{"id":11709,"date":"2017-12-11T14:22:17","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T19:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ben-sternke-live.prev17.rmkr.net\/?p=11709"},"modified":"2025-03-07T18:54:58","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T22:54:58","slug":"pray-without-ceasing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gravitycommons.com\/es\/pray-without-ceasing\/","title":{"rendered":"How To (Start To) Pray Without Ceasing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you struggle with prayer? I sure do. I remember in high school when I first read Paul\u2019s instructions to the church in Thessalonica:<\/p>\n

Rejoice always, pray continually,<\/strong> give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God\u2019s will for you in Christ Jesus\u201d<\/em> (1 Thess 5:16-18).<\/p>\n

I could get my head around rejoicing \u201calways\u201d and giving thanks in all circumstances (these seemed like attitudes I could carry with me), but what in the world would it mean to pray<\/em> continually?<\/p>\n

Some translations say \u201cpray without ceasing.\u201d Is Paul saying that the goal is to become a monk, so you can devote the entirety of your time to prayer? What could \u201cpray without ceasing\u201d mean for people who have jobs and kids?<\/p>\n

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Learning to pray by praying<\/h2>\n

One mistake I see people often make in their attempts to pray without ceasing is to think they can jump right to the \u201cwithout ceasing\u201d part and skip the praying part. In other words, they think they can just \u201cmake their whole life a prayer\u201d by trying.<\/p>\n

But that never really works. You don\u2019t learn anything by just\u00a0trying<\/em>. You have to engage in some\u00a0training.<\/em> Which means practice. Which means practicing something specific at certain times. Which means you can\u2019t really learn to pray without ceasing until you learn to pray for a few minutes at a time.<\/p>\n

So the first part of learning to pray without ceasing is to make sure you actually have some sort of rhythm of daily prayer. The only way to learn to pay attention to God with your whole life is to practice paying attention to God at specific times.<\/p>\n

I recommend\u00a0at least<\/em> scheduling time for morning prayer, but committing to a short time of prayer at noon and in the evening has also been an incredibly fruitful discipline for me.<\/p>\n

Learning from tradition is listening to dead people<\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s where I always got tripped up, though. I would decide to get up at a certain time in the morning and pray for 30 minutes. I\u2019d get up, make some coffee, sit in my chair, and\u2026 didn\u2019t know what to do. I\u2019d read my Bible for a bit, then try and think of something to pray about, then get distracted by something I forgot to do yesterday, and then usually end up checking my email.<\/p>\n

Part of my issue was that I thought authentic<\/em> prayer was the same thing as spontaneous<\/em> prayer.<\/strong>\u00a0I thought that prayers I \u201cmade up\u201d on demand were \u201ctruer\u201d than pre-written prayers. Nonsense.<\/p>\n

Prayer is not just about me expressing myself to God, it\u2019s about being formed by God into the image of Christ. Prayer is something we must learn<\/em>, as the disciples intuited when they asked Jesus to teach<\/em> them to pray.<\/p>\n

As Brian Zahnd says, \u201cThe primary purpose of prayer is not to get God to do what we think God ought to do. The primary purpose of prayer is to be properly formed<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the ways we learn to pray is by submitting to the wisdom of those who\u2019ve gone before us in faith. That\u2019s all tradition is: the collected wisdom of our ancestors in the faith. Why wouldn\u2019t we pay attention to them? As G.K. Chesterton said, \u201cTradition means giving a vote to\u2026 our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is part of the reason Brian Zahnd\u2019s Prayer School<\/strong> was so helpful for me. It was\u00a0training<\/em> in a traditional method of prayer that could actually spiritually form me as I practiced it over time. I actually still use this prayer regimen every morning almost two years later. It completely transformed my prayer life.<\/p>\n

\"Prayer<\/a>

Photo of Prayer School with Brian Zahnd.<\/p><\/div>\n

Learning from dead people how to pray without ceasing<\/h2>\n

\"IconSo there is tremendous wisdom in learning from tradition how to practice some kind of regular rhythm of prayer. But I\u2019ve also discovered that, in addition to fixed rhythms of prayer, Christians have been finding ways to \u201cpray without ceasing\u201d for centuries.<\/p>\n

One way that\u2019s easy to start practicing is called the Jesus Prayer, and it comes from Jesus\u2019 parable in which a Pharisee loudly thanks God that he\u2019s so blessed, and a despised tax collector prays, \u201cLord, have mercy on me, a sinner\u201d (Luke 18:10-14).<\/p>\n

God hears the tax collector\u2019s prayer, Jesus says. The prayer that developed in Christian tradition, then, goes like this:<\/p>\n

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some people call it a \u201cbreath prayer,\u201d because it is easily memorized, and because you can pray it under your breath,<\/p>\n