A Holy Charge (19)

 

“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).

 

Recalling that rejoicing always, praying without ceasing, and giving thanks in all things are woven into the essence of our koinonia with (and in) the Trinity, that they are expressions of our life in the Vine – how might we think about this admonition to always be praying?

 

(Can we see the continuous element in verses 16 – 18? Always rejoicing, always praying, and always giving thanks; if we give thanks for everything then we are always giving thanks.)

 

For sure prayer takes many forms. Paul urges that “entreaties [intercessions] and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men…” (1 Tim. 2:1). We pray for others; we also pray for ourselves, we give thanks on our own behalf, we make petitions. The one prayer we cannot pray on our own behalf is the prayer of intercession, that requires another to stand in our place before God; Jesus always does this (Heb. 7:25), but hopefully there are others who also intercede for us…well…let us hope there is a least someone who does.

 

Praying for someone is not the same as interceding for someone. To intercede for someone (or a people) means that we stand in that person’s place before our Father, it means that we identify ourselves with that person, it means that we bind ourselves to our prayers of intercession until an answer comes and our souls are released from the burden of intercession. Intercession may be for a short season, but it may also be for many months or years; indeed, it may be for a lifetime. Intercession is intensely sacrificial.

 

Praying for someone may morph into intercession…or it may not. When we pray for someone on a regular basis we may find times a sense of special prayer for the other person is placed on our hearts by the Holy Spirit – responding to the Holy Spirit in such times often leads us into a season of intercession.

 

I tell many people that I will pray for them, but seldom do I tell others that I will intercede for them. While all prayer is holy ground, intercession is a particular holy ground with a commitment and a cost – it is usually long term. The Lord hears our words, He knows whether we have made a commitment to intercede…and I do not think He takes these things lightly. After all, His intercession for us cost Him His life…and to one degree or another our intercession will cost us our own lives. “Death works in us, but life in you” (2 Cor. 4:12).

 

It has been said that prayer is conversation with God – this means both speaking and listening. I believe this, I strongly and deeply believe this; I believe conversational communion is at the core of our life in the Trinity. If we spend our days and nights in Jesus the Vine, it is natural that we’ll be enjoying listening to Him and speaking to Him – mutually sharing thoughts with each other.

 

It we spend our days with a spouse or a friend; there will be times we engage in conversation and there will be times we are both silent; every day will probably not be the same. The absence of verbal conversation does not mean that we are not together, it does not mean that we are not thinking about each other, it does not mean that our presence has been withdrawn from one another. There may be days when one spouse talks more than another. Ought we not learn to be natural with our Father, with our Lord Jesus, and with the Holy Spirit?

 

Yet, while prayer is conversation with God, we know from Scripture that prayer takes many forms and some of those forms have a special “voice” to them – such as intercession. Other forms can include petitions for oneself or others, thanksgivings, confession of sin, a plea for wisdom, prayers for healing, prayer when making a decision (Jesus spent the night in prayer before choosing the Twelve).

 

I am making this point because as much as I cherish the image of prayer being conversation with God, and as much as I have endeavored to practice this as the fabric of my life, prayer can also require much work and sacrifice, it can require wisdom as it is based on the Word of God and the Promises of God as contained in His Word. Prayer often requires discipline, in fact, we may fail to engage in forms of Biblical prayer because we are not living lives of discipleship – therefore we do not have a foundation upon which to build and practice a life of prayer.

 

Many years ago, when I was pondering my prayer life, I sensed the Father speaking to me, “Bob, why are you pondering your prayer life, when you should be thinking about living a life of prayer?”

 

We are called not so much to have “prayer lives,” but rather to live in intimate relationship with God, an intimacy in which we live lives of prayer.

 

I suppose I need to address the question, “Is this possible? Is it possible to pray without ceasing?"

 

O dear friends, to live in deep relationship with Jesus and with one another is our calling, and when we focus on Jesus we will (I think) stop asking such questions for we will realize that we are abiding in the Vine – in good days and bad, in sorrow and in joy – and we will be going deeper and higher in our dear Lord Jesus. Why, even should we sin we will still be praying…prayers of confession, of repentance, of consecration – there is always something to talk about with Jesus, our Father, and the blessed Holy Spirit – always!

 

Jesus calls us and He keeps us…and O my…how patient He is with us.

 

I suppose I should also mention that praying without ceasing is something we all need to learn from our Father and Lord Jesus. We can see it modeled in others, we can learn some things from others about prayer in its many forms, but there are places where only you can go in our Father – I cannot go there for you and you cannot go there for me. The Scriptures give us many expressions of prayer, many forms, many images, and the Holy Spirit can draw us into them and can plant them within us – and so we ought to know His Word – I think this is critical.

 

On the other hand, I do not think teaching others “techniques” and methods is generally helpful. Yes, perhaps for a time they can be as training wheels on a child’s bicycle – and if they are treated that way it is one thing, but to think that certain forms and techniques are for adult bicyclists is…I think…not wise. Our relationship with the Trinity is organic, therefore our lives of prayer are organic. Let us remember that the Word of God, the Scriptures, are organic – they are living in Christ, displaying Christ, and drawing us into the Trinity.

 

Praying without ceasing is a charge to us as individuals, as husbands and wives, as families, and as congregations.

 

How are we responding to this holy charge?

