The shameless audacity – of two men called John!

John always prayed for his unbelieving son – regardless of what people thought. His prayers involved tears, and his voice would tremble as he implored God to intervene. Yet sometimes I could detect something of an unspoken “tut” in the prayer meeting.

For some people such persistence in prayer showed a lack of trust in the Lord, while for others such demonstrations of emotion were unseemly, and certainly slightly awkward for us British!

Yet, I suspect John’s relentless hammering on the doors of heaven for the lost was closer to the kind of prayer that Jesus taught, than some of the more arid prayer meetings I have been part of.