Praying Unceasingly
1 Thessalonians 5:17
Our text this morning is one verse, chapter 5 and verse 17. First Thessalonians 5:17 says, "Pray without ceasing."
The Apostle Paul in this simple and specific command calls on Christians to pray basically as a way of life. I used to say praying is like breathing, it's just normal, it's just natural, it's just living for us. We inhale, we exhale the atmosphere of the presence and the power of God. And while that is true, it is also true that we who are dependent on God and who if genuinely Christians do commune with God do not pray as unceasingly as we ought to pray. We are guilty, I think, of spiritually holding our breath. While we would assume that the pressure of the very environment of God's presence would force us to pray even as air pressure forces us to breathe, that's not necessarily the case. And we as Christians restrict our intake, the very presence of God, due to our own sinfulness. And so comes the injunction of the Apostle Paul to pray without ceasing, to pray at all times. Continual persistent, incessant prayer is an essential part of Christian living and it flows out of dependence on God.
I want us to understand this principle of praying without ceasing and while just reading it gives you certain clear understanding, there is much more to enhance the significance of that statement found in Scripture and I want to see if I can't give you some of the riches of what the Word has to say. A good starting point is to look at two parables that our Lord gave. In fact, among the many parables of our Lord, these two stand out as unique. They are unique for a very simple and interesting reason. All other parables relate to God by comparison. All other parables relate to God by comparison. In some way they are like God, they are like God's Kingdom, they are like the way God operates. These two parables relate to God by contrast. They are not like God. They're the only two parables Jesus ever gave that relate to God in a contrasting way. These two parables show us illustrations of someone who is utterly unlike God and in so doing make a very very strong point about this matter of persistent praying without ceasing.
Let's turn to these two parables. The first one we find is in Luke chapter 11. It is called the parable of the reluctant friend, Luke chapter 11. Our Lord gave it in a context of prayer. In fact, the disciples had come to Him and they said, Luke 11:1, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John also taught his disciples. And Jesus responded to them with the very familiar words, When you pray say, Father, hallowed by Thy name, Thy kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us, and lead us not in to temptation," the familiar Lord's prayer or Disciple's prayer.
So in verses 2 to 4 Jesus taught them what to say. He taught them basically the content of prayer. When you pray you are to honor God and hallow His name. You are to pray for those things that relate to His Kingdom. You are to seek the daily provision that He alone gives. You are to confess your sins and seek His forgiveness. And you are to ask for His wisdom so as not to be led in to temptation. Those are the component parts of prayer, that's how to pray, what to say when you pray.
But beyond that, "He said to them, Suppose one of you shall have a friend and shall go to him at midnight and say to him, Friend, lend me three loaves for a friend of mine has come to me from a journey and I have nothing to set before him. And from inside he shall answer and say, Do not bother me, the door has already been shut and my children and I are in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything." You have to remember that in those days when it was cold, the whole family got in the same bed for the sake of warmth and they were all tucked in and warm and it was midnight and this was not a time to get out of bed and get some bread for your friend.
Verse 8, "I tell you, Jesus said, even though he will not get up and give his friend anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence, he will get up and give him as much as he needs." In other words, what he wouldn't do for friendship he'll do for sleep because the guy won't go away until he gets his bread. So Jesus is saying, here is a man whose friendship will not allow him to make this gesture of sacrifice, so the man just keep irritating him until he finally has no choice. This, our Lord is saying, should instruct us about the benefits of persistence. But the point He is really making here is that when you consider how unlike the reluctant friend God is the parable becomes all the more striking. If a reluctant friend will do something for you because you're persistent, imagine what a God who is not reluctant will do if you're persistent. That's the contrast. And Jesus goes on to talk about a father who is asked by his son, verse 11, for a fish, he won't give him a snake, will he, instead of a fish. Or if he asks for an egg he will not give him a scorpion, will he? In other words, an earthly father is not going to give something that will harm his child. An earthly father will hear the cry of his child. Then in verse 13, "If you then being evil," that's the point, "know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father, implied, who is not evil give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him."
God is so different, but God responds to persistence. If an unfaithful friend, a reluctant friend, an unsympathetic friend, a friend who lacks compassion, a friend who has no mercy and feels no grace will because of your persistent asking respond, what do you think a God who is loving, gracious, merciful, compassionate and tender hearted will do if you're persistent? Praying without ceasing moves the hand of God.
So, first He told them what to say and then Jesus said, "Now I want to remind you to keep saying it...to say it with persistence because God who is good will hear and respond."
In Luke 18 there is another parable that follows the same contrastive style. In verse 1 of Luke 18 Jesus again has been teaching about prayer and He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not lose heart. If you don't get an immediate answer, if things aren't exactly the way you want them to be, if things don't turn around as quickly as you might have planned, don't lose heart, you need to continue to pray. You need to pray at all times incessantly, continually without ceasing. And then to illustrate this He says, "There was in a certain city a judge who didn't fear God and didn't respect man." Now you'll have to figure out for yourself how he got to be a judge, but he did. "And there was a widow in that city, at least in this story, and she kept coming to him, this judge, repeatedly saying, Give me legal protection from my opponent." Apparently someone was doing everything possible to take away her meager substance in life and she was pleading for justice at the court of this judge. "And for a while...verse 4 says...he was unwilling. But afterward he said to himself, Even though I do not fear God, nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me I will give her legal protection lest by continually coming she wear me out." This woman is a pain. "What I will not do for love of God and will I not do for love of humanity, I will do for peace of mind," he's saying. I can't take this constant badgering.
