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Pray Continually
Brian Mashburn
July 3, 2016
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Pray Continually
The Bible, of course, has a lot to say about prayer.
The first mention of prayer (Gen 20:7) put the power of life and death in it. Samson and Nehemiah used prayer to be strengthened by God, and Peter and Paul used prayer to strengthen those around them. It was prayer than Hannah turned to whether it was in her anguish and grief or in her joy and delight. All through scripture, both servants and Kings, slave and free, Jew and Gentile used it. Whenever scripture portrays God as "hearing" anyone, it was their prayers that He heard. When scripture really wants to make a point about how "bad" someone is, it says that "even their prayers" were despised by God.
And Jesus? Well, his prayer life is depicted as the central reason that he was who he was, and that he could be who he was being, and that he could do what he was doing. Did you know that the only thing that the apostles ever asked Jesus directly to teach them was to pray? It was like they knew - by observation, they KNEW - if they could pray like Jesus, they had hope of being like him.
No wonder Paul then extols prayer so regularly and intensely. But in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, does he take it a little far? In emphatic language - commandment language - he tells us to "pray continually".
Is that even possible?
Before we dismiss it out of hand, let us first consider it as if it were possible. Let us open our minds and consider that prayer may be much more than our current picture of it. Because, after all, if we CAN do such a powerful thing constantly, wouldn't we want to?
Prayer, for the spiritual life, is more necessary than breathing is for the physical one. And we wouldn't dare stop doing that, would we? Let us pray.