Video Transcript: Pray Without Ceasing

The Bible says, “To pray without ceasing.” But for a lot of us it’s a bigger question, “How can I get started praying?” or “How can I pray even a little bit?” Many of us struggle just to pray five minutes a day. The average pastor prays less than seven minutes a day. And so the thought of prayer without ceasing seems a little bit ridiculous. How can we possibly be expected to pray all day, every day? What’s the use of being told to never stop praying when we’re still wondering how to get started? What is it mean to pray without ceasing? Besides, how can I get anything done during the day if I’m supposed to be praying all the time?

Well, there’s a number of ways to think about this. One is simply that praying without ceasing probably has as its main meaning don’t quit praying, don’t give up on prayer. It certainly doesn’t mean that you’re breathing a conscious word of prayer every moment of every day. We have a lot of other things that we have to do. But it means at least a couple of things. One means that you never give up on prayer, that prayer is something you keep coming back to. And the other thing that I believe it does mean is that a spirit of prayer accompanies us throughout the day and that more and more we live our lives simply in conversation with our Father.

Have you ever been walking around in the store and seeing people just talking to themselves? I know for a while there I would really be astounded by that and think, “What is that weirdo doing?” This was in kind of the early days of those little phones that people could just clip in their ear. It looked like they’re just talking to themselves but actually they were in conversation with somebody else while they were walking around the store and shopping and picking up things. If you have a little hands-free phone attachment, you can do an awful lot of things right while you’re having a conversation.

Prayer without ceasing is a little bit like that. Go through life with God in your ear and with the ability to talk to God at all times. If you had the direct cell phone number of a very powerful and rich person, you would be mighty glad to have it and you would want to use it and to have conversation with him as well as seek help from him. So, make a habit of talking to God about everything because he gives us that access, that little hands-free phone that we can just clip right on and speak to him whenever and wherever.

I remember my daughter would like to do things around the house while she was talking with somebody on the phone. So she would just take the phone and put it on speaker phone and then she’d go out baking her goodies or writing addresses for the wedding invitations that she was sending out or talking with me while she was talking with somebody else on the phone or whatever else she was doing. She just go yakety yak yak yak with her friend on that speaker phone while she was doing everything else. Prayer without ceasing is a little bit like that, we’re in constant conversation with God in our minds even while we’re in the midst of a whole lot of other things.

In the scripture, prayer without ceasing is taught again and again and again. Scripture says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing.” “Continue steadfastly in prayer.” “In everything by prayer.” “Be constant in prayer.” “Praying at all times in the Spirit.” Well, if something is said once in the Bible we should pay some attention to it. When it’s said at least five times and I could probably give many more examples, then we really have to heed these continual calls to prayer. Let’s just look at each of these real quickly in its context.

“Rejoice always; pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit.” So it comes in a cluster of calls from God to keep rejoicing, to keep giving thanks, and to not squelch and quench and put out the Spirit of God. And praying without ceasing is key in all of that. “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it.” That means being aware and alert of possible enemy attacks and also being thankful in it all the time.

“In everything by prayer. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, “Rejoice!” Let your reasonableness or your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

What a tremendous statement. The peace of God rejoicing constantly and what is at the heart of that? A constant attitude of prayer. “Be constant in prayer.” “You received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba, Father.” The Spirit is always prompting us to cry out to our daddy and, likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. But the Spirit, himself, intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So, prayer without ceasing might sometimes just include the groans of the Spirit and just the desires that God lays on our heart without even knowing how to put them into words. “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” It’s very hard to keep on rejoicing and to keep on being patient when things are tough unless we’re also constant in prayer.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplications. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance making supplication for all the saints. We’re up against terrible enemies and we have the ability to put on the armor of God that the Lord gives us to stand against the devil and we do that praying at all times in the Spirit. As one old hymn put it, “Put on the Gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer.” Every piece of God’s armor must be put on with prayer.

So, why pray without stopping? Let’s us look at four reasons. One reason to pray without stopping is you never stop needing help. And if you never stop needing help, then never stop praying for help. Prayer brings God’s pardon when the help you need is forgiveness for sins you’ve committed. Prayer brings God’s provision when the help you need is simply material supply or financial help or health or whatever it is that you need or whether it’s provision for your spirit. “He restores my soul.” But he does that in response to prayer. We need God’s peace. The peace of God that surpasses understanding comes as we pray to him when we never stop needing his help.

