EP 116: Stay on Your Knees (Pray without Ceasing)

In this week’s episode of Loving Life at Home, I’m tackling part two of my three-part series on Christian discipleship: Stay in the Book. Stay on Your Knees. And Stay after Souls.

It’s all about the topic and practice of prayer and its important place in the life of every believer who desires a closer, more vibrant walk with Christ.

Stay on Your Knees (Pray w/o Ceasing)

Complete Transcript from Episode 116

Hello, friend. Welcome to Episode 116 of Loving Life at Home. Today I’m doing part 2 of a three-part series on Christian discipleship, as summed up in an adage my youth pastor drilled into me 40+ years ago and one I’ve been faithfully trying to live by ever since. He taught us that believers need to stay in the Book, stay on their knees, and stay after souls.

So today’s topic is prayer. Staying on our knees. Continuing in prayer—not just as a blessing you say at mealtime or a benediction on the day as you drift off to sleep, but as a day-by-day, moment-by-moment way of life. A continual conversation with your Creator.

I’ve done a couple of podcasts on prayer before, which I’ll link in today’s show notes. But today I want to address five different aspects of prayer: the purpose of prayer, a pattern for prayer, our position in prayer, the power of prayer, and persistence through prayer.

So let’s start with the…

PURPOSE OF PRAYER

Why do Christians pray? What are we hoping to accomplish through our prayers?

I recently read something about prayer with which I strongly disagree: The author likened God’s power to a television signal and effective prayer to a properly positioned antenna. It posited that if you weren’t seeing God move in a mighty way in response to your prayers, it was because you weren’t properly plugged into the power source. Not rightly tuned into the signal.

That analogy bothers me for several reasons: Namely, it treats God like a cosmic Santa, it reduces prayer to manipulation technique, and it assumes that if God isn’t giving you everything you ask for, that you must be doing something wrong.

But just because we don’t always get what we want, doesn’t mean God is ignoring us or not responding to our prayers. He is in no way obligated to say “Yes” to every request. “No” is also a valid answer, as are “not right now” and “wait.”

So…if fulfilling our fleshly desires and granting wishes is not the purpose of prayer, then what is? Why do we pray? Or why should we?

Well, I can think of several reasons. The first is…

1. Obedience

We pray because the Bible commands to pray:

• 1 Thessalonians 5:17  – “Pray continually” or “Pray without ceasing”
• Colossians 4:2 – “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful…”
• Philippians 4:6-7  – “…in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known unto God.”
• Romans 12:12 – “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, persistent in prayer.”

So… if you believe the Bible and you want to obey it and order your life according to it, then you’ll devote yourself persistent, continual prayer in every circumstance you encounter.

The second reason believers should pray is …

2. Communion

Prayer is simply a conversation with God. It is a way for us to praise Him for His goodness and thank Him for His grace and mercy.

He speaks to us through His Word, the Bible, and we speak to Him through prayer.

• James 4:8 – “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”
• Jeremiah 29:13 – “You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”
• 1 Chronicles 28:9 – “… the LORD searches every heart and understands every desire and every thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you; but if you forsake him, he will reject you forever.”

The third purpose of prayer is…

3. Intercession

Prayer is an opportunity to “make our requests known to God.” It allows us to lift not only our own needs but also the needs of others before the LORD. This is fitting, because the Bible tells us…

• Galatians 6:2 – “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
• Philippians 2:4 – “do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”
• 1 Timothy 2:1 – “First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be offered for everyone….”
• Ephesians 6:18 – “Pray in the Spirit at all times, with every kind of prayer and petition. To this end, stay alert with all perseverance in your prayers for all the saints.”
• James 5:16 –“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.”

A fourth purpose of prayer is…

4. Unity

This was Jesus’s prayer on the night of His betrayal…

• John 17:2-23, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” And in…
• Philippians 2:2, “…make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.”

Well, prayer is definitely a purpose and an endeavor that can unite us with other believers. It promotes unity between us and our fellow Christians.

