What Is Supplication?
Persistent prayer doesn't change God. It changes us. Because it takes everything to keep showing up at His throne with the same request day after day, and more faith than you think you have to keep believing He will answer in His time.
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God.” -Philippians 4:6
In Greek, the word “supplication” is “deésis,” meaning a need or entreaty. The prefix deō means “to be in want, lack” (e.g., déomai means praying for a specific, felt need). Deésis ultimately roots back to dḗ (“really”), which likewise implies a felt need that is personal and urgent.
Supplication is the action of asking or begging for something earnestly or humbly. It is a heartfelt petition arising out of a deep personal need. It is sitting in the tension of having a sense of lack, a desperate want. It is imploring God’s aid in some particular matter, without ceasing. It is the action of seeking, asking, praying, entreating, and petitioning God for something you greatly want or need.
This same word is used by the angel with Zacharias, the husband of Elizabeth, when he told the couple that their petition/prayer (“deesis”) for a son had been heard (Luke 1:13).
And there is Hannah (1 Samuel 1). Hannah prayed in a way that only we as women can understand. She prayed for a child until words stopped and there was only a weeping of the soul. Year after year, she prayed until one day she received a promise from a man of God that her prayer was heard, and after that she believed and waited expectantly for the promise to be fulfilled.
There is a widow who petitioned a judge like this once upon a time. You can find her in Luke 18:1-8. Jesus shared her story when He instructed us to “always pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). That woman wouldn’t leave the judge alone until he granted her petition and in response Jesus said, “Shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, through He bears long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:7-8).
In the book of Psalms, David practices supplication often (Psalms 86 and 88), but as I studied this concept, I realized that from the stories recorded in the Bible, women especially seem to go to this place of supplication most often.
It is the mother praying for a wayward child.
A future mama praying for a baby after years of infertility.
A wife praying for the salvation of her husband.
A single girl praying for a husband.
We as women know those prayers so well. The ones that sometimes God takes years to answer, and yet will still pray. We still ask. No matter how often we lose hope or “give up,” in time, we still always come back to the throne of God because we know He is the only one who satisfies - the only one who can fill that gaping hold of need.
There’s a reason prayer warriors are rare - becoming one will humble you and break any concept of independence or self-ability you have. Prayer changes you, until it doesn’t matter if He answers any prayers you pray, because you know He is God, He is good and He is able, so you’ll keep asking. Praying without ceasing, even when He is silent, is a chiseling process. Because a prayer warrior isn’t made overnight.
No, she is made on her knees, with a prayer list a mile long, a mind that believes in Him without wavering, and the tenacity to keep praying every day of her life, no matter how many prayers are checked off as answered.
Because at the end of all her days, she’ll see it wasn’t about the answers anyway - somewhere along the way, she began to look like Him, His desires became her prayers, and her face is radiant because she had come to know the Living God Himself all those hours she spent on her knees in the presence of Yahweh.
Hannah desperately wanted a son, but God wanted her to want Him more than ten sons, and because she prayed, God changed her heart to the point that she willingly gave up the thing she wanted most and prayed for all those years back to God. Elizabeth did the same with John.
Can you imagine? Say, for example, if you were praying for a husband and you made a similar vow, and then God gave you a husband. But a year into the marriage, you obey your vow and send him off to unknown lands into ministry and give him back to the Lord, knowing maybe, at most, you’d see him once a year on holidays? Could you do that? If you asked for a husband for His glory, you’d readily say yes.
But in reality, few of us could probably do that, because we want husbands for our own pleasure and desire. We want the gift more than the gift giver, but prayers of supplication change that. That is how, I believe, Elizabeth and Hannah were able to surrender the thing they wanted most to God.
In John 14:13, Jesus said, “And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” Did you notice that small caveat? Ask for His glory, not your own. Ask of the things that will point people to your God, not to yourself. For we often “ask and do not receive, because [we] ask with wrong motives, so that [we] may spend it on [our] pleasures” (James 4:3).
How many of us can describe our prayers as prayers of supplication? Will the Lord find that kind of faith in us? A faith that keeps praying and believing until it receives an answer from heaven?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Yelena is the founder and editor in chief Tirzah. Yelena works as an attorney in tax and in her spare time, she is working on her first book for unmarried twenty-something women in extended waiting seasons and running Tirzah. She has a passion for pointing young women to Christ, and enjoys reading, writing, traveling, and spending time with her family.