Secondly, the demons never stop attacking. And if they’re never going to stop attacking, then let’s never stop praying. Praying brings God’s intelligence, his communications. We’re in touch with his knowledge of what the demons are up to when we’re in the Spirit of prayer. We may have our own notions about how to deal with it, but when we pray for God and his wisdom and his strength, then God’s vast intelligence capacities, his great spy network, so to speak, can be brought to bear on and his fire power can come into our situation.

We need the air force to come in and help us when we’re facing attacks on the ground. Maybe you’ve seen the film Saving Private Ryan with many of its terrible and graphic scenes of battle and fighting during World War II. I remember one scene near the end of the film, where the captain is facing a tank coming straight at him. And the captain is wounded and there’s nothing he can do to stop this tank. All he has is his pistol, his little old pistol with a few bullets left in it. And so he fires at the tank and he fires again and the tank keeps rolling and he fires again and all of a sudden that tank just explodes!

And he looks at his pistol and then he hears the drone of a plane come roaring over that they just dropped the bomb on that tank. We need that kind of fire power. Our little pistols aren’t going to handle demon attacks all by themselves. We need power from the air, power from on high. The demons never stopped attacking, we never stopped needing God’s fire power and therefore we need to keep on praying, “Deliver us from the evil one.”

God never stops being wonderful. That’s another great reason to never stop praying. If God never stops being wonderful, then we want to know him better and savor him and seek him and thank him. Some of the songs have such a beautiful expression of this. Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul thirst for you, O God.” Or Psalm 63, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you.” God never stops being wonderful. So let’s never stop seeking him and praising him and thanking Jesus for who He is.

And the fourth reason never to stop praying is that the Spirit who lives in you, if you’re a believer, the Spirit never stops prompting. And the only way to stop praying and to get out of the spirit and attitude of prayer is to quench him. So join the Spirit in his prayer. Don’t stifle him or try to put him out. When we’re not praying, we’re ignoring the Holy Spirit inside us who is nudging us to cry “Abba” to our Father and to communicate with Jesus at the right hand of God.

And when we hold on to anger, when we refused to forgive rather than praying and saying, “Lord, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” well, we grieved the Holy Spirit. When we ignore promptings, we quench the Holy Spirit. Prayer means always being alert for the presence of the Spirit and being constantly drawing upon him and upon his help and having him turn our attention towards Jesus and towards the Father.

What are some walls that blocked prayer? Well, let’s look at it again in terms of our reasons for praying. You never stop needing help. So, why wouldn’t you pray? Well, sometimes you won’t pray because you don’t know how badly you need the help. You feel self-reliant. You can handle your own problems. You can deal with them and you don’t need the Lord. You might not say that when you’re a Christian but you can really have that kind of mentality.

We so quickly forget what Jesus said. Jesus said, “Without me, you can do—what? Nothing! Without me, you can do nothing!” He says, “You need to abide in me in order to have my power and my fruit in your life.” And so self reliance, the notion that you are just going to try it on your own and do your best is a thing that stifles prayer. By the way, for people who are involved in ministry, that’s an occupational hazard. You get so busy. You got this. You got that person to see. You’ve got a sermon to work on. You’ve got other things to do and you’ve got to do it. And you got to do it now! Yeah. Uh-huh. And you do it all without the hand of God on it? And half of it blows up on your face and the other half burns you out. That’s what happens to prayer-less ministry.

And another reason why we have walls on prayer is simply unbelief. We hear these calls to prayer in the Bible but really aren’t so sure that prayer has that kind of life-changing power either upon us or in the things we put our hands into. And a major reason for not praying is unbelief. Unbelief in the power of God and in the love of God to answer prayer and to really make things happen.

Well, another reason for praying is that the demons never stopped attacking. So what walls keep us from praying? What is this cluelessness? A lot of people are just silly. They don’t realize that they are surrounded by enemies, that these enemies are coming, that they have been around for centuries. That they are out to destroy people and if they can’t destroy us forever they are, at least, going to try to rob us of our joy and our effectiveness in the Lord’s cause. And we don’t radio for help. We don’t call on the Air Force because we don’t even know we’re under attack. So, cluelessness is just an ignorance about spiritual warfare can be one cause of prayerlessness.

And another is perhaps softness. We’re wimps and the demons maybe attacking but part of their attack is the kind that leaves us to our wimpiness and our softness instead of arousing us. And so we need to be aware of the attacks of becoming calm in the middle of a war and sleepy in the middle of a war. Thinking that all is calm when we’re actually in the middle of a war is a wall that blocks desperation prayers in light of how serious our situation is.

