Pray without Ceasing

A dear brother Mike, over at Possessing the Treasure, has written a post on prayer and we got into a short discussion about “unconscious consciousness” in the Lord.  I remembered a wee while ago that I wrote a post about this back in September 2008  and I wanted to share it again now.

This morning, I share a page from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest, then some thoughts of what I have learned so far about the subject of Praying without ceasing

(You can get My Utmost for His Highest free online from here: http://www.myutmost.org/)

We think rightly of wrongly about prayer according to the conception we have in our minds of prayer. If we think of prayer as the breath in our lungs and the blood in our heart, we think rightly. The blood flows continually; we are not always conscious of it, but it is always going on. We are not always conscious of Jesus keeping us in perfect harmony with God, but if we are obeying Him, He always is.
Prayer is not an exercise, it is the life. Beware of anything that stops sudden, spontaneous prayer. “Pray without ceasing,” keep the childlike habit of spontaneous prayer in your heart to God all the time.
Jesus never mentioned unanswered prayer; He had the boundless certainty that prayer is always answered. Have we by the Spirit the unspeakable certainty that Jesus had about prayer, or do we think of the times when God does not seem to have answered prayer? “Every one that asketh receivith” We say – “But…,but….” God answers prayer in the best way, not sometimes, but every time, although the immediate manifestation of the answer in the area in which we want, it may not always follow. Do we expect God to answer prayer?
The danger of us is that we want to water down the thing that Jesus says and make them mean something in accordance with common sense; if it were only common sense, it was not worthwhile for Him to say it. The things Jesus says about prayer are supernatural revelations.

Some personal thoughts on prayer and relationship with the Lord:
Prayer is not about me getting something from God – it’s real purpose is for me to get to KNOW God in a deep personal, intimate way. If I am walking with Him in this intimacy, then I will allow the freedom of this to allow Him to bring to me what I ought to pray. I cannot pray formal, dutiful religious prayers If I want to get to know God. – God is not part of them. He wants a transparent heart from me. I cannot not bring ‘surface’ praying before Him – He wants the intimacy too with me. This intimacy won’t and can’t take place if I don’t bring Him my all – absolutely everything that makes me, me. No secrets, no hidden chambers no tucked-away attics full of secret can’t-share- that-with-Him stuff. (He knows it all anyway) This I can hardly believe and leaves me breathless. It was this very thing that made me want to flee from His prescence a few years aso. Thankfully, He caught me by my shirt-collar as I was about to leave the Bible study and took me to a place of safety – His everlasting arms and held me fast.

If I am praying for someone who is giving me a hard time, or I am battling with -a ‘hedge-hoggy’ person, God uses prayer to change me in attitude to that person which changes the situation around. It is more often me and my heart who has to change. I have seen this happen many times already and it has eventually brought me so close to some of the most prickly people I have ever had in my life.

This praying without ceasing or praying continually has had my mind busy for a few years. When I first read about it, it puzzled me. How can you do this – how does it take place? If I am conscious of talking with the Lord, how does it become an unconscious, continual thing? How can I go about my day normally and yet still have this taking place? Because when it is conscious, we can put it down when we either choose to or just forget to be conscious and pick it up whenever we remember. Then that is not continual – “pray without ceasing?

So, if I now put it in the context of family – what I know about being married and having children – because I am not aware of them consciously all the time when I am not with them, does that mean they are not in my heart any more and I stop being with them in spirit or thinking about them – an “out of sight out of mind” situation? No, I think not. So it has to be like this with God, but even more so. He has to be first in every area. As I learn to love Him more and get to know Him more by chatting to Him on and off all day, I gradually become ‘unconciously conscious’ of Him in my heart and life, and by faith know absolutely, that this continuous prayer and communion is taking place, because my heart is kept open before Him and it is He who brings it about.

Another thing this does, is it makes it natural to call on Him when I am in need, immediately before I try to do things myself or ask someone else. I turn to Him first in every situation – not just when things are tough in my life. This is a wonderful ‘habit’ to form. I recently heard Paul Washer talking about praying for people. He has learned to first ask the person looking for prayer, if they have gone to the Lord about it. If they say “No”, he then sends them away to seek out the Lord’s answer first, then to come back if they still need to work things out together with him. I got so excited when I heard this as most people, myself included, never think of asking this question. We just go right on an pray for them. Give God His place. We are but servants. It’s so obvious when you look at it!

This ‘unconscious, consciousness’ of prayer changed my life and my relationship with the Lord. I had to ask Him to show me how to do this and have Him bring it about in my life. Often we don’t receive because we don’t ask or as Jesus Himself said in James 4 “Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss”. We need to seek after the things of God because that is where He is. Seek ye first the Kigndom of God…. (Matt 6:33)

Bless you and thank you for reading my ramblings this morning. I pray that the Lord will open us all more and more to Him as we walk with Him and develop an incredibly deeper intimacy with Him and He with us.