This very want is your prayer, and in case your want is steady, your prayer is steady too. The apostle meant what he mentioned, Pray with out ceasing.
—Augustine (Expositions on the Psalms 37.14)
People do only a few issues with out ceasing. We’re by nature restricted beings. We can’t at all times be working or at all times speaking or at all times feeling unhappy, mad, or glad. We begin and cease. We start and finish. But there are some issues we do with out ceasing; we breathe with out ceasing or we stop to be. Can a kind of issues we do with out ceasing be prayer?
Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonian church to “pray with out ceasing” appears unattainable (1 Thessalonians 5:17). We balk on the command as a result of we can’t think about what it might imply to obey it. But there it’s in black and white on the web page: “pray with out ceasing.”
Maybe, although, Paul’s command is only a method of talking and never one thing we should always take actually. Certainly, Scripture has many related instructions. Proper within the earlier verse, Paul says, “Rejoice at all times.” Or, within the Psalms, we discover instructions to “search [God’s] presence frequently” and to “bless the Lord always” (Psalm 34:1; 105:4). What ought to finite people do with such absolute instructions?
One early church pastor, Augustine of Hippo (354–430), affords a solution by linking prayer and want carefully collectively, each exegetically in his preaching and letters and by instance in his personal e-book Confessions.
Prayer and Want
To grasp prayer, in accordance with Augustine, we should perceive what it means to lengthy for God. Too typically, we consider prayer as solely the head-bowed, hands-folded second of intentional reward or petition. Imagining prayer this fashion can blind us to the essence of prayer, which is our want for God. “This very want is your prayer,” Augustine declares in a single sermon (En. Ps. 37.14). A eager for God is the subterranean river beneath each real prayer for any good present. We must always not, although, collapse want and prayer into one. Moderately, prayer and want are linked like physique and soul. Our want for God provides life to our prayer. And intentional prayer shapes and strengthens our want for God.
Augustine distinguishes between the broadest sense of prayer as a steady want for God and a slender sense of prayer as intentional acts of speaking with God. As Augustine writes in a single letter, “We at all times pray with a steady want crammed with religion, hope, and love. However at sure hours and moments we additionally pray to God in phrases” (Letter 130.9.18). The broad sense of want for God should encourage our intentional prayers lest they change into mere ritual or senseless babbling (Matthew 6:7). Real prayer begins in and is sustained by want for God. And after we stop to want God, then we stop to actually pray.
Lest our want for God fade, although, we’d like the slender sense of prayer. Intentional prayer itself prompts and strengthens our want for God. We don’t reward God in prayer to satisfy a necessity in God to be praised. Nor can we petition God in prayer to tell him of one thing he doesn’t already know. We reward and petition him to train our want for God (Letter 130.8.17). For with out intentional prayer to activate and strengthen our want for God, the will would atrophy.
Prayer, then, each enacts and workouts our want for God. However what then does it imply to “pray with out ceasing”? Augustine means that “in case your want is steady, your prayer is steady too” (En. Ps. 37.14). Ceaseless prayer is a steady want for God.
Insatiable Want for God
Augustine illustrates a life stuffed with eager for God within the three-hundred-page prayer often called his Confessions. He begins by pleading with God, “Let me search Thee, Lord, by praying Thy help, and let me utter my prayer believing in Thee” (1.1.1). All through his Confessions, he praises and confesses to God, he wrestles and pleads with God, he declares his marvel and love for God. Woven into each a part of his prayer is one sustaining want to essentially come to see God as he’s: “Let me see Thy face even when I die, lest I die with longing to see it” (1.5.5). Augustine says we should be taught our longing from the psalmist: “One factor I’ve requested of the Lord; this I search, that I’ll dwell in the home of the Lord all the times of my life, that I’ll ponder the delight of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4; Letter 130.8.15).