A third thing is that God never stops being wonderful but the walls that keep us from realizing that and from praising Him for his wonders and from seeking Him to drink in more and more of his wonders and to savor Him, a couple of the big walls are worldliness and coldness. Worldliness is falling in love with all sorts of other things so that our hearts are divided. We cannot love the world and love God whole heartedly at the same time. You remember Jesus’ Parable of the Soils where the riches and pleasures and cares of this world are like thorns that just choked out the word. And they can also choke out prayer because we desire those things more than we desire God.

A second wall to basking in the wonder of God in times of prayer is just the coldness of our hearts. We’ve lost our first love as Jesus put it in the book of Revelation. And when we sense that our prayer life is shriveling, we need to be aware of this coldness that can come and grip our hearts and snuff out that flame of the Spirit. Now, the Spirit will always be there if we’re believer at all. But he can be grieved. He can be quenched and we can become very, very cold inside and God starts seeming not so wonderful to us after all. And that’s a wall that blocks prayer. If you don’t delight in God, you’re not going to see the point in spending time in conversation with Him and just enjoying his presence and offering yourself to Him.

And the Spirit never stops prompting but a couple of things that keep us from being responsive to his prompting is busyness and shallowness. We just got so much to do and we just fill our lives with our duties and also with our entertainments. And we get up in the morning and the first thing we have to do is, well, is prayer is the first thing we have to do? No! We had something else to do earlier. We don’t have time for that! Uh-huh. Well, the Spirit was prompting you to pray and start your day with him but you thought you were too busy.

And another thing is just the shallowness of much Christianity. We think that if we know a few correct doctrines and if we don’t kick the dog too hard and we’re semi-nice to the people around us, we’re pretty good Christians. Dream on! One of the great measures of your spiritual health and vigor is your prayer life. And this is a very humbling fact. I know for me and I know for many others that our prayer life is very, very far from where it ought to be and the shallowness of our prayer life and of our spirituality, our willingness to have some surface things right without having a deep part connection with God from day to day is a wall that can really block prayer. Don’t be satisfied to stay in the shallows. Dive into the deep and swim in the reality and the joy and the greatness of God.

What are occasions for prayer then? Well, let’s just look at it again in terms of the outline we’ve been following. You never stop needing help so pray every time you want something. Okay? When you want something, talk to God about it. He already knows your heart anyway. You might as well tell Him about it. And if it’s something you really shouldn’t want, well then talk to God about it. And if it’s something you’re embarrassed to talk to God about maybe you start have to check whether you really ought to be wanting it. So pray every time you want something.

The demons never stop attacking so pray every time you see evil advancing and even when you don’t see it, realize it’s there and pray against it. God never stopped being wonderful so pray to Him every time you taste some joy. Just delight in Him and keep on praying to Him about those things. The Spirit never stops prompting so keep God in your ear. Just keep that little hands-free phone there all the time where you’re listening for him and where you’re talking to him. Discuss everything with your friend, wherever you go, whatever you do.

Charles Hodge, a great theologian from the 1800’s, remembered back to his childhood and he said, “As far back as I can remember, I have the habit of thanking God for everything I received and asking him for anything I wanted. If I lost a book or any of my play things, I prayed that I might find it. I prayed walking along the streets, in school, and out of school, whether playing or studying. It seemed natural. I thought of God as an everywhere present being full of kindness and love; who would not be offended if children talked to him.” What a great attitude. We may think, “Oh, some things are not important enough to pray about.” If you have the attitude of prayer without ceasing, then you talk to God about everything that’s on your mind and everything that you’re involved in.

Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive.” Now that is above all true of asking when we know it’s in line with God’s will, but meanwhile wherever we deal with things in life, we need to ask that God may bring us his answer and his blessing. When we need to be changed on the inside, let it be done first of all through prayer and through conversation and experience of God’s presence. When we’re entering into marriage or when we are already married and seeking to be faithful and to be a good spouse, pray for the one you love so much. And keep constantly in conversation with God and then in conversation with your spouse and spend times in prayer together, as husband and wife, seeking God’s favor and enjoying God’s presence in your marriage.

Parenting by prayer. Don’t just read the manuals on parenting and study on how to be a good parent. That may be fine. But pray for your kids because the greatest transformations in your children’s lives are not the things you’re going to be able to do directly. There are things you should do in obedience to God but God, himself, has to do wonderful things in their hearts and in their lives, and so parenting by prayer is very vital.

Work by prayer. You’ve got jobs to do, things you have to accomplish. And if God’s hand is in it and upon it, it will bring great fruit. “Establish the work of our hands for us.” That’s a great prayer in the Bible and one we can be praying everyday throughout the day. “Lord, establish this thing that I’m doing right now and make it worthwhile and pay off for your kingdom.”

