SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/17/2014
9:49 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Pray Without
Ceasing
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1
Thessalonians 5:17
Message of the
verses: 17 pray without ceasing;”
Let us begin with a quote from Warren Wiersbe who writes under
his main point of “Family Worship” “Worship is the most important activity of a
local church family. Ministry must flow
out of worship; otherwise it becomes busy activity without power and without
heart. There may be ‘results’ but they
will not glorify God or really last.
Many church services lack an emphasis on true worship and are more, like
religious entertainments, catering to the appetites of the congregation.” He then goes on to talk about prayer and
praise which cover verses 17-18.
When we get to this verse, verse 17 and read it we can
think of many different things and perhaps what we are thinking about is not
what the verse is talking about. We
wonder how can we pray all of the time when we have to work or we have to
sleep, and so perhaps we just want to give up and not dig into what the real
meaning of what Paul was writing about so we can follow his instructions. At this point in his letter he is writing
about some things that will help the Thessalonian church grow and worship the
Lord in a proper way, and one of the things he wants them to do is to pray
without ceasing. Warren Wiersbe says
that we are to keep the receiver off the hook so that we can always talk to the
Lord. He also writes “Pray without
ceasing” does not mean we must always be mumbling prayers. The word means ‘constantly recurring,’ not
continuously occurring.” He then writes
that “God know the desires of the heart (Ps. 37:4), and He responds to those
desires even when our voice is silent.
See Psalms 10:17; 21:2,” “17 O
LORD, You have heard the desire of the humble; You will strengthen their heart,
You will incline Your ear.” “2 You have
given him his heart’s desire, And You have not withheld the request of his
lips. Selah.” Psalm 37:4 reads “Delight
yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.”
John MacArthur ties being joyful with praying without
ceasing and writes: “Joyful believers
will also be prayerful believers. Those
who live their Christian lives in joyful dependency on God will continually recognize
their own insufficiency and therefore constantly be in an attitude of
prayer. Paul’s exhortation to the
Thessalonians to pray without ceasing is thus a divine mandate to all
believers.” He then goes on to explain
the words pray and without ceasing. The
word prayer is “from proseuchomai,
the most common New Testament word for prayer.
It encompasses all the aspects of prayer: submission, confession,
petition, intercession, praise, and thanksgiving. Without ceasing means ‘constant’ and defines
prayer not as some perpetual activity of kneeling and interceding but as a way
of life marked by a continual attitude of prayer.”
When we think about an example of prayer we must first of
all think of our Lord Jesus Christ when He was on earth. As we read through the gospels we can find
numerous times when our Lord was praying.
MacArthur writes “He undoubtedly prayed with a kind of intensity that
believers know little or nothing about.”
Now when we combine this with joyfulness that our Lord had we read in
Hebrews 12: 1-2 “Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses
surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so
easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before
us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the
author and perfecter of faith, 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.” We can see this most of all when our Lord
was praying in the garden the night before He was crucified as found in both
the gospels of Matthew and Luke, but since Luke was the beloved doctor he wrote
about Jesus actually perspiring blood when He was praying, for His prayer was
so intensified to His Father. Jesus was
about to be separated from His Father as His Father was about to take upon Him
the punishment for the sins of the world.
Jesus was separated from His Father because of our sins and He had never
been separated from His Father before, and this was why He fervently prayed to
His Father at this time. We can see how
much He loves us to do such a thing to provide salvation for those who would
accept His sacrifice for them.
In the early church we see from the book of Acts much
about prayer as it was the disciples of our Lord who had seen Him pray, and
thus they knew the importance of prayer and so they prayed fervently in the
early church.
In the sermon that John MacArthur did on this verse he
gave ten reasons why we should pray without ceasing. I am not going to give the entire quote, but
just list them and perhaps give a little bit of his commentary on them.
Number one is a desire for
the Lord’s glory. When we read “The Lord’s
Prayer” we first of all see “Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be Thy name,
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” When we pray this we are not praying four
ourselves, but we are praying that our Father’s will be done.
Number two reason for praying
without ceasing is “a desire for fellowship with God. “As the deer pants for the water brooks, So
my soul pants for You, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God (Psalm 42:1-2)?”
