This very need is your prayer, and in case your need is constant, your prayer is constant too. The apostle supposed what he stated, Pray with out ceasing.
—Augustine (Expositions at the Psalms 37.14)
People do only a few issues with out ceasing. We’re by way of nature restricted beings. We can not at all times be operating or at all times speaking or at all times feeling unhappy, mad, or satisfied. We commence and forestall. We start and finish. But there are a few things we do with out ceasing; we breathe with out ceasing or we stop to be. Can a type of issues we do with out ceasing be prayer?
Paul’s exhortation to the Thessalonian church to “pray with out ceasing” turns out unattainable (1 Thessalonians 5:17). We draw back on the command as a result of we can not consider what it could imply to obey it. But there it’s in black and white at the web page: “pray with out ceasing.”
Most likely, despite the fact that, Paul’s command is only a method of talking and no longer one thing we must take actually. Certainly, Scripture has many equivalent instructions. Proper within the earlier verse, Paul says, “Have fun at all times.” Or, within the Psalms, we discover instructions to “search [God’s] presence regularly” and to “bless the Lord always” (Psalm 34:1; 105:4). What must finite people do with such absolute instructions?
One early church pastor, Augustine of Hippo (354–430), gives a solution by way of linking prayer and need intently in combination, each exegetically in his preaching and letters and by way of instance in his personal e-book Confessions.
Prayer and Want
To grasp prayer, in step with Augustine, we should perceive what it way to lengthy for God. Too steadily, we bring to mind prayer as most effective 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 need for God. “This very need is your prayer,” Augustine pronounces in a single sermon (En. Playstation. 37.14). A eager for God is the subterranean river underneath each authentic prayer for any just right present. We must no longer, despite the fact that, cave in need and prayer into one. Reasonably, prayer and need are connected like frame and soul. Our need for God provides existence to our prayer. And intentional prayer shapes and strengthens our need for God.
Augustine distinguishes between the broadest sense of prayer as a continual need 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 continual need full of religion, hope, and love. However at positive hours and moments we additionally pray to God in phrases” (Letter 130.9.18). The huge sense of need for God should encourage our intentional prayers lest they transform mere ritual or senseless babbling (Matthew 6:7). Authentic prayer starts in and is continued by way of need for God. And after we stop to need God, then we stop to in point of fact pray.
Lest our need for God fade, despite the fact that, we want the slender sense of prayer. Intentional prayer itself turns on and strengthens our need 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 does no longer already know. We reward and petition him to workout our need for God (Letter 130.8.17). For with out intentional prayer to turn on and support our need for God, the need would atrophy.
Prayer, then, each enacts and workout routines our need for God. However what then does it imply to “pray with out ceasing”? Augustine means that “in case your need is constant, your prayer is constant too” (En. Playstation. 37.14). Ceaseless prayer is a continual need for God.
Insatiable Want for God
Augustine illustrates a existence stuffed with eager for God within the three-hundred-page prayer referred to as his Confessions. He starts by way of pleading with God, “Let me search Thee, Lord, by way of praying Thy support, 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 pronounces his surprise and love for God. Woven into each a part of his prayer is one maintaining need to actually come to peer God as he’s: “Let me see Thy face although I die, lest I die with longing to peer it” (1.5.5). Augustine says we should be informed our longing from the psalmist: “Something I’ve requested of the Lord; this I search, that I would possibly reside in the home of the Lord the entire days of my existence, that I would possibly ponder the pride of the Lord” (Psalm 27:4; Letter 130.8.15).
However are we able to really feel this type of eager for God at all times? Augustine’s Confessions illustrates the number of bureaucracy such longing takes, and in a single letter on prayer, he explains that we will describe this need in different techniques. Our eager for God may also be described as a longing to be at liberty. Like pulling open an accordion, Augustine expands our sense of a continual need for God by way of describing it as eager for the glad existence, the everlasting existence discovered most effective in God. “Want with out ceasing the glad existence, which is none however everlasting existence,” Augustine exhorts in his letter to Proba (Letter 130.9.18). Our need to be at liberty is fulfilled no longer by way of anything else this international gives however in the end by way of God himself. Rightly ordered needs make a lifetime of ceaseless prayer conceivable.