Prayer also leads to unity between us and God.
Jesus said in Matthew 18:19-20, “Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

And prayer can also lead to greater unity in marriage. A husband and wife become one flesh through physical intimacy. But they experience spiritual oneness through prayer.

One of the best decisions my husband and I ever made was to pray together every day. That is a practice we adopted very early in our marriage, and we’ve been doing it faithfully since.

In fact, I credit much of the happiness and stability of our marriage to the fact that, for nearly four decades now, we have prioritized both physical and spiritual oneness.

God has blessed and unified us to a degree that simply would not have been possible apart from our commitment to live by BOTH those Scriptural imperatives: to “pray continually” and to fulfill our marital duties to one another by not depriving each other sexually. (you can read both those references for yourself in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 and 1 Corinthians 7:3, 5 )

Then I believe the fifth purpose for prayer is…

5. Growth

Prayer changes me. It aligns my will with His. It acknowledges my need and insufficiency.

It recognizes God as the Source of everything I have, and it relies on Him to supply everything I need.

• 1 Corinthians 4:7 – “…What do you have that you did not receive?”
• Philippians 4:19 – “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

So obedience, communion or communication, intercession, unity, and growth… those are a few of the purposes of prayer. There are probably many more, but these are the ones that come immediately to mind.

Next, let’s talk about the…

PATTERN FOR PRAYER

When I was a teen, there was a popular acrostic for prayer

ACTS = Adoration –Confession – Thanksgiving – Supplication 

Adoration means praising God for who He is.
Confession means admitting to Him any ways you have sinned.
Thanksgiving means thanking Him for all He’s done.
Supplication means interceding on behalf of others

But I think an acrostic that is even easier to remember is P-R-A-Y:

PRAY: Praise – Repent – Ask- Yield

I like this second pattern even better, because, if you look closely enough, you can see this same pattern in the model prayer Jesus provided to His disciples when they asked Him to teach them how to pray

You can also see elements of this pattern in the words Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion…

In Mark 14:36, He prayed, “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you…” (that’s PRAISE)
Of course, Jesus had no sin to confess, so you won’t see any REPENTENCE in this prayer.

1 Peter 2:22 tells us,

But He did ASK the Father: “Take this cup from me….” (Mark 14:36)

And we also see Him YIELD: “…Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36)

So we see this pattern throughout Scripture, and it makes a great pattern for us as well. So let’s look at it point by point. First…

P for Praise:

We want to give God all the glory for who He is and for the wondrous things He has done.

• Psalm 135:1 tells us to “Praise the LORD. Praise the name of the LORD; praise him, you servants of the LORD”
• Psalm 150:6 says, “Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. Praise the LORD.” And, since praise springs from a hearth of gratitude, we should use this time to thank Him, too.
• Psalm 100:4 tells us to “Enter His gates with thanksgiving and come into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless [or give praise to] His name.”

So praise and thanksgiving go hand-in-hand. They are inextricably linked.

Next,

R for Repent:

• Proverbs 28:13 warns us, “The one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy.” This kind of confession and repentance requires humility.
• James 4:6 reminds us, “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”
• 1 John 1:8 makes this fact even clearer: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” But the very next verse,
• 1 John 1:9, assures us, “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Of course, repenting means more than just an intellectual acknowledgement that we goofed up or even that we willfully disobeyed. It means turning away from that sin, forsaking it completely.

As Acts 3:19 urges us,“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord”

Jesus forgives freely, yes, but then He bids that we “go and sin no more.” (John 8:11)

The Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, certainly. And we never want to grieve the Spirit (Ephesians 4:30) or to quench His work (1 Thessalonians 5:19) in our life by ignoring when He pricks our conscience about personal sin.

To do so would be to put us in danger of becoming hypocrites and liars whose consciences have been seared with a hot iron, as described in 1 Timothy 4:2. That would be a fearful state to be in, wouldn’t it?

So, we need to pay attention when the Holy Spirit works to bring conviction of sin. But we also need to realize He does not heap condemnation upon our heads.

Romans 8:1 tells us,

In the life of a believer, conviction of sin comes from above. Condemnation does not.

