Fixed Determination

Written by  Virginia Brandt Berg

For years I nearly always closed my Meditation Moments radio show with the words “God is still on the throne, and prayer changes things!” Someone once wrote in and said, “I don’t find those words in the Bible.”

No, they’re not in the Bible, but they’re certainly scriptural and express an important truth.

If prayer does change things, then let’s get busy praying and changing the things that need changing. Just think what could happen if you really believed that! Jesus said, “If you can believe, all things are possible.”1

A common expression among some Christians is “praying through.”

The Bible is full of accounts of those who prayed through, particularly King David in the book of Psalms. I get a thrill in my soul whenever David emerges from prayer and comes out with a bold expression of assurance: “The Lord has heard my prayer!”

At the beginning of one psalm, when David began to pray, he was almost in despair over some great trouble, but it wasn’t long before he came away declaring, “Blessed be the Lord, because He has heard the voice of my supplications! My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices.”2

Another time David was overwhelmed with discouragement, but he poured out his heart to the Lord and came away with the sweet assurance: “The Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord will receive my prayer.”3 And another time David comes away from prayer with the words, “Certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer.”4

That assurance became so fixed in David’s heart and mind that he began one psalm with the words, “I love the Lord, because He has heard my voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live.”5

Years ago I was injured in a terrible accident that left me a total invalid, paralyzed from the waist down, and I was mostly confined to bed for the next five years. I also had life-threatening heart and lung problems, and suffered various other side effects from numerous unsuccessful operations to try to restore the use of my legs. It was this fixed determination—this praying through—that brought the fullness of faith that I needed, and the result was that I was miraculously and completely healed.

Through Jesus Christ you too can have your prayers answered just as wonderfully. Hold on to His promises. “If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.”6 “Whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.”7

Are you willing to meet this condition, this fixed determination, or will you let delays discourage you and cause you to give up? Will you allow obstacles to block your way to victory? Will you let others’ doubts frustrate and foil your faith? There are many ways of meeting a crisis, but only one way guarantees victory, and that is to pray straight through it.

The Bible says, “Let us not grow weary while doing good”—in this case, praying—“for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”8

May your faith be strengthened as you think of King David and others in the Bible who through this fixed determination brought down the walls of Jericho, marched through the Red Sea on dry ground, and wrought many other miracles.9

Do you want your prayers answered badly enough to keep praying until God assures you He’s going to answer? Then you won’t be disappointed, because God is still on the throne, and prayer does change things.

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Virginia Brandt Berg (1886-1968) was a well-known American evangelist, and one of the first radio evangelists in America.

Virginia Brandt Berg's Meditation Moments radio programs in text and audio files. (She's my grandmother in the Lord.)



1. Mark 9:23
2. Psalm 28:6–7
3. Psalm 6:8–9
4. Psalm 66:19
5. Psalm 116:1–2
6. John 14:14
7. John 16:23
8. Galatians 6:9
9. See Hebrews chapter 11.