Dogged Praying

The Lord knows that my faith weakens often in offering a particular ongoing prayer request. So recently He sent me help to get on my knees and beg anew. Perhaps it may help you.

It came from reading Sean Michael Lucas' biography on Robert Dabney. From a sermon Dabney preached in February 1849 on prevalent prayer, he had a section for parents whose children were "grievously vexed with sensual and devilish lusts." Note how Dabney strings together encounters of the desperate with the Savior to give this urging in praying:

Go to him. Say, have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David. Does he answer you not a word? "Cry after him." Does he seem to neglect you? Fall at his feet and worship him and cry, "Lord help me." Does he tell you, "It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs?" Does he say you are unworthy? "Truth, Lord." You have set this child so bad an example that you have no right to expect anything but its ruin? "Truth, Lord." Your prayers are unworthy in motive and kind? "Truth, Lord." Admit all, and tell that such is the glory of the Savior's righteousness, the vilest are so suitable objects of the mercy it purchases as any. "I am a dog, but it was just for dogs, that the crumbs of pardoning mercy are made." Therefore, I ask as a dog.

Yes, I do.