“Pray without ceasing.” I Thess. 5:17
"For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." Is. 57:15
"Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart," Lk. 18:1
How genuinely humble and spiritually broken are we? It seems to me that perhaps the single greatest litmus test we have regarding the depth of our brokenness is the frequency and intensity of our prayers. What I mean by prayer is not just a slotted daily event, but prayer as a way of life. Prayer as a continual calling out to God - usually silently - as we go through the day, asking for his wisdom and strength at every turn. I am absolutely convinced that the reason we don’t pray more is not that we are too busy; it is that we are too confident. Oswald Chambers put it so well, “We lean to our own understanding, or we bank on service and do away with prayer, and consequently by succeeding in the external we fail in the eternal, because in the eternal we succeed only by prevailing prayer.” Please, please read that again; it's such an important truth! When God opens our eyes to our abject neediness in everything that truly matters, prayer becomes no longer a spiritual discipline or cultivated habit; it becomes the soul’s ongoing gasp for air only God can provide.
Too often our daily spiritual lives are carried out in what I like to call the gas station approach. In other words, we spend time with the Lord in the morning, get our spiritual tanks filled, and then go out to meet the day by drawing off the morning’s strength. However, within only a few hours into the day, we often find that the strength and joy of the morning quiet time has quietly faded and we’re back on our own. While there is most assuredly a need for concerted times alone with God, there is also a need for something more permanent.
The broken saint runs more like the trolley. Like the trolley, he or she is connected to the higher power source throughout the entirety of the day, drawing continuously from that strength at every turn. I think this is what Paul had in mind when he wrote “Pray without ceasing.” (I Thess.5:17) The word “without ceasing” was used in that day to describe the regularity of a hacking cough. I love that! It is a life spent sending up short, quick, arrow prayers time after time after time throughout the course of each day. It is not daring to go into a meeting, make a phone call, or write an email without first falling back on God’s strength and wisdom through short, intentional prayers. The issue isn’t so much the length of praying, the method of praying, or the bodily position of praying. It is the attitude of praying - the radical, gasping dependency on God for everything that truly matters in life. What qualifies a man or woman for effective ministry is not a certificate of ordination but rather a certificate of desperation. And nothing reveals how genuinely desperate we are for a joy, love, wisdom, and strength not our own more than our prayer life. Our daily, hourly, nay – minute by minute, prayer life. May God grant that we become more and more broken as the years go by. And nothing reveals the depth of our true brokenness more reliably than our prayer life.
Flashpoint: The reason we don’t pray more is not that we are too busy; it is that we are too confident.
