I just had a "duh" moment. I've always heard that because we are to pray in faith, when we pray we should then forget it. I've also heard about the importance of persistent prayer. These two ideas seemed to contradict each other. I knew the contradiction came through the interpretation of man and not in God's word, but I still hadn't worked it out for myself. Anyway, I decided to start studying next week's Sunday school lesson. Yes, I'm actually studying a week early. I admit I didn't study for this morning's lesson, plus I was someone distracted this morning (teenage drama, husband drama, PMS/peri-menopausal drama, you name the drama, this mama had it) so not only did I not get everything I should have out of a really good lesson, I couldn't answer the question my teacher asked. So anyway, I'm reading about the Gentile woman who keeps asking Jesus, who ignored her at first, to heal her daughter. I realized I have read examples of persistent prayer in the Bible. But I have not read of cases of "okay, I prayed so now I'm done because to pray again would show a lack of faith" prayers in the Bible. That's because PERSISTENT PRAYER is FAITH. This woman didn't turn away and decide this wasn't the answer when Jesus didn't answer her at first. She continued to pray because she did have faith. Maybe this seems obvious to everyone else, but it's something that I couldn't reconcile because I'd heard someone in spiritual authority over me years ago say something that gave me the impression that praying continually over the same matter showed a lack of faith. So it was really neat for me tonight when it finally became clear to me.