How?
Paul said, “Pray without ceasing,” (1Thes.5:16) and Christians have asked, “How can we pray all day and still accomplish our responsibilities?” We may feel more like the New Testament hostess, Martha, who was “distracted with much serving,” (Luke 10:40) and less like her sister, Mary, who “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching,” (Luke 10:39.) Today I can relate to Martha, being a wife, mom, and home school teacher with more chores than hours in my day. Like Martha, I need to find a realistic way to honor what Paul meant, so I can pray in the spirit yet still act responsibly in the physical world.
People have gotten into trouble taking Paul’s command literally. In his youth, my Dad tried to pray without ceasing while driving a tractor for a farmer. He accidentally uprooted some rows of corn. Yet God had mercy on my dad, and later that fall, the farmer discovered that the thinned rows of corn were of such better quality he could sell them for human consumption at a higher price than he could have sold as animal feed. His profits increased due to my dad’s well-meaning but wrong idea.
My dad still realized he was mistaken, so he never again drove the tractor while also praying fervently. God forgives many mistakes young believers make when they are trying to honor God. Yet God still expects us to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them.
My Dad’s example showed me I cannot intensely concentrate upon God and my prayers every moment of the day. Sometimes I must focus on studies such as the academic lessons I present to my daughters in our home school. I need to listen carefully when my daughters, friends and family share from their hearts. I need to pay careful attention when I drive my car. Many times I must give my close attention to matters outside my prayer life.
God understands this, and he never wants to shame us. But if I look at my daughter Amy’s novel in a series, I better understand praying without ceasing. Amy may finish reading one novel and set the book down. Yet she knows the story did not cease. She has paused her reading, even though the story has not ceased. When she has time, she will pick up the next novel and begin reading it. Her interest in the novel did not cease either. Even while away from her book, she may think about the story in the back of her mind.
My prayer life is a bit like the novel in a series. I pray in the morning for many people. I also prayer-journal and write Bible verses a bit later in the morning. But my interest in God does not cease. In fact, even as my daughter thinks about the characters in the novel, I continue to think about God throughout the day, even though I may seriously concentrate upon other matters.
The Lord knows we must work hard. He does not treat our secular work (outside Bible reading and prayer) as non-essential. Throughout the Bible, God blesses our work. For example, Deuteronomy 28:8, “The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your storehouses and in all that you undertake, and he will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you.” Furthermore, God praised the hard working wife in Proverbs 31: 10-31. In 2Thes.3:10, Paul admonished, “He who will not work, neither will he eat.”
Critics mock the Bible and take literal many phrases God meant for us to understand spiritually. When we surrender our heart and mind to God (Matt. 22:37b-38 “Love the Lord your God with all our heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment,”) our prayer life doesn’t truly cease. We may pause in our intense prayer times to work and concentrate upon other matters. But like Nehemiah did, when asked a scary questions (Neh.2:4-5) we may send up a quick instant prayer to God, because we have a disciplined prayer life before hand. Nehemiah interrupted his own conversation with a possibly dangerous and volatile king, with a silent prayer, because Nehemiah had prayed so often before this scary discussion had begun.
Nehemiah could not have been so organized and able to both pray quickly and effectively and then speak so eloquently before making that quick prayer, if he had not spent so much time alone with God praying before this experience. Nehemiah is not a model of how to be lazy and only offer rare, spontaneous prayers. He is an example of how to live a life significantly devoted to prayer and fasting (Neh.1:4) and meditation upon God and his word. It was Nehemiah’s frequent time, alone in prayer, that enabled him to handle a discussion with a king who could kill him if he displeased him. His private prayer life enabled him to briefly leave a human conversation, go into a spiritual place (via prayer) and then go back, mentally to engage in the human conversation.
Nehemiah models for us how we can pray without ceasing and still remain engaged in our physical world. Nehemiah was a highly trusted, loyal, hard working man. He never disappointed the king on earth, nor his King in Heaven.
I pray this brief post has given you encouragement and comfort as both a godly Christian woman, and as a worker in the physical and secular world. We can honor Paul’s command to pray without ceasing and still accomplish our work, all the while honoring our Lord and our friends and family.
I pray we’ve blessed you with this week’s post. Thanks for joining us and if you have any questions or suggestions, let me know.