To “pray without ceasing” refers recurring prayer, not nonstop talking. Prayer is to be a way of life–you’re to be continually in an attitude of prayer. It is living in continual God-consciousness, where everything you see and experience becomes a kind of prayer, lived in deep awareness of and surrender to Him. It should be instant and intimate communication-not unlike that which we enjoy with our best friend.
I agree. But this could also wreck your prayer life.
While I agree that “pray without ceasing” is a sort of nonstop conversation with the Lord, it is also true that prayer should not be multi-tasked. At least a certain kind of prayer shouldn’t be. When Jesus taught the disciples how to pray he didn’t speak of “God-consciousness”. He modeled for them specific times of being alone with the Father and seasons of concentrated and focused prayer.
What I’ve found in my own life is that I can actually use “pray without ceasing” as a smokescreen for my flailing prayer life. I can trick myself into thinking that I’m following the Lord’s call upon my life to be “devoted to prayer” by “praying without ceasing”. But in reality I’m just multi-tasking. And it’s absolutely impossible to devote yourself to something while another thing has a bit of your attention.
As pastors we are called to be “devoted to prayer” and “to the preaching of the Word”. This means there will be times when I’m about the business of proclamation and that is when “pray without ceasing” becomes part of the fabric of my activity. My communication with the Lord is part of the background. But there must also be times when I’m devoted to prayer and the proclamation side of things fades a bit into the background.
If the only prayer we do is multi-tasked then we’re well on our way to shipwrecking our lives and our ministries. We are as Spurgeon said lopsided and have one leg much shorter than the other.
Of course the preacher is above all others distinguished as a man of prayer….The minister who does not earnestly pray over his work must be a vain and conceited man. He acts as if he thought himself sufficient of himself, and therefore needed not to appeal to God…He limps in his life like a lame man in Proverbs, whose legs are not equal, for his praying is shorter than his preaching. (Acts, Tony Merida, 94)
