Pray Without Ceasing - 1 Thess Lesson 38

Call To Worship – Luke 11:1-13

Pray Without Ceasing

1 Thessalonians 5:17

 I invite you to open your Bibles with me once again to the fifth chapter of 1 Thessalonians. Today we will be looking at verse 17. In this verse we find the imperative command to “pray without ceasing.” To make sure we look at this verse in its context I ask you to stand together with me in honor of the Word of God and let’s read verses 12-22 together.

 As I considered the importance of this command I was taken back to a moment in my working career about 45 years ago. I was very young and bulletproof, and stupid. I was a maintenance mechanic and one of my responsibilities was to hook up and unhook railroad tankers filled with concentrated liquefied chlorine gas. The safety requirements were that two of us had to do this together and we had to be suited up with a self-contained breathing apparatus. SCUBA gear is self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. So I had an air tank on my back and a full-face mask with a hose that supplied fresh air in the mask.

 This was necessary because highly concentrated chlorine gas is nothing you want to get surrounded with. I got a whiff of some of this stuff on one of these occasions. What I quickly learned is that a small concentration will close your airway off immediately. You can try to inhale but it is as if someone has you by the throat and they have squeezed your airway completely shut. If a person was in a room filled with this deadly stuff he wouldn’t live long.

 I was reminded of this event in my working career as I thought about the importance of prayer in the life of the Christian. Prayer is as essential to our spiritual life as breathing is to our physical life. Prayer provides the support we need to survive spiritually. We only survive spiritually by the grace of God. It is as we pray that we draw upon the unending resource of God’s grace and find the strength, support, and encouragement we need to continue to walk with Christ.

I’m not sure how many of us truly believe this to be true because the majority of professing Christians do not pray on a daily basis. Most are not only not obeying the command to pray without ceasing, they are praying hardly at all. If we stopped breathing we would immediately realize the impact on our physical well-being. Somehow, those who call themselves Christians can ignore this vitally important aspect of our spiritual life and not even notice the consequences. This is not a good thing.

 Most professing Christians who are asked about their prayer lives say they would like to pray more, but they find time as an issue, or they simply acknowledge that they do not know what to say. Well, if we are to obey the imperative command of Paul in 1 Thess. 5:17, we are going to need to realize that it isn’t a matter of making time to pray, because all our time is to be committed to prayer. If we are to pray without ceasing, this means that we will be praying all the time. Praying without ceasing will also take care of the problem of not knowing what to say in our prayers.  Prayer without words is…impossible. If we are going to be praying without ceasing, we are going to be saying something.

 Now, obviously Paul can’t be telling us to pray without ceasing, and expect us to spend all of our waking hours on our knees with our heads bowed and our prayer list in front of us praying for everything we can think of. To make this verse mean something like that we would have to take it completely out of its context. So let’s talk about the context of this command for a moment. Keeping this verse in the context of the paragraph it is in is essential to understanding what this command is telling us to do.

 The first thing I want you to notice is the position of this verse in the paragraph. I find it very interesting that there are eleven verses in this paragraph. There are five verses before verse 17, and there are five verses after verse 17. That puts this verse, with this imperative, right smack dab in the middle. Now, I know the verse divisions are not inspired, but I don’t doubt the significance of this imperative on prayer being right in the middle of all these important imperative commands. That is because I am convinced that this imperative is the engine that propels us to obedience to all these other commands. In this paragraph this verse is kind of like the hub of the wheel. All the other verses are the spokes of the wheel. All these commandments together carry us through the Christian life. Obedience to all these other commands depends on, and is supported by prayer.

 Look back at verses 12-13. We are told to appreciate those who diligently labor among you, having charge over you in the Lord, giving you instruction, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. In the context of Grace Bible Church, who is that talking about? Who is the one who diligently labors among you to give you instruction? That’s me. I am, quite frankly, sometimes the biggest bonehead in the building. Sometimes my teaching is lacking. I can wade off in the weeds and bore you with stuff that doesn’t even apply to you. You are going to need God’s help to obey the instruction of verses 12-13. How do you find that help? You will find it necessary to be asking God to give you the grace and strength to esteem the likes of me very highly in love. Prayer is absolutely necessary to obeying the instructions of verses 12-13.

 At the end of verse 13 is the imperative to “live in peace with one another.” Is that one that you can do without bathing many of your dealings with one another in prayer? I doubt it. Admonish the unruly – its prayer time. Encourage the fainthearted – its prayer time. Help the weak – its prayer time. Be patient with everyone. Its prayer time with extra prayer time added for good measure. The same is true when you come to verse 15 and are told to see to it that no one repays another with evil for evil. Its prayer time. Always seek after that which is good for one another and for all people. Its time to pray.

 Guess what. If you are trying to obey those imperatives from verse 12-15 without bathing every circumstance in prayer, you are not going to get it right. You will find them hard enough to do after bathing them in prayer. The challenges associated with those instructions drive us to the throne of God where we ask, seek, and knock because we need help in these things. We will find the same true as we work our way through the rest of the verses in this paragraph.

