Without Ceasing

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

"Pray without ceasing." - 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of people wrestle with that seemingly simple command.

How am I supposed to do that?

Does he mean literally non-stop?

What kind of prayer is that? You can’t spend the whole day kneeling with your eyes shut…

I’ve tried to, but I just get so distracted!

A few people have shared about their success and the kind of ongoing conversation they have with the Lord throughout the day. Most people, though, try, fail, get discouraged, and decide “praying without ceasing” is unrealistic, impractical, and out of reach.

One morning recently, I dropped Noah off at daycare, and two things happened the instant I stepped out of the building. They happened so unintentionally and so quickly that I might have missed them, but for whatever reason I noticed. First, the fingers on my right hand twitched, preparing to stretch out to grab something. Then, in the same split-second, they froze and relaxed again, as my body alerted my brain: The thing you’re reaching for isn’t there. Your phone isn’t in your back pocket.

I knew that I pulled my phone out sometimes after I dropped her off. I didn’t know, until that moment, just how reflexively and involuntarily I do it. I was acting on pure auto-pilot. My body knew just what to do. I’ve trained it well, and now that’s become a deeply ingrained part of my daily life.

That morning, when I noticed just how attuned my body was to my iPhone—without any conscious thought involved at all!—I realized that we know how to pray “without ceasing.” We know what that looks like, and we’re capable of it. We do it all the time. We bow our heads to our screens and give our attention and engagement to distractions, entertainment, and shopping without ceasing. We’ve trained our hands to reach for the phone at the first opportunity. Our bodies are keeping track of the thing, alerting us when its out of reach. It is a constant in our lives.

What would it take to make prayer as constant, as deeply ingrained a part of your daily life? How can you train yourself to pray reflexively, at the first opportunity? Maybe you won't suddenly be praying without ceasing, but you might start praying more often.

That’s my hope with a lot of my prayer habits, that they would train me to pray more. That’s the reason for the alarms on my phone telling me to stop and pray, the purple wristband I’m wearing in Lent reminding me to “invite the Spirit,” for stretching out my handwashing with the Lord’s Prayer. (I know that one’s doing something, because now I’ll catch myself praying it when I brush my teeth. I’m like Pavlov’s dogs, drooling every time the bell rings, only I start muttering “Our Father…” every time I hear a sink running.)

Training your body to reach for the phone (and your fingers to unlock it and open an app) takes time and repetition. Training yourself to pray more is no different. It will take a little while for you to get into a new rhythm. And forming new habits always takes intentionality and effort on the front end. Praying “without ceasing” will be that way, too. It won’t happen by accident, and it will take some doing to get this plane off the ground.

But what can you start doing today, to begin training your heart and your mind and begin inserting a new time of prayer, a new way of connecting with God, into your life?

Listen to this week's devotional right here:

"My God"

Lately I’ve been reading Henry Emerson Fosdick’s book The Meaning of Prayer. There are a lot of great insights in the book, but I want to share something he said about Psalm 63.

Fosdick suggests that “the practice of prayer is necessary to make God not merely an idea held in the mind but a Presence recognized in the life.” In other words, until you start seeking and engaging God on a personal level through prayer, God will only be a belief, a theoretical thing, way off in some invisible heaven. Prayer makes God a real Presence in your life—a person you talk to, not just an idea you believe in.

Then he points to Psalm 63:1: “O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is.” (KJV) Fosdick’s focus is on the opening line, “O God, thou art my God.” He writes: 

“O God,” is easy, but it is an inward and searching matter to say, “O God, thou art my God.”

The two phrases sound so much alike, but he sees a world of difference between them.

“Oh God,” he says, is a theological statement, but “my God” is personal religion.

“Oh God” is an opinion about the universe. “My God” is a vital experience.

“Oh God” is something you think about. “My God” is someone you pray to.

“Oh God” is far off, removed from us. “My God” is a real presence in your life.

Fosdick’s concern here is that so many professing Christians seem content to stop at “Oh God” and never journey on to the real destination: “my God.” We say “Oh God” when we come to church, recite the creed, sing a hymn, or write a check, but we never allow this God to invade our hearts and lives with a love that re-evaluates and reorders everything.

This Lent, I want to challenge you to move from “Oh God” to “my God.”

Maybe you believe God’s out there, but you don’t talk to God. Or your prayers are a list of wants and needs, but never make room for God to speak, never assume Jesus has anything to say to you.

Maybe you attend church dutifully, but you don’t set aside time to connect with God and foster that relationship during the rest of the week.

Maybe you read and hear interesting messages from scripture, but you don’t apply them to your life—you don’t let them impact how you treat others, what you’ll say to someone, the way you spend money, whether you’ll offer forgiveness.

Is there some way you’re keeping the Lord at arm’s length? Then what is one step you can take to make God a more regular presence in your life? How could you begin prioritizing a personal relationship with God, instead of abstractly acknowledging a deity? How do you need to rearrange your schedule or change your spiritual habits to start acting like God is “my God”?

Listen to this week's devotional below:

Donkeys and Discernment

I just wouldn’t feel right moving on from Numbers without talking about Balaam.

