Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. — 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18
As the apostle Paul finished his first letter to the church at Thessalonica, he closed with these bullet points of faithful conduct. What’s interesting about these short verses, is that right in the middle of his exhortations to be “joyful always” (which by the way means always) and to “give thanks in all circumstances (where all means all), is an instruction to “pray continually.”
Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not always joyful, nor do I always give thanks for my circumstances because sometimes my circumstances are not very pleasant or joyful. I’m sure you know what I mean. Life can get tough and even get ugly and frustrating. But this exhortation is still the same no matter what we are going through. “Be joyful—give thanks in all circumstances.” Well, how do we do that? By praying continually. Another translation says to “pray without ceasing.” Is that possible?
Dick Eastman in his School of Prayer manual makes this observation about prayer. He says, “To learn to pray we must pray. We learn prayer’s deepest depths in prayer, not from books. We reach prayer’s highest heights in prayer, not from sermons. The only place to learn prayer, is in prayer, bent and broken on our knees.”
Perhaps these words from that great preacher Charles Spurgeon will illustrate this point: “There is no need for us to go beating about the bush, and not telling the Lord distinctly what it is that we crave at His hands. Nor will it be seemly for us to make any attempt to use fine language; but let us ask God in the simplest and most direct manner for just the things we want…I believe in business prayers. I mean prayers in which you take to God one of the many promises which He has given us in His Word, and expect it to be fulfilled as certainly as we look for the money to be given us when we go to the bank to cash a check. We should not think of going there, lolling over the counter chattering with the clerks on every conceivable subject except the one thing for which we had gone to the bank, and then coming away without the coin we needed; but we should lay before the clerk the promise to pay the bearer a certain sum, tell him in what form we wish to take the amount, count the cash after him, and then go on our way to attend to other business. That is just an illustration of the method in which we should draw supplies from the Bank of Heaven.”1
Tonight at 7:00 PM we’re going to practice what we preach and pray for a Dynamic Revival in our church. Join us if you can at Heights Christian Church in Albuquerque. We’re located on the corner of Louisiana and Comanche NE. — Pastor Don
1The Kneeling Christian, Clarion Classics, 1986, Zondervan Publishing House, Page 79-80