 Now consider these three imperatives found in verses 16-18. Let’s narrow our focus on the context to just these verses. Rejoice always. I hope you remember from last week the instructions from 1 Peter on how we do this. We find more than enough motivation to rejoice always by looking at all that God has done in the work of salvation. He chose us, He saved us, He sanctifies us, He sprinkled us with the blood of Christ. Grace and peace are ours in fullest measure. We have been caused to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We have an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away. This is reserved in heaven for us. We are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation to be revealed in the last day. In this we greatly rejoice!

If we are rejoicing always, will we not also need to be praying so that our rejoicing has an outlet? We can rejoice in our hearts, but I think Paul adds this next verse to tell us to use prayer as an outlet for our rejoicing. If we are rejoicing always, will we not, of necessity, also need to be praying without ceasing? Our rejoicing always is the expression of our joy for God’s great work in our lives and we will, of necessity, be praying without ceasing in order that our continual rejoicing has an outlet.

 The same is true if we are going to be giving thanks in everything. If we are going to be able to give thanks in everything we are, of necessity, asking God in prayer to help us obey this command. We are going to focus on this imperative next week. Even before we study it we know how hard it is to obey. Giving thanks in everything is something that requires the supernatural work of God in our hearts so we must be praying and asking God to empower obedience to that command. Then, when He answers that prayer, and we are living in obedience to the command to give thanks in everything, how will we give that thanks if we are not constantly in prayer, expressing that thanks to the only One who is worthy?

 That is a practical way to look at the connection of these imperatives. But that isn’t at the heart of what Paul wants in this command. Paul does not tell us to pray without ceasing so that we can express our joy and say thank you to God continuously. Paul gives us this command because at the heart of it is the reality that we must live continuously in absolute and utter dependence upon God. The Christian who learns to live in prayer is the Christian who has learned to walk in faith, and to experience fellowship with God which He has offered to those who are His children.

 As oxygen is provided to the physical body through the exercise of breathing, spiritual nourishment and power is provided to our spiritual lives through unceasing prayer. Just as our hearts pump life giving blood to every part of our physical bodies, prayer supplies the necessary support and life to every aspect of our walk of faith. Our willingness to pray is our acknowledgment of the need we have for God’s help to obey His commands. When He supplies the strength we need to obey, prayer is the means by which we praise and thank Him for what He has helped us to do.

 I don’t know about you, but for me, I know the moment I wake up that living this day in obedience and in a way that honors and glorifies God is going to be a struggle. I know I’m going to fail. I don’t want to fail. I need help to keep from failing. I must pray for wisdom for the daily walk. I need strength for the work. I need grace for the challenges. To pray without ceasing is to walk through each day with spiritual intentionality. I must be praying without ceasing because the challenges will be tough, the flesh will be weak, the failures frequent, and the need for God’s grace and mercy will accompany every step through that day.

 There is a reason there is so much emphasis on prayer in the New Testament. It is also prevalent in the Old Testament and we could spend months looking at many aspects of prayer. Read the Gospels and take note of the time Jesus spent in prayer. Prayer was the only thing that ever made Him sweat. He could speak to the storm and it would be still and He never broke a sweat. He could raise the dead with the spoken word. He could multiply food in the palm of His hand, enough to feed thousands, without ever breaking a sweat. On Gethsemane, He sweat drops of blood as He prayed.

 Read the book of Acts and note the emphasis of the Apostles and their devotion to prayer. They learned well at the feet of Jesus. They experienced first hand the powerlessness of prayerlessness on the night of the arrest of Jesus. They became men devoted to prayer by the time of the record of Acts.

 Read the letters to the churches and see Paul’s devotion to prayer, the examples of his prayers for the churches, and the instructions he gives over and over to the followers of Christ to be devoted to prayer. Romans 12:12 says, “Rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer.” The word “devoted” in that verse carries the idea of being constant in prayer. I hope you are familiar with the words of Philippians 4. Verses 4-8 should be in the memory bank of every Christian. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

 The imperative of verse 1 Thess. 5:17 is not a hard command to understand. Like the imperative of the last verse, it is only two words in the Greek. “Proseuchomai” is the Greek word translated “pray.” It is a compound word. It combines the preposition “pros” which means “to, or toward” with “euchomai” which means “to wish, or pray.” The adverb translated “without ceasing” is “adialeiptos.” (a-dial-ip-tos) it means “continually, without intermission. It means to pray incessantly. It is a call for us to be in a constant attitude of dependence upon God. It is not a call, as some have mistakenly understood, to abstain from work and cloister ourselves in a monastery in the mountains where we can constantly pray and never do anything else. This is a call to be constantly conscious of our full dependence upon God.