So, once God has searched our hearts and tried our thoughts and convicted us of sin, and we have responded appropriately to His work by confessing and repenting of our sin, then we need to leave the past behind us and run into His welcoming arms – like the prodigal son to his Father. (Luke 15:11-21)

What we don’t need to do is keep hanging around the pigsty to wallow in our past. Nor should we depend on our own efforts to “feel” forgiven or make ourselves “worthy” of forgiveness.

Instead, whenever feelings of doubt or condemnation start to rear their ugly heads, we must fix our eyes on Jesus and keep preaching Truth to ourselves as we cling to verses like…

• 1 John 1:9, where He promises to forgive our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Or
• Psalm 103:12, where we’re told He separates our sin from us as far as the east is from the west. Or
• Isaiah 1:18, where God declares, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow….”

Then, the next letter is…

A for Ask:

James 4:2 tells us, “You have not because you ask not.”

Jesus assures His followers,

And, in John 15:7, He promises, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”

But this is no treatise on manifestation or the basis of some health and wealth gospel. It is a simple if/then proposition:

If you remain in Christ and if His Words remain in you,
then you may ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

We will idea discuss this further in a minute, but basically this verse is instructing us to get the mind of Christ, then pray for whatever we want. Because – guess what? – if we truly have the mind of Christ, then we going to want what He wants.

That’s one reason I love to pray Scripture – and why I’ve packed all my pretty printable prayer guides (which I’ll link in the show notes) with a ton of Bible verses. Because we can be confident that we are praying in accordance to God’s revealed will when we pray His inspired Word over a person or situation.

• I can confidently pray for the salvation of the lost, because 2 Peter 3:9 assures me, God does not desire “that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
• I can boldly ask for wisdom, because James 1:5 promises me that God will give wisdom generously and without reproach to anyone who asks.
• I can pray for clear direction when I don’t know which way to go, because Proverbs 3:5-6 tells me if I trust in God with my whole heart and acknowledge Him in all my ways, He will make my paths straight.

So, get the mind of Christ. Make your requests in His name. Approach the throne of grace with confidence. And appeal to Scripture in your prayers.

Yield:

This is where we subject all our hopes and dreams and desires and preferences to those of Christ.  

As Paul reminds us in…

• Romans 6:16, “Know you not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness?” Paul later continues in…
• Romans 12:1, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”

Living a yielded life means we stop stubbornly insisting on our own way and we eagerly and cheerfully submit to doing things God’s way, instead.

That includes earnestly praying with Jesus, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

Moreover, we do this with full confidence that God sees what we do not see and knows what we cannot know and can be trusted to do what is ultimately best for everybody involved.

As the LORD declares so beautifully in Isaiah 55:8-9 –

God is sovereign over all. Yet He promises that if you “Delight yourself in the LORD… He will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)

There are two ways we can understand the word “give.” This verse could simply be stating that if we take delight in the Lord, He will grant or fulfill the desires of our heart.

But I suspect something deeper is also going on here.

Because the more delight we take in Him, the more God will influence and determine what our heart’s desires are in the first place. In that sense, He will give us the desires of our heart in that He will place there the desires He wants us to have…. And then He’ll fulfill them, making both interpretations valid!

Get the mind of Christ, then ask for whatever you want.

So, we’ve talked about the purpose of prayer and the pattern for prayer. Next, let’s look briefly at the…

POSITION FOR PRAYER

I know I titled this episode “Stay on your knees,” however, if we are to pray without ceasing, then, by necessity, we will have to learn to offer the majority of those prayers from a position other than on our knees with heads bowed and eyes closed.

We’ll need to also learn how to pray while driving cars and washing dishes and taking showers and mowing lawns and cooking dinner and folding laundry and reading books and teaching lessons and playing games and lying in bed, drifting off to sleep at the end of a busy day.

Praying continually means keeping that conversation with God going in and through all the other activities that occupy our lives.