However can we really feel such a eager for God on a regular basis? Augustine’s Confessions illustrates the number of kinds such longing takes, and in a single letter on prayer, he explains that we are able to describe this want in a number of methods. Our eager for God could be described as a longing to be pleased. Like pulling open an accordion, Augustine expands our sense of a steady want for God by describing it as eager for the pleased life, the everlasting life discovered solely in God. “Want with out ceasing the pleased life, which is none however everlasting life,” Augustine exhorts in his letter to Proba (Letter 130.9.18). Our want to be pleased is fulfilled not by something this world affords however in the end by God himself. Rightly ordered needs make a lifetime of ceaseless prayer attainable.
“A eager for God is the subterranean river beneath each real prayer for any good present.”
Dwelling a life oriented towards God — a Godward life — makes it attainable to hope with out ceasing. Praying with out ceasing happens in a Godward life insofar as we set our minds on the issues which are above (Colossians 3:2). On this life, we obtain each good present with thanksgiving to God (1 Thessalonians 5:18). We additionally rejoice in each trial as a result of we all know it’s producing the sort of religion that permits us to see our nice God with larger readability and want him with deeper longing (James 1:2–4). Such a life led by a steady want for God, although, doesn’t occur routinely.
Tending the Fireplace
Want, like fireplace, should be tended. We’d like intentional prayer to maintain a continuous want for God. Augustine loves the metaphor of fireplace to explain want, and as he explores how we kindle want, he emphasizes the significance of the shape and frequency of intentional prayer. We’d like frequent intentional prayer to fan the flame of our want for God.
Pausing to hope at “sure hours and moments” works to “name the thoughts again to the duty of praying from different cares and issues” (Letter 130.9.18). Stoke the fireplace within the morning, at meals, and earlier than mattress (and in different moments too) so that you’ve an ever-growing want for God. The disciples witnessed such an everyday pursuit of God by Jesus in prayer and requested him how they need to pray (Luke 11:1–4).
The type of the Lord’s Prayer gives a sample for all our prayers. Augustine says, “If you happen to run via all of the phrases of holy petitions, you’ll not discover, in my view, something that this prayer of our Lord doesn’t comprise and embody” (Letter 130.12.22). Every a part of the Lord’s Prayer kinds our want for God, and following this sample filters out nugatory needs.
Tending to the fireplace of our love for God with intentional prayer reorders our affections Godward in order that we are able to rightly align any good want towards happiness in God. Common prayer, in accordance with the sample our Lord taught us, orders our loves for all of the items of earth by growing our want for God. All of us naturally lengthy for the pleased life, and prayer reminds us that we discover happiness in God.
Eager for Residence
Ceaseless prayer is like eager for residence on the journey again. You’re by no means fairly at relaxation till you attain residence. Though it’s possible you’ll be refreshed alongside the way in which, you’re by no means fairly happy with any good factor as a result of house is the place your coronary heart longs to be. Many different needs crop up alongside the way in which, however your chief want — your one motivating, driving want — is to be again residence. So Augustine calls his congregation to elevate up their eyes towards their heavenly residence to recollect what they search:
Considering God’s glory and seeing him nose to nose we will be enabled to reward him without end, with out wearying, with none of the ache of iniquity, with none of the perversion of sin. So we could reward God, now not sighing for him however united with him for whom we’ve got sighed even to the tip, albeit joyful in our hope. For we will be in that metropolis the place God is our good, God is our mild, God is our bread, God is our life. No matter is nice for us, no matter we miss as we trudge alongside our pilgrim manner, we will discover in him. (En. Ps. 37:28)
For Christians, our one want is to be with God without end. With him is everlasting life (John 17:3). At his proper hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). So while you learn Paul’s exhortation to hope with out ceasing, welcome it as an invite to domesticate an never-ending, ever-growing eager for God. Are likely to the fireplace of your love for God with frequent occasions of prayer formed by the petitions within the Lord’s Prayer. On this manner, reside a lifetime of prayer — a Godward life. And, as you journey, take common glances upward with eager for the house simply over the horizon.