 

Postscript: The longest book of the Bible, Psalms, is a book of prayers; so let us not be so foolish as to discount the value of written prayers, including those embedded in liturgies. Written prayers can be a framework in which we commune with God and can give us freedom to go ever deeper and higher in Him – as individuals and as His People. Those who are accustomed to written prayers often forget what they have in Christ because the prayers are familiar, and those who discount the holiness of written prayers miss riches that they could have in Christ. Psalm 23 is more real to me today than yesterday and I have known it since I was a young child. If you are a pastor, elder, or teacher – have you written a prayer for your people to pray together? If not, why not? Some of us can bake cakes and cookies, you can bake a prayer for others.

A Holy Charge (18)

 

 

“Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16 - 18).

 

What do you see in verses 16 – 18? How do you see what you see? That is, how do you read what you see? Often, how we read determines what we see.

 

Is there a difference between reading verses 16 – 18 the way it is written above, and the way I’ll write it now?

 

“Rejoice always.”

 

“Pray without ceasing.”

 

“In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”

 

Read both ways aloud and see if you sense a difference. You might or you might not.

 

There is a sense in which perhaps we ought to read these verses in stereo in order to “see” the fulness of the image; there is a sense in which these verses are a trinity, with three in one and one in three. If we look at them one way we’ll see one thing, if we look at them another way we’ll see another image, a similar image to be sure, an image with the same elements; but nevertheless a different image – we really can’t separate the two images, but we can distinguish them.

 

Now you’re probably wondering what I’m talking about, and I appreciate your patience. Perhaps our primary tendency is to read verses 16 – 18 as a list of three things we ought to be doing: rejoicing, praying, giving thanks. When I hear folks talk about this passage I hear them taking in terms of a list. “What is it to rejoice always?” “What is it to give thanks in everything?” And of course, all of my life I’ve heard people discuss what in the world Paul means by “Pray without ceasing.”

 

For sure these are reasonable questions; questions that ought to be explored, commands that ought to be obeyed, practices that ought to be nurtured and cultivated and passed on to others. But is there more? Is there another way to read and “see” this passage?

 

Is this passage more than a list that is to be read number 1, number 2, number 3?

 

I think so. I think these verses are an image of the woman or man or young person who is living in communion with Jesus Christ, in intimate fellowship with Him. To live in intimacy with Christ, and in Christ, is to know, experience, and manifest rejoicing, praying, and thanksgiving as a Way of Life, for it is to live in Christ and to know Christ living in us.

 

We might think of rejoicing, praying, and thanksgiving as a threefold cord which is not easily broken. These three elements of the Christian life are not so much things we do, but rather who we are as we live in the Holy Trinity. Yes, of course, we “do” these things, but we do them because we are them in Christ. Yes, when we begin this journey we may very well do these things because they are commands, but we may find that as we “do” them we become them, and as we become them we do them and find they are embedded in our Nature in Christ.

 

This is what I meant above when I suggested that we have a trinity in these verses, we can see them as a unity while also seeing their individual characteristics – we see the one image in the three (rejoicing, praying, giving thanks), and we see all three in one (the woman or man or young person living in Jesus Christ).

 

Are not rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks what we ought to experience as our Way of Life abiding in the Vine? Ought this not to be our normal Way of Life?

 

When Peter writes of us having “joy inexpressible and full of glory” he is writing of our love for Jesus and our trust in Him (1 Pt. 1:8). When Jesus is the heartbeat of our lives we will know His joy and will be “rejoicing night and day as we walk the pilgrim way.”

 

When Paul writes, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4), he writes from prison – and is this not what the Philippians might have expected? After all, it was in Phillipi that Paul and Silas sang praises to God in prison after having been beaten with “many blows” (Acts 16:22 – 30).

 

The Thessalonians themselves “received the word [of God] in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:6).

 

Jesus desires that His joy may be in us and that our joy may be made complete (John 15:11), and He has given us His Word so that we “may have My joy made full in themselves” (John 17:13).

 

This is the Jesus “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).

 

Have we forgotten that the Kingdom of God “is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17)?

 

Where is our joy today? Where is the joy of the professing church? Where is the joy of the Bride? Where is the inherent joy in Jesus Christ that ought to be flowing from us day after day…at home, in friendships, at work, at school, in our communities…and of course, as we gather as His People?

 

Our joy is greater than this present age, it is greater than our sufferings, greater than our anxieties, greater than the news, greater than economic forecasts – for our joy is in Jesus and it flows from Him, into our souls…and hopefully outward to others.

 

Can we hear the words of Nehemiah?

 

“Go, eat of the fat, drink of the sweet, and send portions to him who has nothing prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength” (Neh. 8:10)?

 

O dear friends, Jesus Christ has given us Himself – is He not the sweet fat of life? Is His Spirit and love and forgiveness not the sweetest waters anyone can ever drink from? Ought we not to be sending the fruit and love and grace of Jesus to all those around us? Wherever we are, wherever they are?

 

The joy of Jesus is indeed our strength – it makes no sense, anymore than does the peace of God keeping our hearts and minds and souls (Phil. 4:6 – 7). O dear ones, we are speaking of something that is supernatural, something we can only know and share in and through the Holy Spirit. Only the Holy Spirit living within us can bring forth the fruit of rejoicing, praying always, and giving thanks in all things.

 

Rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks are at the core of our intimacy with Christ Jesus – they flow from the throne of God – they do not make sense to the world and to much of the professing church – man cannot produce them, but in Christ we can experience them as our Way of Life…and let us make no mistake…rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks is at the core of credible and life-changing witness…for it is so other-worldly that the hungry and thirsty of the world are drawn to it.

 

Shall the joy of the LORD be our strength today?