However, there is value in actually kneeling to pray when the opportunity allows. The pews at our church are equipped with padded kneelers, so that our entire congregation can go down on their knees in corporate prayer during our worship service every Sunday.

And my own mother still kneels on the floor every single morning when she prays, despite the fact she’ll be turning 89 in just a few weeks. And I know she fully intends to continue with this practice as long as her body will cooperate.

Robert Brault once wrote, “If you have a mom, there is nowhere you are likely to go where a prayer has not already been.” And that is certainly true in my case.

My mother prays daily and specifically for a long list of people, including me and my sister and our husbands, and all our children and their spouses, and all our grandchildren – which is well over fifty people, by name, and that doesn’t even include her other friends and acquaintances who may also be in need of prayer for one reason or another.

I saw an old friend at a wedding this past summer whom I hadn’t seen in over a year – since shortly after my cancer diagnosis — and she was asking about my health and was also asking about my mom, whom she’s met on several occasions.

So I was telling her that we are both doing great. That all my follow-up tests have shown no signs of remaining or recurrent disease, and that my mother is as healthy and active and lucid – and just as fervent a prayer warrior – as she’s ever been.

But as I was telling her these things, and we were discussing what a blessing it is to have a mother who prays for me so faithfully, and how that’s the kind of mother I want to be to my children (and the kind of daughter I want to be to my mom) – one who continually brings their names before the Father in intercessory prayer — it suddenly dawned on me that some day (hopefully far, far in the future – but eventually), my mom will no longer be around to pray for me at all, on her knees or otherwise, and that realization got me so choked up that I couldn’t even continue the conversation.

“How will I ever make it without my mother praying for me,” I wondered aloud. And that’s what started my tears to flowing.

But, almost just as quickly, the Holy Spirit reassured me. Because the fact is, as wonderful as it is to be blessed with a praying mother, lots and lots of people have had to face life without such a benefit.

But that fact does not leave them without an intercessor, because as Romans 8:26-27 tells us,

And we read in Romans 8:34 that Jesus, too, is praying on our behalf: “Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.”

Hebrews 7:24-25 elaborates further: “But because Jesus lives forever, He has a permanent priesthood.  Therefore He is able to save completely those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to intercede for them.”

The thought of the second and third persons of the Godhead continually interceding for us, day and night, is a comfort to me, and I hope it’ll be a comfort to you, as well.

So… we’ve now looked at the purpose, pattern, and position for prayer. Next, let’s consider the…

POWER OF PRAYER

I’ve podcasted on the power of prayer before and will link those episodes in the show notes rather than rehash all that right here.

But I would like to look at a few specific verses that address this important topic, so we can approach it from a slightly different vantage point.

• Hebrews 4:6 urges us to “come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
• 1 John 5:14 reminds us, “this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” By way of example,
• James 5:17-18 tells us, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky poured rain and the earth produced its fruit.”

Jesus told His disciples, “…if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.” Which, among other things, has great motivation for me to praying daily with husband. And God has indeed been so faithful to answer the prayers we’ve spent nearly 40 years bringing before Him together!

That is something we’ve done no matter what else is going on in our lives. We’ve prayed when times were bad and we were facing hardship. And we’ve prayed when times were good and everything was going smoothly.

I have a great quote on that topic copied into the back of my Bible. I’m not sure who said it originally, but it reads: “If you pray only when you’re in trouble, you’re in trouble.”

Isn’t that the truth? Don’t wait until you’re in a jam before making prayer a part of your daily habit. Stay on your knees! Pray without ceasing. Make prayer your first response, not your last resort.

• Do as 1 Corinthians 15:58 commands: “…be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
• 2 Corinthians 9:8 echoes those thoughts. It reads, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things, at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”

I’ve had another anonymous quote written in the back of my Bible since I was a young teen which simply states, “Prayer works. Prayer is work. Prayer leads to work.”

Of course, the operative word here should be prayer, but we sometimes act as if the most important word were work.

Have you ever been guilty of that?

When your list of pressing chores is especially long, are you inclined to spend more time on your knees — or less? Do you view prayer as leisurely pastime or a life-preserving necessity?