Finance by prayer. We shouldn’t love money. We shouldn’t set our hearts on money. But as the scripture says, “Your Father knows you need these things, so seek first the kingdom of God.” And let God worry about the other stuff but you can sure talk to God about your finances and about the situations that you face.

Conflict by prayer. That’s very important. Jesus teaches us to pray for our enemies. He also warns husband and wife to not be bitter towards each other because that can hinder our prayers. It’s very hard to stay in conflict with somebody when you’re praying for them and praying with them. As you come in God’s presence together and pray together then those people whom you’ve kind of in conflict with or even almost been an enemy even it happens to be your spouse or a neighbor or a friend but you’ve kind of become enemies, many conflicts will vanish in the face of prayer.

Politics by prayer. The Bible teaches us to pray for rulers and for those who are in authority over us. We can get out there on our crusades and we can get out there trying to change the world and change the political system and get our candidates elected. And that maybe fine in its own measure. But the Bible commands us to pray for those who are in authority. And it’s a shame if Christians are known only as the grumps who don’t like what the government is doing rather than as those people of prayer who are constantly upholding our rulers by our prayers.

The church by all means pray for your congregation. If you’re a leader in a congregation, if you’re involved in a congregation pray for your fellow leaders. Pray for others in the congregation. Pray that God will be upon it, not just that the church will be doing a bunch of busy work or a bunch of programs that come to nothing but that the presence of God, himself, will infuse everything you do.

Missions by prayer. Be praying for the unsaved every day, morning and evening, when we have our family devotions, after breakfast and after supper. One part we require in prayer, our kids take turns praying or we as adults, we always pray for somebody in our neighborhood, one of our neighbors. And we always pray for one of the missionaries whom our church supports. Just get a habit of praying for the unsaved and praying for those who are involved in mission.

And waiting by prayer. Hey, it gets old standing in line or getting stuck in traffic and you can get impatient. You can get grumpy or you can say, “Hey, God is in charge of all things. He put this pause in my day. What am I going to do with this pause? Gripe or pray?” And you get the idea. There are an awful lot of occasions where we can be praying. “Ask and you will receive.”

And as we pray, not just ask, but give thanks and give praise. Here’s a few tips. Pray with your eyes open. Now that doesn’t mean you always have to keep your eyes open. It’s very often good to pray with your eyes shut when you’re in your special time of prayer by yourself. But when I say pray with your eyes open, I mean notice, pay attention. Don’t overlook every good gift from God. When you pray, thank God for the good things he is sending into your life. Pray with your feelings honest. Sometimes you’re not feeling so happy or so thankful. Well, bring God your complaints and thank him for listening even on such occasions. And when you have joy, obviously bring it to him with the spirit of joy and gratitude.

Pray with your heart warm. Practice the presence of God. Keep reminding yourself, “My God is with me. In fact, his Holy Spirit is in me and my Lord Jesus walks with me all the time throughout my life. And I want to more and more train my mind and my heart to be aware of him and to rejoice in him always.” And pray with your mind clear because sometimes it’s hard to pray if things are going against us but when you have your mind clear, you set your heart and your mind on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

And you focus your mind on the things that last forever. And then even amid your troubles, your mind stays clear because you know that you have reason to rejoice in eternal life, whatever might come at you in this. That empowers you to give thanks in all circumstances not just when things have been going well for you lately.

Thanks should be a way of life. Clement of Alexandria who lived only a short time after our Lord Jesus Christ Himself said, “Not in a specified time or selected temple or on certain festivals or days but during one’s entire life the Christian in every place acknowledges his gratitude for the knowledge of the way to live.” We cultivate the fields praising. We sail the seas hymning. Thanks and praise as a way of life not just something you do now and then in church.

Paul Miller has written a good book, A Praying Life. And in that book he says, “If God is sovereign, then He is in control of all the details of my life. If God is loving, then He’s going to be shaping the details of my life for my good. If God is all-wise, then He’s not going to do everything I want because I don’t know what I need. If he’s patient, then He’s going to take time to do all this.” And so a praying life is one that realizes that we don’t always get everything instantly but still trust that God is in control. That he is loving, wise and patient and accomplishing his purposes and answering our prayers in a wonderful way.

Now, if we’re to be praying all the time and if we want to have God constantly on our minds and in our ear and in our mouth, does that mean that prayer at set times is useless and or even wrong? Well, our family for instance has certain patterns of prayer and I have personal patterns of prayer. Here’s what a day goes like for me if I’m following the right pattern and I don’t always but usually I do. This is kind of how my set pattern goes.

