Pray Without Ceasing

The Chaplains’ Desk
“Pray without ceasing”
(I Thess. 5:17) 

            “For Christians prayer is like breathing. You don’t have to think to breathe because the atmosphere exerts pressure on your lungs and forces you to breathe. That’s why it is more difficult to hold your breath than it is to breathe. Similarly, when you’re born into the family of God, you enter into a spiritual atmosphere wherein God’s presence and grace exert pressure, or influence, on your life. Prayer is the normal response to that pressure. As believers we have all entered the divine atmosphere to breathe the air of prayer. Only then can we survive in the darkness of the world.”¹

          Some Christians would say that it is hard for them to find time to pray. I beg to differ. I find it hard not to pray. Prayer is not an added accessory to make your life better, or a means of asking God for something when we have a need. It is our very life source.

          Prayer is the highest activity of the human soul. Therefore, it remains the ultimate test of a man’s true spiritual condition. There is nothing that tells the truth about us as a Christian so much as our prayer life. For if we are truly admonished by the Scripture to “pray without ceasing,” then our life should be one continual prayer to the Father. Prayer simple defined is our spirit communicating with His Spirit. And if this is true, then the fellowship we have entered into with Him is an ongoing and continual relationship.

          “Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. To pray is to change. If we are unwilling to change we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. In prayer, real prayer we begin to think God’s thoughts after him: to desire the things he desires, to love the things he loves, to will the things he wills.”²  Slowly, but surely, we are taught to see things from His perspective. Nothing draws us closer to the heart of God then prayer.

¹MacArthur, John: Alone With God. Wheaton, Ill. : Victor Books, 1995.