Thirdly is a desire for our
needs to be met. Jesus prayed “Give us
this day our daily bread.” MacArthur writes “It is right to pray that our needs
would be met. It is right to ask God for
the basic things of life. That’s a
prompter to prayer.”
The forth motive for
praying without ceasing is a desire for wisdom.
“James put it this way, ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God
who gives to all men liberally and holds back nothing.’” Now don’t believe that we do not need the
wisdom of God in our life, for we all do.
One of the verses that I use in my prayer life is Proverbs 3:5-6 “5
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own
understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy
paths.”
Number five is “prayer is
prompted by a desire of deliverance from trouble.” We can read through the Psalms and especially
the ones that found David running from Saul and we can see how he prayed for
deliverance from trouble. Let us look at
the prayer that Jonah said when he was in the belly of the great fish: “1 Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the stomach of the fish,
2 and he said, "I called out of my distress to the LORD, And He answered
me. I cried for help from the depth of Sheol; You heard my voice. 3 “For You
had cast me into the deep, Into the heart of the seas, And the current engulfed
me. All Your breakers and billows passed over me. 4 “So I said, ’I have been
expelled from Your sight. Nevertheless I will look again toward Your holy
temple.’ 5 “Water encompassed me to the point of death. The great deep engulfed
me, Weeds were wrapped around my head. 6 "I descended to the roots of the
mountains. The earth with its bars was around me forever, But You have brought
up my life from the pit, O LORD my God. 7 “While I was fainting away, I
remembered the LORD, And my prayer came to You, Into Your holy temple. 8 “Those
who regard vain idols Forsake their faithfulness, 9 But I will sacrifice to You
With the voice of thanksgiving. That which I have vowed I will pay. Salvation
is from the LORD."” We now see the
answer in verse ten: “10 Then the LORD
commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah up onto the dry land.”
Number six is “a desire for
relief from fear and worry.” Philippians
4:6 says “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” He goes on in verse 7 “And the peace of God,
which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus.” MacArthur writes “When you’re in
fear and anxiety and worry, you are in distress, you are in depression, what
should you do? Very simply, stop being
anxious and go to prayer and pray with a thankful heart and the peace of God
which surpasses all human comprehension will protect your heart and mind. What
does that mean? Guard it from anxiety;
guard it from depression, distress, fear, and worry. If you want a humanly comprehensible solution,
go to a person. If you want a humanly
incomprehensible solution, go to God. In the time of fear, in the time of
worry, in the time of anxiety, in the time of emotional distress and pain, the
formula is simple, just go to the Lord in persistent continual unceasing prayer
with thanksgiving and the peace of God promised will guard your heart and mind.”
Number seven is “a desire
to offer thanks for past blessing.”
Sometimes we pray and pray and finally get the answer and then forget to
praise the Lord for the answer we have been seeking for such a long time.
Number eight “here is a
very important motive to prayer and that is a desire to be freed from the guilt
of sin.” We need only to look at one of the Psalms that David wrote when he had
committed his sin with Bathsheba, and that is Psalm 32. I won’t quote this but it is good to take the
time to read over it..
Number nine is “a desire
for the salvation for the lost.” This is
a very important element of our prayer life as we pray for the lost, praying
that God would do that same miracle of the new birth in their lives that he has
done in ours.
Number ten “is prompted by
a desire for the spiritual growth of believers.” We only have to read through the letters that
Paul wrote to the churches that he founded to see that he prays for their
spiritual growth of them. This is
something we can continue to do as we all need to grow in our walk with the
Lord as long as we are on this earth. We
have a lot of good suggestions to pray about.
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: Continue to pray
and remember these ten items to pray about in my prayer life which is to be without
ceasing.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Pray without ceasing.
Memory verses for the
week: Colossians 3:1-6.
1 Therefore if you have
been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is,
seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set
your mind on things above, not on the things that are on earth. 3 For you have died and you life is hidden
with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who
is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. 5
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality,
impurity, passion, evil desire and greed, which amounts to idolatry. 6 For it is because of these things that the
wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience,
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Joshua” Joshua 3:9-17).
Today’s Bible
question: “Prior to first Samuel, what
made Israel different from other nations?”
Answer in our next SD.
8/17/2014 11:16 AM
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