The 21st century is distracting
In 1 Thessalonians 5:17 it says that we should “pray without ceasing”. Unless you are a monk, you probably don’t have the opportunity to dedicate all of your waking hours to prayer. We can be sure that the apostle Paul was not suggesting that we quit our jobs to go up on a mountain and pray all day, because he had some strong things to say about providing for our families (1 Tim 5:8).
That said, I think he was referring to more of a continual fellowship with God. Not knowing everyone’s situation, but judging from my own life, my hunch is that one of the biggest challenges our generation faces is distraction. Never has there been so many things fiercely fighting for our attention. But God isn’t. He is a gentleman, who is waiting for us to draw near to Him (James 4:8).
I remember a famous preacher who said, “I don’t often spend more than half an hour in prayer at one time, but I never go more than half an hour without praying.“
For me, my prayer-life is very chunky. That kind of sounds funny, but what I mean is that I have some regular blocks of time that I dedicate to prayer, but fail when it comes to maintaining a continual fellowship with God. So, this is why I am designing a challenge/experiment for myself based off the above quote….
My goal is to…
Pray at least 5 minutes every waking hour for 7 days straight.
I am going to set an alarm that will go off once every hour and I am going to force myself to abandon whatever I am doing at the moment and focus on God for at least 5 minutes. I have no doubt that this will be very impractical and extremely difficult to accomplish. But what do I have to lose?
The purpose
The purpose, of course, is not to create a religious routine or to try to “earn points” with God, but rather to train myself to get closer to praying without ceasing. Just like the 10 Day Give, the goal isn’t necessarily to continue giving something every day or to pray every hour for the rest of my life. But hopefully, after the challenge is complete, I will MORE consistently pray without ceasing than I do now.
So, anyway, that’s what I am up to for the next week. I will let you know how I am doing with the “experiment” as it progresses.
“He who is too busy to pray will be too busy to live a holy life. Satan had rather we let the grass grow on the path to our prayer chamber than anything else.” – E.M. Bounds
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I think this is a great idea. Sometimes I just get so wrapped up in distractions that I miss out on talking with God. When that happens it’s like I get out of sync. Setting the alarm on your watch is a great way to help yourself develop a good habit, even if it just reminds you that you need to be checking in with God.
Yea, it has been an interesting morning, I am looking forward to writing a post about what happened…
This is one of my faith goals for the new year!
This is such good advice. Too often we get caught up in the things that we “have” to get done, and forget what a joy just simple conversion with the Creator can be. In this time of nothing but discouraging news, thanks for an uplifting article.
Prayer is a conversation, like Mr. Imperfect says. Prayer isn’t just us talking, necessarily – it is God speaking as well, and he is speaking constantly in a million different ways. When I think of it that way, it is much easier to think how prayer without ceasing is possible.
But I’ve never accomplished it!
“I don’t often spend more than half an hour in prayer at one time, but I never go more than half an hour without praying.“ Smith Wigglesworth