 To pray without ceasing is to live with a constant awareness of our need for His grace and mercy every moment of every day. To pray without ceasing is to constantly acknowledge our need, our powerlessness, and His sufficiency. To pray without ceasing is to live with a spiritual alertness. It is to live with an attitude of submission and humility. To pray without ceasing is to live with full and constant awareness of His presence with us. It is to rely on His power in the face of our challenges. It is to walk in His truth and to apply the wisdom of His word to every circumstance of life. To pray without ceasing is to live in utter and absolute dependence upon Him.

 To pray without ceasing is to reflect a heart that is always open and sensitive and willingly obedient to His will in all things. When I read of Enoch and Noah, that they “walked with God” I think that there must have been a couple of men who knew what it was to pray without ceasing. To pray without ceasing is to live a life permeated by the presence of God. I really must restate that. To pray without ceasing is to come to realize the extent to which our life is permeated with the presence of God. We don’t use prayer to cause our lives to be permeated with God. It already is if we are His. To pray without ceasing is to acknowledge His presence and to live accordingly. To live a life permeated by the presence of God is to walk with God. To pray without ceasing is to walk with God.

 This imperative is in the present tense in the Greek. This tense indicates something we are to do continuously and/or repeatedly. At all times, in all circumstances, we rejoice, we pray, we give thanks. These things are to be the things that mark our lives moment by moment. I am convicted by this. I am challenged by this. I am humbled.

 Last Sunday my granddaughter Kate requested prayer for her peers. She spent a week at a church camp with a bunch of kids whose understanding of the work of salvation is somewhat suspect, if not totally flawed. I’m not their judge. God alone is in that position. But Kate’s concern is that these kid’s confidence in their salvation ebbs and flows because it is dependent upon some feeling that is generated by a certain atmosphere or activity, or type of music that is employed. These kids feel like they are saved, and they are motivated to worship God, they believe everything is good, as long as they are in that setting where the mood has been set, and the music makes them happy, and the feelings of worship are present.

 Those kids are not alone. This may be the dominant characteristic of the evangelical community. For many who claim to follow Christ, the purpose of church is to provide their weekly “pick me up” session. Their spiritual energy gets drained through the week so they have to come on Sunday to get recharged and energized for another week of life. This is why churches are so popular that create an energetic environment and a style of music that targets the emotion rather than the mind. People believe this is what they need to get fired up so they can go another week.

 I worry about the spiritual condition of people whose spiritual lives are marked more by the glow than the flow, or the way they grow. The genuine Christian life isn’t evidenced by the glow of Sunday, but by what flows out of us each day of the entire week, and the growth toward Christlikeness over time. Paul does not say, “Rejoice on Sunday, pray on Sunday, and give thanks on Sunday.” He says rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God for you.” If we take anything away from this verse it is that prayer without ceasing is an expression of constant, utter, and complete dependence upon God. On the other hand, prayerlessness is really a loud and clear declaration that we have got this without Him. Too many Christians are prayerless people who are living as practical atheists. 

 Now, this does not negate our responsibility to spend time devoted to prayer. Continual prayer does not replace times of prayer when we are devoting ourselves to confession of sin, adoration of God, praise, petitions, thanksgiving, intercession, and submission. This type of prayer should also be part of our spiritual lives. We should enter the closet and close the door and pray to our Father who hears what we say in secret. We are to pray to our Father in heaven and seek for His name to be hallowed. We must pray for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We should be asking for our daily bread and forgiveness of our trespasses and expressing our forgiveness to others.

 Jesus modeled this kind of prayer for us. He often got alone to pray. Sometimes it was all night. Sometimes it was for a period of time. Sometimes it was where the disciples could hear. Other times it was alone. We are never given a consistent pattern, posture, or place where times of prayer should happen. We are given a great model to follow in what we call the Lord’s Prayer. I often focus on that model and I sometimes don’t get beyond the first phrase. I spend time considering what it means that God is my Father who is in heaven. 

 Think about that. Holy God, eternal God, creator God, omnipotent God, omniscient God is my Father. I have that kind of a relationship, as Father and son, to the One who made me, the One who chose me from before the foundation of the world, the One who called me with His effectual calling, the One who redeemed my life from the pit, the One who saved me, sanctified me, and will glorify me. How long could we spend in prayer just meditating and praising and glorifying God for all that it means for Him to be our Father.

 Then we can move on to the reality that our Father is “in heaven.” From the throne of the universe, from a vantage point I can’t even fathom, He watches over me, He cares for me, He listens to me, He sovereignly ordains my steps, He protects, provides, and guides me. 

 These are all things that can help us in our times of devotion and prayer and personal worship. But the prayers we pray without ceasing may not even be words we say with our mouth. They may be prayers in our hearts, prayers that we think, prayers we express to God in our spirits. Remember, man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.

 We need to pray without ceasing because we never find ourselves not needing God’s grace and mercy. He calls us to ask. He invites us to pray. He promises to give what we ask. We pray without ceasing because we are in constant need of a consistent supply of an unending resource from an infinitely good Giver of all we ever need.

 Let’s pray.