I usually pray in the morning and at night but have never really understood being in constant prayer. I think of God constantly but not sure that constitutes prayer thru out the day.
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,3720.msg116701.html#msg116701:
(4) 1Th 5:17 Pray without ceasing.
In Matthew 6 Christ says don’t be like the Pharisees who want to be heard and stand in the Synagogue. They pray in the Synagogue, go into the house of prayer. There was the Temple, but the Synagogue was supposed to be a house of prayer too. But they loved to pray in the Synagogue and long prayers or some liked to pray on the street corners or whatever.
About four or five years ago somebody emailed me and they sent me something and I answered back and they got on me about this thing about corporate prayer. ‘Don’t you believe in corporate pray, Ray?’ I don’t find that phrase in the Bible, corporate pray. You can pray in front of the congressional pray breakfast or ‘corporate’ pray. But I said I don’t believe much in corporate prayer.
I pray in public when I feel like praying, I don’t pray as a ritual. Sometimes I pray short prayers and sometimes they’re a little longer depending on how I feel or the situation. But I don’t ever want to feel that it’s politically correct for me to pray now, so let’s pray. We can fall into that.
Pray all day, you know. If you pray all day and you are thankful all day and now you are going to have yourself a sandwich, then you don’t have to sit down and ‘Lord I thank You for this sandwich, oh how I love this sandwich Lord and I just want You to bless it to the nourishment of my body. Make this sandwich be disease free for the rest of my life.’
It’s not wrong to say ‘grace’ or whatever. But I don’t bow my head and say these vocal prayers out loud when I eat a sandwich. I’m always thankful for what I have. I’m always praying, all day every day. There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t pray 50-60 times or 70-80 times, I just pray.
My thoughts are prayers, my meditation is prayers, I just think like God is there, that’s the way that I think.I’ve told you that God is Spirit, He’s everywhere. He’s not sitting up there on a throne where you have to raise your voice so He hears you. So if you are praying silently… like I put in that paper that I wrote on prayer, ‘Praying by God’s Rules,’ I pray myself to sleep virtually every night of my life. That’s how I go to sleep, I don’t count sheep, I pray myself to sleep.
Last night I’m praying about today, praying about what I should talk about. You know, ‘help me give these people something worthy to take back home with them, so they will be really glad that they came and feel that they profited spiritually.’ I just pray about that and I pray about it and prayer goes into meditation and meditation goes back into prayer and pretty soon I’m asleep. Then I wake up and I don’t remember when I fell asleep, but all I know is I prayed myself to sleep.
I don’t think I’m a religious nut or something, but all day long I am always consciously aware of who I am and what I am and that I’m a child of God. I’m trying to live right and think right and do right, I think about that all day long. To me that’s good, I mean that it’s just possible to be. It’s always checks and balances… am I doing things right? Am I worrying to much? Am I showing my wife enough love? All these things, do I need to adjust my attitude on the way I’m writing on Bible Truths? I think and I meditate and I pray about this stuff all day long. Now then I get sidetracked where I will get in conversations or maybe I’ll watch television. I always watch the news, at least 20-30 mins. every morning while I drink a cup of coffee or second or third. Sometimes I don’t have a third or a second, but then I’m back at my computer and reading my emails and stuff like that. But I get sidetracked while I’m doing some other things, but mostly all day long I pray. “Pray without ceasing” (1Th 5:17).
Christ says don’t be like the hypocrites. Now when Jesus Christ wanted to pray… you don’t see many public prayers of Christ. I’m not saying that’s wrong, I’m just saying, you don’t see many from Christ, do you?
One time when He raised Lazarus from the dead, I guess it was Martha that said… He had said roll the stone away from the tomb, but she said, Lord by now he stinks, it’s been four days. He didn’t give a prayer, He payed no mind to these things. He doesn’t stink he going to walk out of there alive, he’s not going to walk out of there with rotten flesh, he was going to have good healthy flesh. He said out loud;
John 11:41 …And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. V. 42 And I know that You hear Me always…
He already knew that Lazarus was waking up, He just said roll the stone away so he can come out. He said, I thank You that You always hear Me, but He said for the sake of those that are standing around I said it out loud. Why did He say that? Because He normally didn’t do that. So you can, but it doesn’t have to be ‘politically correct’ or this is the time and the place and I think we should.
I mean I think there are times when you just about have to, at every situation that comes up like that. If you are burying a loved one in the ground and all of the relatives are standing around and you are a minister and you want to comfort them, I think you should offer a pray in behalf of those people and what they are going through. You comfort them, and ask God to comfort them. Now this is a public prayer that’s needful, that’s a good time to pray.
When you marry a couple, that’s a good time to say a prayer publicly for this couple and their life together and so on.
But most of the time you notice that Christ went up in the mountains to pray. He said go in your closet to pray. Most of the time it is a private thing between you and God. No one has ever said to me, ‘Ray what are you doing?’ Oh I’m praying… I don’t do that. It’s a private thing, they don’t know what I’m saying.
“Pray without ceasing.”
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Topic: Prayer (Read 9654 times)