Pray without ceasing. 1 Thess 5:16 (NLT)
What is Prayer?
It’s said that prayer is conversation with God. Asking things for ourselves and for others – answers, healing, revelations… So in terms of this verse, are we meant to never stop conversing with God? Always in conversation? Always talking and listening? Always asking for something? Seeking the positive outcome we want? What about sleeping? Or other conversations that need our attention? Or work? It’s just not possible or practical to always be conversing verbally with God, to be locked away in “prayer closets.”
Then what happens when our ‘prayers’ don’t get answered? The hard ones… the ones that make God look like a monster and us like pawns in a game. Is His part of prayer that part where He says, “yes” or “no?”
Talking to God and asking for things is part of prayer, but it goes beyond just conversation and exchange of requests.
Think about your relationships. Your really close ones. My children are always on my mind. If I’m not talking to them, I’m thinking about them, or looking at them, or buying things for them, or cooking them food, or washing their clothes, or wondering how this or that will effect them… we are connected and I’m aware of them most of the time. It's a connection that you can’t see or explain, but is carried by blood and love. It’s there in silence and conversation.
Prayer is awareness… and more than that, an openness to God. To move within His presence and understand that He IS, and He is always there. Prayer doesn’t end when the conversation is finished.
Is the point of it to ask questions? To get answers? It seems to me that in an intimate relationship such as we have with Jesus, there is more to it than simply petitions and answers. It’s not a formality or religious practice. It’s our posture and connectedness to life – living open to God. Seeing His presence in and through every situation, whether we get the answers we want or not. Prayer means He is there and we are connected.
Never stop believing. Wake up to His nearness in all things and at all times. Live open. See every moment as a conversation with God, verbal and non-verbal. Joined by blood and love… a conversation and commitment to each other that never ceases… and is, in fact, eternal.
Let your whole life be a prayer.
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