I get up in the morning and I spend an extended time in the word of God and in prayer. And then my family gets up and we have breakfast together and then we have a family time with the Bible and sing a hymn together and pray together and do some scripture memory together. We do that again in the evening as a family where we read the Bible and spend time in prayer. And just a few minutes I’m going over our scripture memory verse that we’re working on at that time and then ending that time again with prayer. Then when the kids go to bed, we pray with each of the children individually and I’ll often just lie on the bed with them even ones weren’t little anymore with an armor album and sometimes we’re silent, sometimes we talked together. So that’s kind of how a day goes.

And then of course every week we go to church on Sunday and there are times in service for prayer. Now, if we’re supposed to pray without ceasing, what’s the use of having this kind of set times for prayer? Isn’t that kind of artificial? Aren’t those patterns of just doing it at certain times going to be counter-productive? Well, I don’t think so. It’s kind of saying, “Well, if you have set times at meal time with your kids, that’s going to harm communication because you should be ready to communicate with your kids at all times.”

Well, I agree. You should be able to communicate with them at all times but when you have planned times together, then some communication happens during those times and it opens up a spirit of communication the rest of the time. I know that I’m just lying by one of my children in bed at night before they go to sleep. We’ve got that as part of our habit or routine but that’s the time for some special talking.

Or think of it another way. A basketball team need to be constantly communicating. When you’re playing with a variety of players and you’re playing defense together, for instance. You warn your team, “Hey, there’s a screen coming. A guy’s about you block you out. Watch out behind you!” Or if you’re an offense, “I’m open. Throw me the ball!” There’s a variety of communications that’s going constantly if you’re on a good basketball team and good coaches emphasize constant communication. And the coach will be yelling instructions from the bench for people to pay attention to right while they’re in the middle of the game.

That’s talking without ceasing as you’re playing basketball. So, does that mean that you should never have a timeout? Well, no not exactly. Because timeout where you can talk without any other interruptions are very valuable and where you can not have to be right in the middle of the game while you’re talking together. So basketball teams need time outs and they need half time. Why do they need that? Well, they need it for one thing to catch their breath because you just get so tired if you’re running constantly.

And that’s true of our set times with prayer. Sometimes, we just [sigh of relief] nothing else to do but spend some time with God and talk to him. You may have been talking with him on the run and on the go but sometimes you just need to catch your breath. And you also need that time with no interruptions to talk things over. I know that as a basketball player, it was very valuable for me to have some of those timeouts where I could catch my breath again and to have some time with the coach and our other teammates when we didn’t have to be right in the middle of the game but have a bit of time to really get focused on what we were doing wrong, on what we were doing right, on some strategic things that needed to change.

And so it is in our prayer life. With constant communication but also those special timeout times to be in prayer with the Lord without any interruptions. So, why pray at set times? Well, prayer at set times each day gives us a regular opportunity for special closeness. We can pray all the time but there are those special times and they are wonderful. A prayerful attitude spills over into the rest of the day. When you have set times and you have the special times, then that helps keep you oriented and helps you focus on God even when you’re not in your special prayer time and you live more and more with the sense of God’s presence.

Prayer at set times each day is a launching pad toward a growing habit of prayer until you pray without ceasing. You will never give up on prayer and more and more just the spirit of prayer and the sense of God’s presence goes with you throughout your life. One of the great men of prayer in the Bible was Daniel. Some of his beautiful prayers are recorded in the Book of Daniel but there’s also a story about Daniel’s prayer.

He was a man of prayer and he would not quit praying even when his boss, the King of Persia, signed a law that nobody could pray to anybody but to the king. What did Daniel do? Well, it was a threat that anybody who disobeyed that law would be thrown into the lions. But Daniel went into his room and he didn’t even try to make it very secret. He opened his windows towards Jerusalem. He knelt in the direction of Jerusalem and he prayed three times everyday just as he always did.

Now, Daniel could have said to himself, “Oh, I think I’m just going to pray without letting anybody else notice and I’m going to do it just in my mind.” But he followed his pattern of prayer as well as his constant prayer. He did that even when he was threatened with death. Daniel would rather spend a night in a lion’s den than go one day without prayer. That’s how much prayer meant to him. And in the scripture, we read of morning prayers and evening prayers. We read of Daniel’s pattern of praying three times a day.

So prayers at set times can really be a launching pad toward prayer without ceasing. You’re not threatened with a lion’s den but the example of man who would rather spend a night in a lion’s den than go a day without prayer should inspire you and me to be people who want to pray without ceasing.