When the apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church, he gave them a brief but powerful command: Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Other translations of the passage are:
- Pray continually (NIV)
- Always keep on praying (TLB)
- Never stop praying (NLT)
- Pray all the time (MSG)
What does this mean?
Charles Spurgeon was a pastor who practiced Paul’s command. When he preached on this passage, he explained:
“While your hands are busy with the world, let your hearts still talk with God; not in twenty sentences at a time, for such an interval might be inconsistent with your calling, but in broken sentences and interjections…we may let short sentences go up to heaven, ay, and we may shoot upwards cries, and single words, such as an “Ah,” an “Oh,” an “O that;” or, without words we may pray in the upward glancing of the eye or the sigh of the heart. He who prays without ceasing uses many little darts and hand-grenades of godly desire, which he casts forth at every available interval. Sometimes he will blow the furnace of his desires to a great heat in regular prayer, and as a consequence at other times, the sparks will continue to rise up to heaven in the form of brief words, and looks, and desires.”
Spurgeon once said about praying without ceasing, “I always feel it well just to put a few words of prayer between everything I do.” When I read that quote, I thought to myself, how beautiful it would be for a physician to “put a few words of prayer between” seeing one patient and walking to the room to see the next one!
John Piper says praying without ceasing means,
- Praying repeatedly and often.
- Having a spirit of dependence permeate all we do, and
- Not giving up on prayer. He says, praying without ceasing means: “Don’t ever come to a point in your life where you say, ‘Prayer doesn’t work. I am done. I am giving up on prayer. I am giving up on prayer.’ That would be the very opposite of “without ceasing.” It means don’t ever do that. Don’t ever get to that point.”
John Piper adds that this kind of spontaneous, ongoing prayer happens best when we have disciplined regular scheduled times of prayer as our base and then from that base we pray spontaneously all day long.
John MacArthur has this to say:
“Praying without ceasing. What does that mean? Adialeiptōs is the Greek word for those of you who are interested in that. It simply means continually. It doesn’t mean non-stop. It means recurring. It is that which is, as I said, flows from a settled dependence. It’s just a constant kind of running open conversation that never really has a period. It’s sort of like prayer is just your Christian life and community with God with a series of commas and semicolons.”
References
https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/pray-without-ceasing#flipbook/ Accessed Feb 11, 2019.
https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-do-i-pray-without-ceasing Accessed Feb 11, 2019.
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/80-268/pray-without-ceasing Accessed Feb 11, 2019.