James 5:16 tells us, “The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”

Prayer should be so much more than a brief benediction we utter before setting our shoulder to the wheel.

Prayer works. Prayer itself is work. And prayer has the power to make all the work that follows more focused and productive.

Martin Luther understood this fact, which is why he once wrote,

Whether intuitively or experientially, Luther knew that the longer his “to do” list, the more desperately he needed the wisdom, blessing, and empowering of God.

Shouldn’t prayer be our starting point, as well?

Prayer is some of the most important work we will ever do as believers, and it deserves to be the starting point for all other work that follows. So bathe every endeavor in prayer, rejoicing in the fact that God has promised that our labor in this area will never be in vain.

And that brings us to our last topic…

PERSISTANCE THROUGH PRAYER

In in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a parable about persistence that illustrates our “need to pray at all times and not lose heart: 

 [It went like this:] “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected men.  And there was a widow in that town who kept appealing to [the judge], ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’

[Well, the judge initially] refused, but he later said to himself, ‘[Even] though I neither fear God nor respect men, yet because this widow keeps pestering me, I will give her justice. Otherwise, [she’s going to] wear me out with [all] her perpetual requests.’”

[Then Jesus draws this parallel.] “Listen to the words of the unjust judge,” [He tells His followers]. “Will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry out to Him day and night? Will He delay in helping them? I tell you, He will promptly carry out justice on their behalf. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:1-7)

That’s a great question for us, too. When Christ returns, will He find us persisting in fervent prayer and filled with unwavering faith that God will answer, just as He’s promised to do?

Or will He find a church who can’t be bothered to devote time to prayer? Who remain far too distracted to spend time on their knees. Who gave up on intercession long ago, convinced it was as a waste of time? Whose prayer life is neglected, ineffective, and virtually non-existent?

For many decades, I’ve collected great quotes on Christian living from wise, mature, godly Christians – I’ll link a few favorites in today’s show notes. But I especially love what Charles Spurgeon has to say on the topic of prayer. He notes,

“We should pray when we are in a praying mood,
for it would be sinful to neglect so fair an opportunity.
We should pray when we are not in a proper mood,
for it would be dangerous to remain in so unhealthy a condition.“

– Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Another favorite, although I don’t know who originally said it, is this:

Ouch! Isn’t that convicting? I couldn’t imagine a life without prayer. I faithfully pray every morning. But I’ve certainly been guilty of setting to work on individual projects — school days, blog posts, lunch dates, planning sessions – without first pausing to pray. And that, too, is an arrogant boast against the LORD.

“Pray without ceasing” means we don’t launch out on our own that way. We understand our overwhelming need for divine strength and wisdom and guidance.

Moreover, we don’t grow weary. We don’t give up. We don’t decide God isn’t listening or doesn’t care or that prayer doesn’t work any way so why even bother?

No! We persist. We stick with it. We persevere.

That’s what it means to continue in prayer. That’s what being a prayer warrior looks like.

It is remembering that our struggle is “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” And realizing that the best position for doing that kind of battle is on our knees (if not physically, then at least metaphorically).

Like the widow woman who wouldn’t quit, but kept on appealing to the judge.

Do you remember the verse I quoted a few minutes ago from Luke 11, where Christ commands us to ask, seek, and knock? Well, the verbs He uses in the original Greek are imperfective and denote an ongoing, continual, repetitive action.

So that passage might’ve been more accurately translated, “Ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking….”  

That’s exactly what we need to do in our prayer life, as well: Pray and keep on praying. Don’t stop. Don’t lose heart. Don’t get discouraged. Just keep on keeping on.

We need to do as Hebrews 10:23-25 reminds us to do and…

That’s the kind of encouragement I want to give to others through my podcast, and I pray God will help me be effective in this way. I do so appreciate your being here and hope you’ll come back next week, when we’ll be finishing up this three-part series (Stay in the book. Stay on your knees. And stay after souls.) by discussing mission-minded living, and how we can shine as a light for Jesus in this dark and dying world.

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