will renew your passion for prayer and strengthen your faith.
Scott Savage
Day 1
Scriptures: Psalms 63:1, Revelation 5:8
Americans like me love Australian accents. Whether it’s a voice actor reading an audiobook, or someone sitting next to us at a restaurant, something is captivating about that accent. I grew up in an area of the country that left me with no distinct accent, so I’ve always admired people with Aussie accents.
One of those Aussies is Jon Tyson, a pastor who came to Christ at age 17 during a revival in Australia. Jon now leads a church in New York City. I heard Jon share about his family’s fascinating journey earlier this year. Captured by the phenomenon of revivals throughout history, Jon took his family on what he called the “Tyson Family Revival Tour.” They visited 17 or 18 places where the Holy Spirit had moved significantly over the last centuries.
After returning from studying these revivals, one of Jon’s friends asked him, “Did you figure out the secret? What was the common thread?” Jon leaned close and whispered, “God comes where He’s wanted.”
Revival wasn’t about denomination, wealth, or culture. People’s deep hunger for His presence was the one common factor when God showed up powerfully in different places, centuries, and continents.
This truth grabbed hold of my heart, and wouldn’t let go. I felt God compelling me to pause my preaching, study, and focus on prayer. Prayer is one way we say, “God, we want You here.”
When King David wrote Psalm 63, he expressed the same desperate hunger for God: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” David’s prayer wasn’t just words on a page—it was a cry of longing for God’s presence.
In Revelation 5:8, we glimpse how God views our prayers. The text describes our prayers as golden bowls of incense, precious and fragrant before His throne. Every time we pray, we tell God, “We want You here – in this circumstance, in this relationship, in this struggle, in our lives.”
My deepest desire for you as you read this plan is not just that you hunger for God while reading my words. I want you to develop an increasing hunger and passion for His presence that grows stronger daily. If God truly comes where He’s wanted, shouldn’t we continually express our desire for Him?
Throughout this plan, we’ll explore how to cultivate and maintain our hunger for God’s presence through prayer. We’ll examine what can awaken our spiritual appetite and what might dull it. Most importantly, we’ll discover how to persist in prayer even when answers seem delayed.
Tomorrow, we’ll explore a surprising truth about adversity that I didn’t expect when studying prayer.
I’m excited to share it with you!
Day 2
Scripture: Psalms 63:1-5
I didn’t see this insight coming, but it’s undeniable. As a pastor, I’ve noticed a pattern for nearly two decades – people felt closest to God during their most challenging moments.
King David wrote one of the most passionate declarations of love for God from an unexpected place—the wilderness. Psalm 63 begins with the heading, “A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah.” The context is heartbreaking. One of David’s sons led a coup against him, forcing David to flee Jerusalem to protect his life.
David writes from this place of pain, “God, you are my God. I eagerly seek you. I thirst for you and my body faints for you. In a land that is dry and desolate and without water.” Notice that David’s most profound expression of hunger for God didn’t come from his throne room but from the desert.
The most powerful line in this psalm stopped me in my tracks: “Your faithful love is better than life.” As I prepared to preach this passage, I had to ask myself an uncomfortable question: “Scott, do you believe that? Is God’s love truly better than life itself?”
I think I’m hungry for God’s presence, but honestly, I’m not sure I always fully believe those words. There have been seasons when I could say them with complete conviction, usually during adversity.
Adversity comes to all of us in different forms.
- A health crisis
- A struggling marriage
- A financial hardship
- The grief of losing someone we love
During these seasons, our hunger for God often grows. We pray more passionately, are more desperate for Him, and depend more on Him. We genuinely believe His love is better than life because we know His love is the only way through our pain.
Then, the diagnosis turns positive. The marriage strengthens, financial stability returns, and we emerge from the fog of grief. Our prayers begin to change, and our hunger diminishes. We still love God, but that desperate thirst? It’s not quite the same.
This thought may sound ridiculous, but adversity can be an unexpected gift. No, we don’t want bankruptcy. We don’t want to sit in a marriage counselor’s office with our relationship hanging by a thread. We don’t want to receive difficult news from a doctor. We don’t want to plan funerals. But how many of us would admit that these were the times we felt closest to God?
Here’s the challenge: Can we maintain our hunger for God during the good times? Or does it require hardship to drive us to our knees? If you’re in adversity right now, allow it to awaken your hunger for God. And if you’re in a season of success – beware! Guard against allowing your appetite to be satisfied by anything other than God. Don’t let success dull your desire for His presence.
Tomorrow, I’ll share a powerful truth about prayer that Jesus taught—one that completely changed how I approach God when I’m hungry for His presence. I pray it helps you sustain your hunger for God in good times and bad.
Day 3
Scripture: Matthew 7:7-11
Have you noticed how many of our favorite things have an “instant” option? Instant coffee, instant messaging, instant delivery—we love everything fast and easy.
