To Pray Without Ceasing

I'm getting to the place where ANYTHING that distracts me from God's plan for me is probably not good. Like, okay, so God created us. Jesus is our King and our soon-to-be husband. He comes on a white horse, robes dripping in blood, etc (it's true, read Revelation), and whether
that is literal or figurative, it's still INTENSE. The Bible describes Him as being jealous for us, that means jealous for our love and our attention and our lives. And He deserves it! Everything that we have to give, and much more, He deserves, because He is the only one good and the only one who is faithful and the only one worthy of anything. So, I’ve come up with some steps to help me accomplish my goal, to be obedient in God’s desire for me to be abandoned to Him.

Our lives are NOT our lives. We raise our children for God, we love our spouses for God’s sake and because He allows us to; everything we do we do unto God for God’s sake. Or at least we should.

So, Step 1 is: Realize that your life is not your own.

The Bible says to pray without ceasing. Now, I'm not at that place yet (I say yet by faith that I will be at some point), but I do know that I can pray while working, while doing house work, while taking care of my kids...there is very little I can't pray during EXCEPT watching tv and movies. I don't know why, but my brain shuts down and nothing comes out or comes to mind. THAT is the biggest indication to me that I shouldn't watch it much, regardless of what the show is.

Step 2 is: Limit “innocent entertainments,” as much as possible with whatever grace God gives you to do so.

God wants to be loved and needed by us. The children of Israel were given Ten Commandments to follow. What they should have done was fall on their knees, broken, and beg God’s mercy and tell Him that it was impossible and that they needed Him. What they did was say, “oh, totally, sure, we can do that,” and they failed over and over again. Only in their desperation did they turn back to God. So, when God says, “pray without ceasing,” I know it’s impossible, I can’t do it. So, instead of ignoring that verse or making light of it, I fall on my knees and beg mercy and grace, and His help! We do not receive because we do not ask...so ask God for this Godly gift, to dwell in His presence!

Step 3 is: Ask God for the ABILITY to pray without ceasing.

There is a great book called “Practice of the Presence of God,” by Brother Lawrence that addresses this issue. It’s a good read, and a VERY short one, and is available for free online. It talks about the practicality of dwelling with God all the time, of praying without ceasing, and in a much better way than I can. Really, though, just practice. Pray, and when you realize that your mind drifted away three hours ago, repent and start up again. Soon you will find you are dwelling more communally with God more often and with less distraction. You will still accomplish your day-to-day tasks, but with the mind of Christ, which we are supposed to have anyway, right?

Step 4 is: Practice praying without ceasing.

Yes, this all does seem impossible, in fact, it IS impossible in and of ourselves. But God told us to, so we should do it anyway! Often, we read something in the Bible and think to ourselves, “oh, that’s not for me, that’s for pastors or church leadership,” or “that must be written for people who just lived in Jesus’ time,” but if the Bible directs us to do something, we should give ourselves to that thing.

What we feel is important is usually NOT important, not compared to what God’s plan is for us. We work, shop, save, eat, watch tv, sleep...and in a few decades we are dead with nothing to show for all of that. That’s why the Bible says to store up riches in Heaven...not that we should all quit our jobs and be pastors, that would be very impractical, but to live our lives as unto Him, to work as unto the Lord, to partner with Him to accomplish His purposes, and we accomplish that by dwelling with Him in our day to day lives.

Living Inside the Box

We live in a culture preoccupied with the idea of individuality, the desire to "be yourself," and to your "own self be true." We grow up with it, it's what our teachers tell us, and what our educational entertainment promotes. It's one of the many things that makes turning to Christ wholeheartedly so difficult in this day and age, because we know in order to do so, we have to give up our goals, dreams, desires, all the way to our innermost selves, which is the opposite of the knowledge we have been ingrained with.

Gal 5:1 says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free…." How can we be free if we have to give everything up? How can express our individuality when we are just a "little Christ?"

Consider an all-you-can-eat buffet. You can never really make up your mind what you want, so you sample a little of this and a little of that. Only a small part of what you eat you actually enjoy, and you end up making yourself sick by over-indulgence. Life without God is just that…a infinitely large, greasy all-you-can-eat buffet. Sure, you have choices, lots of them, but they are all bad, and you don't feel very good at the end of it.

In 'Mere Christianity,' C.S. Lewis writes, "It is no good trying to 'be myself' without Him [God]. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call 'Myself' becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call 'My wishes' become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men's thoughts or even suggested to me by devils…Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own personal political ideals, I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call 'me' can be very easily explained."

The reality is, life without God has many "choices" but no freedom, and we cannot give ourselves to Christ without giving up our "self." With the first, we are in the world, and with the second we are lukewarm, at best, and we all know what Christ said about that.

The only way to live free is to give our life to Jesus. He gives it back to us, squeaky clean and with a purpose. That is where our freedom comes, with direction and purpose, with something to live for besides ourselves. This is where our true personality develops, instead of one shaped by our conditions and circumstances.

"The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become." -C.S. Lewis