“Pray without ceasing,” Paul tells the Thessalonian church (1 Thess 5:17). There is something in this kind of prayer that felt foreign to me for years, and I’m not fully at home with yet. Jesus spent 40 days and night in prayer and fasting before starting his ministry and often spent all night praying before making major decisions in his ministry. The rhythm of Jesus’s prayer life shaped and directed what he did in his ministry and prepared him to be enthroned as King on the cross. The early church prayed for guidance before choosing leaders (Acts 1:24; 6:6), devoted themselves to prayer (2:42), prayed for Peter’s release from prison (12:12), prayed for guidance (22:17), as well as many other times of prayer.
When I read the life of Jesus and the early church, prayer seemed to play a different role than what I was experiencing in my church upbringing. My prayers never felt like the reached higher than the ceiling and often felt more like a mental exercise than a conversation with the creator of life who is our Father and embraces us as his children. We were taught to “read the bible, pray every day, and we will grow, grow, grow.” For the first part of my life, I prayed the same prayers every night. When I went to college, I started noticing different forms of prayer in the Bible and experimented some with fasting. It bothered me more and more that I was going into ministry but didn’t know much about prayer as I was seeing it in the pages of the Bible. In my first year as a minister, I went on a personal retreat to a monastery to learn about prayer from people who dedicate their lives to the ministry of prayer. Rhythms of prayer, communally and individually, shaped life in this community.
To “pray without ceasing” was the real purpose of the Christians who fled society to live in the desert in the 3rdand 4th centuries. What we have discussed the last two weeks, regarding solitude and silence, provides the context within which prayer is practiced. When solitude and silence are separated from the call to unceasing prayer, they only become aesthetic practices of an empty spiritual life. Solitude, without prayer, is merely an escape from a busy work life. Silence, without prayer, an escape from a noisy society. Solitude, for the desert Christians, was being alone with God. Silence, listening to God.
As these Christians fled society to reclaim the ancient ways of following Jesus, the call to “pray without ceasing” became a call to “come to rest.” Solitude with God and listening for his voice created a rhythm of life with God where they found a rest and peace in the midst of the struggles of life. This God-given rest is what flows out of a life formed by prayer.
I have often approached prayer as an activity of the mind where I have a one-sided conversation with God, think through hard concepts about God, or an exercise of working through my day. Talking to God is still prayer but it is a very limited view of prayer. Prayer is first and foremost resting in God’s presence. The hardest journey for many of us to make is the path from the head to the heart. Moving from the head to the heart in prayer is where rest is found. Praying with the heart does not mean “heart felt” prayers or some other kind of emotive expression. Praying with the heart is simply to dwell with God, be in his presence, and find rest. This kind of prayer takes practice. We are people with noisy minds and hearts. When we enter the room of our heart there is a lot of clutter that needs cleaning. This takes practice. But the practice is worth it. When you establish rhythms of prayer in your life, rhythms where your alone time with God in silence shapes the rest of your day, you will discover that the peace and rest Christ offers us dwells inside of us. Paul assures us that Christ dwells inside of us in 2 Corinthians 13:5. Let’s establish rhythms of prayer where we abide in Christ and are transformed into people of peace in a world of chaos.
Where are natural spaces in your day where you could pause for 90 seconds and pray for the next hour of your day? How would your life look different if you approached all of life from a place of prayer, inviting the Holy Spirit to guide how you respond to the world you are entering into?