A couple of years ago, my family was preparing for Halloween. This holiday is a big deal in our neighborhood—anywhere from 300 to 800 kids come to our home! It’s our best chance to meet our neighbors and build relationships all year, so we moved our fire pit to the front yard, set out candy, and made it a whole event.
One year, we bought instant fire logs while trying to simplify things. The marketing was perfect: “Fast, easy, and clean!” And it worked… sort of. The logs lit quickly with minimal smoke. But there were problems. The fire barely gave off any heat, and the chemical smell was so intense my wife had a nauseous reaction to it.
The following year, we went back to building a regular fire. Yes, it took more work, and yes, it produced more smoke. But when the temperature dropped, those real logs provided the warmth we needed. Our decision failed to deliver the experience we wanted.
This experience taught me something profound about prayer. Many of us approach prayer like an instant fire log – we want it fast, easy, and clean. But that’s not how Jesus taught us to pray.
See Jesus’ famous words in Matthew 7: “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.” We often read these words as one-time actions. Ask once. Seek once. Knock once. Then, when nothing happens, we think, “Well, I did my part!”
But here’s what I discovered: these words indicate continuous action in the original language. The New Living Translation captures this perfectly: “Keep on asking… keep on seeking… keep on knocking.” Jesus never separates prayer from perseverance. The kind of prayer He teaches isn’t a one-off request—it’s a continuous, persevering action.
As Albert Haas wisely noted, “There’s no spiritual microwave oven you can put yourself in and come out 60 seconds later as a saint. You must be willing to jump into the crockpot called your life and simmer for a lifetime.”
We live in a microwave culture and try to follow a crockpot God. And sometimes, even a crockpot is too fast for God’s timing!
This continuous prayer Jesus describes requires persistence in asking AND patience in waiting.
Many of us struggle with both. We’re more like my kids, who hate being bored. We give up when we have to wait on God. Our perseverance muscles are weak. We stop praying because we get impatient or distracted.
But Jesus promises that the work is worth it. He says, “If you, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” Notice that He doesn’t say when—He only promises that our persistent prayers matter to a perfect Father.
Tomorrow, on the final day of this plan, I’ll share the most encouraging truth I’ve discovered about persistence in prayer. It completely changed how I view those times when God seemed silent.
Day 4
Scriptures: Luke 18:1-8, Revelation 5:8, Psalms 56:8
Sometimes, the most difficult prayers are the ones we’ve prayed for years. You know, the ones – the same prayer you prayed this year that you also prayed last year. And the year before. And the year before that. The prayer that makes your knuckles bloody from knocking so long.
In Luke 18, Jesus tells a fascinating story about persistence in prayer. This story is unique because Jesus gives us the meaning before he tells the parable: “He told them a parable on the need to pray always and not give up.”
The story involves an unjust judge who “didn’t fear God or respect people” and a persistent widow seeking justice. This widow kept coming to the judge until he finally said, “Even though I don’t fear God or respect people because this widow keeps pestering me, I will give her justice so she doesn’t wear me out!”
Here’s Jesus’ point: If an evil judge eventually does what’s right because someone is persistent, how much more will God – who is not evil but perfectly good – respond to our persistent prayers?
Let’s be honest. It’s tempting to give up when you’ve prayed the same prayer for years with no apparent answer. Life breaks our hearts, forcing us to wrestle with cynicism and confusion.
In those moments, the questions flood in:
- “Did I pray wrong?”
- “Do you not love me enough, God?”
- “Are you actually a good Father?”
In those moments, prayer invites us to trust God’s character when everything in us wants to grasp control. Sometimes, faithfulness isn’t running a marathon—it’s saying, “I’ll pray one more time.” “I’ll hold on for one more day.” “I can do today. I don’t know about tomorrow, but it’s not tomorrow yet.”
If you’re weary and brokenhearted in prayer today, I have an encouraging truth: God is a collector.
We all collect different things. Some people collect Christmas decorations. Others collect coffee mugs. (I collect sneakers!) But God? He collects two precious things.
In Revelation 5:8, we read that He collects our prayers like precious incense in golden bowls before His throne. In Psalm 56:8, David tells us that God collects our tears in His bottle and records them in His book.
Think about this: Not a single prayer or tear you’ve shed has been lost on God. He hasn’t misplaced one in a move. He has collected every prayer and tear because He sees it all, hears it all, and knows it all.
When you pray like that determined widow, the enemy will whisper that God doesn’t care. But Revelation 5 and Psalm 56 remind us that God cares more than we could imagine.
Prayer in these moments becomes our way of saying, “God, I want You here. You may not be showing up or expressing Your power yet like I want, but I will never stop reminding You that I want You here.”
Remember what we learned on Day 1? God comes where He’s wanted. So keep praying, persisting, and sharing your prayers and tears with God for His bottles and books. Your persistent prayers matter deeply to a Father who cares enough to keep every single one.