“A eager for God is the subterranean river underneath each authentic prayer for any just right present.”
Residing a existence orientated towards God — a Godward existence — makes it conceivable to hope with out ceasing. Praying with out ceasing happens in a Godward existence insofar as we set our minds at the issues which might be above (Colossians 3:2). On this existence, we obtain each just right present with thanksgiving to God (1 Thessalonians 5:18). We additionally have fun in each trial as a result of we are aware of it is generating the type of religion that permits us to peer our nice God with larger readability and need him with deeper longing (James 1:2–4). This type of existence led by way of a continual need for God, despite the fact that, does no longer occur routinely.
Tending the Fireplace
Want, like hearth, should be tended. We’d like intentional prayer to maintain a continuing need for God. Augustine loves the metaphor of fireplace to explain need, and as he explores how we kindle need, he emphasizes the significance of the shape and frequency of intentional prayer. We’d like widespread intentional prayer to fan the flame of our need for God.
Pausing to hope at “positive hours and moments” works to “name the thoughts again to the duty of praying from different cares and considerations” (Letter 130.9.18). Stoke the hearth within the morning, at foods, and ahead of mattress (and in different moments too) so that you’ve got an ever-growing need for God. The disciples witnessed this type of common pursuit of God by way of Jesus in prayer and requested him how they must pray (Luke 11:1–4).
The type of the Lord’s Prayer supplies a trend for all our prayers. Augustine says, “When you run via the entire phrases of holy petitions, you are going to no longer in finding, in my view, anything else that this prayer of our Lord does no longer include and come with” (Letter 130.12.22). Each and every a part of the Lord’s Prayer bureaucracy our need for God, and following this trend filters out nugatory needs.
Tending to the hearth of our love for God with intentional prayer reorders our affections Godward in order that we will rightly align any just right need towards happiness in God. Common prayer, in step with the trend our Lord taught us, orders our loves for the entire items of earth by way of expanding our need for God. All of us naturally lengthy for the glad existence, and prayer reminds us that we discover happiness in God.
Eager for House
Ceaseless prayer is like eager for house at the adventure again. You’re by no means reasonably at leisure till you achieve house. Despite the fact that you’ll be refreshed alongside the way in which, you’re by no means reasonably happy with any just right factor as a result of house is the place your center longs to be. Many different needs crop up alongside the way in which, however your leader need — your one motivating, using need — is to be again house. So Augustine calls his congregation to boost up their eyes towards their heavenly house to keep in mind what they search:
Considering God’s glory and seeing him head to head we will be enabled to reward him eternally, with out wearying, with none of the ache of iniquity, with none of the perversion of sin. So lets reward God, not sighing for him however united with him for whom we now have sighed even to the tip, albeit completely satisfied in our hope. For we will be in that town the place God is our just right, God is our gentle, God is our bread, God is our existence. No matter is just right for us, no matter we pass over as we trudge alongside our pilgrim method, we will in finding in him. (En. Playstation. 37:28)
For Christians, our one need is to be with God eternally. With him is everlasting existence (John 17:3). At his proper hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). So whilst you learn Paul’s exhortation to hope with out ceasing, welcome it as a call for participation to domesticate an never-ending, ever-growing eager for God. Generally tend to the hearth of your love for God with widespread occasions of prayer formed by way of the petitions within the Lord’s Prayer. On this method, reside a lifetime of prayer — a Godward existence. And, as you adventure, take common glances upward with eager for the house simply over the horizon.
.jpg?w=350&resize=350,250&ssl=1 "A Different Spirit")