And then verse 6, "And the Lord said, Hear what the unrighteous judge said, now shall not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night and will he delay long over them? I tell you, He will bring about justice for them speedily." You see, God is different than an unjust judge. God is different than a reluctant friend, but if a reluctant friend and an unjust judge will do what is asked because of the continual pleading, then certainly a compassionate loving gracious kind tender‑hearted God will do more. That's His point.
And so, Jesus is saying in effect, pray, pray like this, pray persistently, pray consistently, pray at all times, don't give up, don't lose heart, keep knocking, keep asking, keep seeking and good, compassionate, faithful, loving, gracious, merciful Jehovah, your God, will hear and answer.
Now some have imagined that such parables are contradictory to other things that Jesus taught. For example, back in Matthew chapter 6 He said something it may on the surface appear contradictory and needs to be understood, in Matthew 6 verse 7 Jesus said, "And when you are praying do not use meaningless repetition as the heathen do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words, therefore do not be like them for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him."
You say, "Now isn't this contradictory? Isn't He saying don't be repetitious in your praying?" No, He is saying don't be meaninglessly repetitious, that's the key word. What do you mean meaningless repetition? Well the kind of prayers that the pagans pray. They suppose they will be heard for their many words. In other words, it isn't that the deity cares about their heart, it isn't that the God understands the compassion, the passion, the pain, the longing, the desire of the heart, it is that there is some formula, some religious ritual, some ceremony, some mantra, some chant, some something or other, some sequence of beads, some repetitious formula that's going to somehow make that God do something that he otherwise wouldn't do. Jesus was simply saying to them don't pray in that way. He is not forbidding meaningful repetition. He is not forbidding the pleading of the heart. What He is forbidding is empty ritual, heartless babble that flows only from the mouth and assumes that God will be responding because of the words rather than the heart.
So when Paul says pray without ceasing, he's not in disagreement with Jesus. He is simply supporting the principle taught in Luke 11 and Luke 18 that prayer is to be incessant. We are not heard simply for our many words, but we are heard for the cry of our heart. The man who came to his friend's house and needed bread did not pray a formula ritual prayer, he pleaded for something he needed. The widow who came to the judge did not offer to the judge some mantra or some chant or some recitation of ritual prayer. The woman gave the cry of her heart for protection from one who had the power to do that. And such heart crying repetitious prayer is that which moves the heart of a compassionate loving God.
In fact, we can even start to understand praying without ceasing by looking at the life of our Lord Himself since He did that. He was obviously in constant communion with the Father. And we see Him in Scripture rising up early to pray. We see Him spending all night in prayer. It must have been an unending and non‑stop communion between Himself and the Father. Hebrews tells us that He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears. That is a fascinating insight. There was an intensity in the prayers of Jesus that is utterly unique, that is utterly amazing. When He prayed on a number of occasions, there was a great agonizing. And we can assume that even though the Scripture does not chronicle for us all the details of all of His praying, that it had much of the same kind of intensity as those prayers that we do see and have revealed to us in the text. When the Bible tells us that He went in to the Mount of Olives and prayed all night, there was no doubt an intensity in that kind of praying that we know very little about, if anything.
The one great classic illustration we have of the intensity of His praying comes in the garden prior to His death where we see Him praying there in sweat in an agony of blood. He is kneeling down and praying, Luke writes in chapter 22, saying, "Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me, nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done." And Luke writes, "And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly and His sweat became as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground."
There is an agonizing intense kind of experience here that causes the Lord Jesus Christ to sweat and then to begin to bleed in that very environment of prayer. That strikes me. It also strikes me that in Matthew chapter 26 verses 38 to 46 it tells us that Jesus repeated the process of His pleading in the garden for three consecutive times. This was a prolonged prayer experience. In fact, we know well that it was prolonged so long that the disciples fell asleep on several occasions. And so in this prolonged agony of prayer we get an insight into the life of our Lord Jesus Christ which is quite unique.
Let me tell you what I mean by that. The Lord Jesus Christ wrought many mighty works when He was on earth. In none of them is there any apparent expenditure of energy. Though the Scripture says virtue went out of Him, there is nothing that He does in all of the holy scriptures in terms of the record of the New Testament which would indicate that there was any agonizing in the process of performing that miracle...whether it would be giving sight to the blind, or hearing to the deaf, or speech to the dumb, or giving health to the sick body or giving walking capability to a lame person, or whether it was raising someone from the dead, or whether it was feeding 5,000 men plus women plus children, 20,000 people by the seaside, or whether it was calming a storm, or whether it was walking on water...it didn't matter what it was there is no record that there was any apparent expenditure of energy, any toil, any sweat, any drops of blood in some kind of agonizing to make that thing happen. There seem to have been no weariness involved, no toil involved, no strain involved, no travail involved until it came to prayer. And when He prayed there was an agony, there was a wrenching of His heart, His very being that showed up in His physical body. He prayed in an agony unto blood, a level of intensity that certainly speaks of the persistence that Jesus indicated in Luke 11 and 18 and what Paul had in mind when he said pray without ceasing.
The early church was marked by this kind of continual passionate unceasing prayer from the very start. Even before the day of Pentecost in Acts 1:14, all the believers were one, it says, one mind and continually devoting themselves to prayer, incessant prayer, constant prayer, persistent prayer marked the early church. When the Apostles were structuring the church so that all the ministry could be accomplished, they themselves said, "We can't do all of these routine things but we will devote ourselves to prayer....we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word."
In Acts chapter 12 again we see the early church. Peter was kept in prison but prayer for him was being made fervently by the church of God. Fervent prayer, incessant prayer, persistent prayer marked the early church.
When you come into the epistles, whether you're reading Romans, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, whether you're reading 1 Thessalonians, you hear Paul exhorting believers to prayer. In fact, perhaps as significantly as any of those epistles is Ephesians in marking out the importance of prayer. He says in Ephesians 6:18,