"Pray Without Ceasing"

A prayerless Christian should be an oxymoron. Yet, how often do you come across a sense of passion about prayer among the believers you know?  Periodically you might hear someone talk about prayer, yet they are noticeably absent whenever the church prays corporately, and you never hear mention of specific ways God has encouraged their heart or illumined their understanding of Scriptural truth or given them a deeper understanding of His character as a result of their prayer. The "talk" and the "walk" just don't match up.

When we do manage to pray, how often do our prayers sound more like the list of "wants" a child might pen to Santa Claus at Christmastime? Seldom do we pray from a biblical perspective. We expend more effort wanting God to remove adversity, make us healthy or protect our loved ones than we do beseeching Him to lead us into spiritual maturity or praying for the faithfulness of His saints. Worst of all, we fail to magnify God in our prayers or thank Him for His abundant love and mercies towards us or recognize our part in the advancement of His kingdom program. Sadly most of our prayers center around ourselves and those nearest us, as we focus on surface needs, not deep, spiritual, eternal needs.

Our prayerlessness demonstrates our lack of understanding of the providence of God, His sovereignty and the power of His mighty hand. We don't think "big enough". Our culture provides three huge stumbling blocks to rich, consistent prayer. Modern  life is overly busy and full of distracting, empty amusements demanding our time and attention. Too often we're not discerning enough to prioritize our time in a way that honors God and contributes to our own sanctification, thereby robbing ourselves of the very things we need to lead us into the victorious Christian life. Also, we tend to trust in ourselves more than we trust in God. When we're at the end of our own resources, THEN we'll call on God. Scripture commands us to humble ourselves before God BY MEANS OF casting all our cares on Him. (1Pet.5:6-7) When we're continually casting (Pres. Tense Greek verb) our cares onto God, we humble ourselves before Him. Finally, most of us have lost our facility with language. We don't know how to glorify God with our words. Even if we are aware of God's greatness, lovingkindness and providence in our lives, we don't know how to express it verbally during our prayers. We think vague thoughts, we feel vague emotions.

So what do we do? Here are two simple suggestions. First, become disciplined. Plan your time, rather than letting unimportant things crowd out vital things such as prayer. Second, use tools to direct your thoughts and expand your ability to express yourself ... go to the prayers of those who had great skill at doing so and use them as the "jumping off points" for your own prayers.

Personally, I love using Don Whitney's suggestion to pray through the Psalms. His book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, has a chapter explaining the method. Basically, start reading a Psalm. When the Psalm triggers your thoughts toward adoration, confession, thanksgiving & supplication (the ACTS of prayer), stop reading and pray until your mind starts to stray, at which point you return and read more of the Psalm until your thoughts are triggered once again, at which point you stop to pray again. If the Psalms are short, you might find yourself reading through more than one. If it's a long Psalm, you might take several days to work through it. You will be amazed at how long and rich your prayer time becomes after using this approach for a few weeks! It will change your prayer life ... and it will change you!

A second suggestion is a system based upon the Puritan prayers in The Valley of Vision, an anthology of Puritan prayers. Like the Psalmists, the Puritans had a God-centric view of life and an amazing ability to express themselves, far beyond modern man's skill to do so. While the advantage of using Psalms is that you are also learning Scripture itself as you read through them in your prayer time, the Puritan prayers lead you to become more God-focused in your worldview. That was their great strength. I can see the advantage of using both, and recommend alternating them throughout the year. Joe Thorn offers a free copy of his schedule using the Puritan prayers here.  He sets aside three times during the day to go to the Lord in concentrated prayer.

Become a person of prayer. It will affect your own Christian walk, the lives of those you pray for and the purity, effectiveness & strength of your local assembly. It will also help advance God's program in the world. Don't you think those things worthy of your time?