The Effect of Praying without Ceasing

Ever wonder what Paul meant when he said, "Pray continually" (1 Thessalonians 5:17)? Does that mean literally be on your knees praying 24/7? Maybe it just means "pray a lot". Or maybe that's Paul's hyperbolic way of saying "prayer is really important".

I'd like to share with you what God's revealed to me (so far) about this instruction.

"Our prayer lives should be less about a short segment in the morning to "start our day off right" and more about an ongoing, vibrant, open-ended conversation that we have throughout our day with our God - our Heavenly Father."

The past few weeks have been very eventful in a lot of ways, so I got to pray a lot (Hopefully this carries on into uneventful times). That being said, in the process, a lot of what I believed about prayer changed.

This verse really stuck out to me:

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7).

Wow. That is a great verse... These two verses are so densely packed with truth and practice so let's slow down and unpack it together.

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God". Like Paul said elsewhere, "Pray continually". Pray in every situation not because you're anxious, but because you shouldn't be.

The Greek word for "petition" in this verse is deomai which can be translated to "ask", "request" or "beg". This word informs us of what our heart posture should be like: a heart posture of fear for the Person to whom you present your deomai. It adds flavor in the sense that we come to God in humility (the only way we can actually come to God) and lay everything at His feet surrendering control. Your petition is less of: "God, here's what I want. Please help me out", and more of: "God, here's what I have and everything I lack. Please help me to submit to your perfect ways."

Let's catch an interesting nuance too. Verse six presents an interesting rhythm of prayer that we need to practice - "By prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God". I like how the Gideon translation puts it - it makes this distinction more clear: "Pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done."

The rhythm is this: (1) Present your prayer requests and (2) thank God for everything. Yes, prayer and petition are important and permitted (even expected), but let's not forget to thank God for even enabling us to come to him with prayer and petition. Thanks Jesus! The fact that we can even have a conversation with a Holy God should bring us to our knees and leave us in awe and thanksgiving first and foremost.

We need to understand praying is not about us. It's primarly about internalizing God's will into our hearts and minds (Romans 12:2). In the words of Oswald Chambers, "We generally look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical idea of prayer is that God's holiness, purpose, and wise order may be brought about" (13).

Can we even continue any further without looking at the prayer Jesus taught us?

"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us no into temptation but deliver us from evil" (Matthew 6:9-13).

Jesus doesn't start talking about himself until the sixth clause, "Give us this day our daily bread". Prayer should be focused on the will of God taking its place in our hearts and pleading that his "wise order may be brought about".

"And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus". This is the promise. If we pray and give thanks in every situation, presenting our requests to God, then God promises to give us His peace.

What is His peace? One of my favourite lines from Jesus is, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid" (John 14:27).

"I do not give to you as the world gives"? What? What is this Peace that Jesus is talking about?

Let me present you with what I believe to be a biblical definition of peace: Peace is the ability to humbly and willingly submit to the will of God because you are genuinely convinced that it is good and perfect. The phrase "genuinely convinced" hopefully doesn't create the notion of being 'deceived' into submitting to the will of God, but rather emphasizes this idea: That you strongly believe the truth that God's will is good.

Question. When are we not at peace?

When we don't like what's going on in our lives.

When we feel like we have no control of the situation.

When, even if we don't want to admit, we don't agree with God and his plan.

This is my point: Constant prayer gives us real Peace. That is, constant prayer in the rhythm described in Philippians 4:6 and real Peace as I defined earlier. It changes our heart and renews our mind so that we become more and more accepting of God's will for us! It transcends our skewed and selfish understanding - what we think is the right way to do things or our confusion and anxiety in our messy situations - and replaces it with Jesus' Peace that assures us that God's will is better and God's will is good!

I think of the time when Jesus is desparately praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before he is taken up to die. The Son of Man is on his face, his heart recklessly beating in his chest, blood and sweat dripping from his face, fist pounding on the ground as he cries out to His Father. The Son of Man is, in his humanness, anxious and scared. The Gospels don't hide that information from us - Jesus is going through a lot of emotional turmoil here.

In three intense stages of prayer, we are shown how prayer "morphs Jesus' heart" into complete submission to God's plan. His prayer moves from "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39) to "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done" (26:42). Then after praying like this, we see a completely determined and steadfast Jesus emerge who says "Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" (26:53-54). It is then that Jesus has embodied the genuine and complete Peace of God.

There is so much more to say about prayer: How Jesus practiced prayer during his lifetime, how other characters in the Bible prayed, how God answers prayers, etc., but for the sake of your attention span, I will save it for later. If anything, take away this:

Pray without ceasing so that you can (1) better know the character of God and (2) believe in his good and perfect will.

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Recommended Reading:

• Michael S. Lundy, Fill your heavy heart with heaven

• Oswald Chambers, If You Will Ask

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