You know: the guy with the talking donkey. (Balaam’s “ass” in the King James Bible, much to the delight of church youth groups everywhere.) We first meet Balaam in Numbers chapter 22. The King of Moab is afraid of the Israelites, and so he sends a message to Balaam:

Please come and curse these people for me because they are too powerful for me. Then perhaps I will be able to conquer them and drive them from the land. I know that blessings fall on any people you bless, and curses fall on people you curse. (22:6)

As it turns out, Balaam has so much success with blessings and curses because it’s the Lord who works through this foreign prophet. Of course, when the Lord hears Moab’s request, God tells Balaam not to curse Israel, “for they have been blessed!” (22:12) Eventually, the prophet does return to Moab with the king’s messengers, though, which leads to the donkey incident. (If you want the full story and Balaam’s conversation with his donkey, check out Numbers 22.)

The King of Moab tries three times to get Balaam to curse Israel. The first time (23:1-12) and the second time (23:13-26), seven altars are constructed and seven bulls and seven rams are offered to God, then the Lord gives Balaam the words to speak.

The third time (23:27-24:13), things go a little differently. The altars are built, and the sacrifices are made. But then, it says, “Balaam saw that it pleased the Lord to bless the Israelites, so he didn’t go as the other times to seek omens.” (24:1) Apparently, before he had been looking for signs of God’s will, like someone reading palms or tea leaves. But he didn’t have to check for all that anymore. Balaam could already see what God’s desire was. And that’s when

 the Spirit of God came on him and he spoke his message:

“The prophecy of Balaam son of Beor,
    the prophecy of one whose eye sees clearly…” (24:2-3)

Balaam’s gift for prophecy has transformed from a matter of asking to a way of seeing. He is so familiar with God’s will, from regularly asking and listening, that he doesn’t even have to ask now. He has become a man “whose eye sees clearly"—and that has to do with his connection to God’s Holy Spirit (24:2). Because of that connection, he sees the world differently.

I think Balaam here gives us a great picture of discernment. Discernment is the ability to recognize God’s will, the best course of action in a situation. When you are discerning, you see the world differently. And this’s rooted in love, knowledge, and insight (Col 1:9) and in transformation and renewal (Rom 12:2).

I don’t think Balaam is special. Frequently asking and listening, and staying open to the Holy Spirit, will make any of us more discerning people. But that connection with God and that clear-sightedness shouldn’t be taken for granted. When we first met Balaam, he can't see as well as a donkey, and the next time we hear about him, in Numbers 31, he’s killed after plotting to lead the Israelites away from the Lord (see 31:7-16). Every day we have to recommit ourselves to seeking the Holy Spirit if we want to see the world differently, see the world from Christ's point of view.

So, what you are doing to listen for God’s voice and to open yourself up to God’s Spirit today?

You can listen to this week's devotional here:

Blind to the Wonder

Then the people of Israel set out from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. But the people grew impatient with the long journey, and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!” – Numbers 21:4-5

Complaints in the wilderness are nothing new. The Israelites have been grumbling about their provisions from the moment they crossed the Red Sea (see Exodus 16 and 17). What struck me as I read Numbers 21 recently wasn’t that the people were complaining. It was what they said: “There’s nothing to eat here and nothing to drink. And we hate this horrible manna!”

Nothing to eat? What about the manna, the miraculous, daily sustenance from God that you’re griping about?

Nothing to drink? There was water gushing out a rock just the chapter before, enough water “to satisfy the whole community and their livestock.” (20:8)

How on earth could these people miss the incredible work of God that had been sustaining them in this desert?

But as I was scratching my head over this, it occurred to me: some of these Israelites have been eating manna their entire lives. This is the very end of the 40-year hike through the wilderness. Few of these people would even remember Egypt. Most had never lived anywhere but this desert. All they knew was this wonder, survival by God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm. Their senses were dulled to the incredible. That was just the water they swam in, day-by-monotonous-day. The miracles were all white noise by now. The people had become blind to the wonder of it all.

It's easy to find fault with the Israelites in Numbers, but what if I turned to the person in the mirror? If familiarity can obscure the wonder of something as extraordinary as manna, imagine how easy it must be to overlook the wonder of God’s very ordinary gifts in our lives today.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,” James says (1:17)—and if I tried to catalogue all the good and perfect gifts in my life, we’d be here all day. But how often do I shut a crammed refrigerator and complain, “There’s nothing to eat”? Or groan when my daughter wants her tired Daddy’s attention? (Emily and I once thought we couldn’t have children.) Abundance and blessing are the water I swim in, day-by-day, and yet I can be so blind to the wonder of it all.

And I bet I’m not the only one.

I want you to stop what you’re doing, and name one incredible gift of God in your life. Try to name something that you know you always take for granted.

A friend.

A job.

A vehicle.

A breath of air filling your lungs.

Now, since God’s so used to hearing our grumbles, tell God how good that gift is and what it means to you. Don’t skimp on the praise—heap on the superlatives. Let God have it with gratitude.

If you and I got in the habit of doing that more often, I wouldn’t be surprised if our eyes became more attuned to the everyday wonders of God’s love and care.

Listen to today's devotional right here: