What's Your Daily Heart-Cry?

Dick LaFountain

Years ago I read a devotional on prayer by Harry Emerson Fosdick. Something he said impacted me for many years. He said “Prayer is dominant desire.” That is so true.

True prayer is not just asking God for things, answers, healing, provisions, or guidance. True prayer isn’t a passing fancy or a momentary wish. True prayer is dominant desire. Real prayer before God is a repeated heart-cry. It’s a yearning after God that exceeds all other wants and wishes.

Jesus warned us about prayers that are vain repetitions in Matthew 6. But He also told us the story of the desperate woman who pestered her master day after day with the urgent desire of her heart. That’s was her heart-cry. It was desperate. It was tenacious and daily. That is not a vain repetition; that’s desperation.

The Greek word here is “krazo.” It is an onomatopoeic word, that is, a word that describes a noise. Literally it is the noise that a crow or raven makes. It is that incessant chant of “caw, caw, caw.”

There are several times krazo is used in the New Testament of people who were desperate for theLord’s help. The two blind men on the road side cried out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David” (Matthew 9:27). The Canaanite woman who kept shouting after Jesus, “Jesus, have mercy on my daughter” (Matthew 15:23). The father of a demonized boy who cried out, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). It is what Jesus cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 24:44).

God loves to be pestered.

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The prayer of Jabez was a heart-cry. It was a life-long crying out for God’s blessing.

“Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm (evil) so that I will be free from pain.’ And God granted his request” (1 Chronicles 4:10).

Jabez was known for that daily prayer, so much so that his children and children’s children remembered it well. It was his daily heart-cry.

What is your daily heart-cry?

In 1947 Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, was working as an evangelist for a ministry called Youth for Christ in China. There he met a battered and abandoned little girl. Pierce emptied his pockets of his last five dollars and agreed to send the same amount each month to provide for her care. He realized it was just a drop in the bucket as he encountered thousands upon thousands of orphans in his travels. Soon afterward he scribbled this prayer on the fly leaf of his Bible.

“Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”

Some years ago I became obsessed with my own heart-cry. I realized my prayer life was pathetic. As I read the scriptures I was captivated by the prayer disciplines and habits of Jesus. I wanted to pray like that. So, I began to cry out to God daily, “Lord, teach me to pray like Jesus prayed.”

It became my daily heart-cry. God heard and began to teach me, not just principles of prayer, but how to pray like Jesus and to spend intimate time with God every day. Prayer became a delight. That eventually led me to preach and teach a series on intimacy and intercession. I prepared a three-fold brochure that I passed out to my congregation. Twenty-five years later, one of my praying saints pulled that brochure from her Bible and said, “Pastor, I’m still praying those 12 steps. It has transformed my prayer life!”

That prayer continued to be my heart-cry throughout the remainder of my pastoral ministry. Upon retirement it gave birth to my first book, Spending Time Alone with God. Since then I have travelled extensively teaching and preaching on learning to pray like Jesus. I’m still praying that heart-impassioned prayer.

As pastors each of us should have a heart-cry that we pour out to God every day. It should become a heavenly obsession. It should be the persistent cawing of the hungry crow. It should become the ONE THING we desire of the Lord.

What is your daily heart-cry?

About the Pastor:

Rev. Richard LaFountain was a missionary to Brazil, and a longtime pastor in the Christian & Missionary Alliance. In his "retirement" Dick loves to help pastors, church leaders and local congregations discover the power of the presence of God through an intimate walk with Christ in disciplined daily prayer. Dick's website prayertoday.org is a treasure trove of prayer guides, prayer tips and other resources.