Over a long period of time I have been reflecting on the passage in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 where it tells us to “pray continually;” or as I learnt it as a kid from the King James “Pray without ceasing.”
It has perplexed me over many years on how to achieve this end and over the years have attempted to develop systems of prayer, attempted to develop formats to maintain prayer as a real focus in my everyday life and find avenues to set times aside for consistent and deliberate prayer. It never seemed to work.
Talking with some guys that I spent time with in their early Christian life last year, they thanked me for helping them develop a consistent prayer life. Hang on, what did I miss.
One young guy, well, he is not so young anymore as the ministry that I was involved with him was twenty years ago, mentioned that he developed the habit of praying when drive to work because he remembered I talked about making pray part of life. He particularly remembered a talk I gave about praying for individuals as I swam laps at the swimming pool. One lap per person – the more laps, the more people I got to pray for, the fitter I got more people prayed for. I had forgotten that I actually do that.
One of the other guys remembered the same talk except he remembered I talked about praying while training on my bicycle and had to pray with my eyes open so I didn’t hit anything, a habit I still have. I still pray when I ride or run, I still pray when (or should I say if) I get to the pool. I pray at different times. I pray at lots of different times. It’s funny how their memory was better than mine. I dug out the old notes and had to laugh at how it spoke volumes to me so many years later. Since writing that talk I have been to bible college, been ordained and am doing further study, yet that old talk nailed my quest for an understanding of an effective prayer life. Maybe my search for systems has bypassed the fact that I do pray, heartfelt and honest prayer. Prayer without ceasing is partly praying where I am and prayer can be truly an anywhere, and everywhere thing.
Now this sounds all very simple, non theological, non exegetical and not at all clever yet maybe we make our prayer life too complicated. Just because I am involved in ministry I think it has to be hard or maybe I work too hard at it. We should look at what we are doing and recognize our attempts as being valid and that a gracious God doesn’t want us to beat ourselves up when we don’t nail it or to appease our sense of achievement and accomplishment.
From what I read in scripture, prayer that God wants is the honest and open stuff, not the nice sounding theologically correct mumbo jumbo. In scripture we read of people wanting their enemies wiped out, even their own people punished, prayers for victory in battle, prayers that complain, prayers that are bitter, prayers that question God’s care. Did God listen? You bet. Do we believe that those prayers are valid because they are in the bible? If so, then our prayers are valid as we swim, or drive or walk. So pray as you go about your daily activities.
And don’t be scared to be taught about prayer by the people we work with!
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