Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians 5:12-22 [NLTse]
¹² Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. ¹³ Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. And live peacefully with each other.
¹⁴ Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy. Encourage those who are timid. Take tender care of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone.
¹⁵ See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people.
¹⁶ Always be joyful. ¹⁷ Never stop praying. ¹⁸ Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
¹⁹ Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. ²⁰ Do not scoff at prophecies, ²¹ but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. ²² Stay away from every kind of evil.

Sermon
Richard Foster begins his book, Celebration of Prayer, saying, “We today yearn for prayer and hide from prayer. We are attracted to it and repelled by it. We believe prayer is something we should do, even something we want to do, but it seems like a chasm stands between us and actually praying. We experience the agony of prayerlessness…
Does he speak for you? Do you want to pray, even yearn to pray, but for some reason avoid the practice when opportunities come? Do you find yourself too busy with work and family obligations to spend set-apart time fellowshipping with God? And yet you’re aware that your busyness rarely keeps you from eating or sleeping or shopping or watching the big game.

Do you believe that before you can really pray that your life needs some fine tuning? or that you need to know more about how to pray? or that you need to understand better how prayer works? Etc., etc…?

Let me steal your crutch and take away all your excuses by saying that you and I will never have pure enough motives, or be good enough, or know enough in order to pray rightly. So it’s time to set all these things aside and begin praying.
I’m not talking about what many have come to call “flash praying”: Those interactions we might have with the Lord as He comes to our mind at different times throughout the day, or when situations around us turn our hearts towards prayer. These are good. “Flash praying” is good. But Paul writes to the Thessalonians in verse 17, “Never stop praying.” And “flash praying” is a part of that, but God’s Spirit is calling us to something more.

“Praying without ceasing” means praying repeatedly and often. “Without ceasing” translates the Greek word adialeiptos. And in Romans 1:9, where Paul uses this word in a different context, he writes, “God knows how often I pray for you. Day and night [adialeiptos] I bring you and your needs in prayer to God, whom I serve with all my heart by spreading the Good News about his Son.”

Although Paul says, “Day and night,” surely he wasn’t in prayer for the Romans every minute of his waking hours, or even every minute of his prayers. Surely he also prayed about the many other things we read of throughout his letters. And yet clearly he mentioned them over and over, and often.
So “without ceasing” doesn’t mean that we have to be speaking prayers every minute of the day, but that we should be praying again and again, and often.
Paul is calling the Thessalonians – and all Christians – to make prayer a regular, habitual, recurring, disciplined part of our lives. We, who have put our independent, old lives to death with Christ and been raised to new lives, wholly dependent on God’s grace, need to treat prayer the way we treat eating and sleeping and doing our jobs; not hit or miss about it; not assuming that time will mystically appear in the midst of our other things. A husband who says he doesn’t need to have special times alone with his wife because he always feels so very close to her will not long feel so very close. Paul is calling all of us to a life of regular, planned meetings with God in prayer in which we praise Him for Who He is, and thank Him for what He has done, and ask Him for help, and seek His blessing on those we love, including the peoples of the world.
Don’t be discouraged if you’ve always had trouble praying. You don’t take an occasional jogger and sign them up for a marathon. If prayer is not a regular discipline for you, then set a goal for something that is practical and do-able for you, and begin there.

Jesus’ example to us is one of “rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark” and going out to a desolate place to pray (Mark 1:35), and also of going up to area mountains to pray, and praying “to God all night” (Luke 6:12).

Early-morning prayer begins our day acknowledging our dependence on God and giving whatever our waking hours may hold into His hands. Instead of waiting until temptations hit and we feel surrounded and overwhelmed, early-morning prayer takes the initiative and strikes first in the spiritual battles of our-coming day. And, of course, it is so predictable how Satan uses even good things to squeeze prayer out of our schedules. If we say to ourselves, “I will give some time to prayer later,” it generally does not happen.

So, saints across the centuries have demonstrated there to be many benefits to early-morning prayer. That being said, I tend to be an late-evening prayer person. But regardless of when, I would encourage us all to enjoy several times of prayer across our days: A longer time in focused prayer and Bible reading in the morning or at night (though it could be anytime), and then two or three other shorter times throughout the day, perhaps consistent with waking and/or mealtimes and bedtime.
These shorter occasions for prayer may be no more than a few minutes: A few minutes of focused calm and quiet, with your Bible open in front of you (or perhaps recalling and refreshing in your mind the words of the Scripture you were reading during the longer, morning or evening devotional time), asking that God would grant you contentment in Him for the next part of the day, and free you from sinful desires, so that you might shine for Christ and love people… So you are consciously dedicating every part of each day to God in focused prayer.
(And it is amazing how just a few minutes reading and praying the Word of God can bring spiritual clarity and power and peaceful-joy to the hours and segments of our days, even in the midst of much pressure.)

Plan ahead of time not only when but where you will pray and read throughout each day. (As we’ve already stated, the Devil will thwart you if you let him.) The longer, devotional time will need a place of relative privacy so you are not distracted and are able to read and sing and even cry…

Perhaps you don’t have space in your home for a “prayer closet” (as some call it). So do your best, perhaps explaining to your spouse or children or your roommate that when you are in that chair at that time that you would like to be undisturbed. Consider where could you create such a space? Do you have a spare closet where you could have a kneeling cushion, with a light for reading the Bible? Is there space under your stairs for a prayer bench or chair?

Evangelist and minister to orphans, George Mueller, used to take a walk for his longer devotional time: “I find it very beneficial to my health to walk thus for meditation before breakfast, and am now so in the habit of using the time for that purpose, that when I get into the open air, I generally take out a New Testament of good sized type which I carry with me for that purpose… I find it very profitable, not only to my body, but also to my soul.”

Most people (and that surely includes me) don’t have the godliness of heart and mind to offer up to God prayers of significant spiritual impact for any length of time. I think that to pray for longer than a few minutes in a God-centered, Christ-exalting way requires help. So let the passages you are reading devotionally be transformed into the basis for your prayers: Leading you to confess sin or to give thanks, to ask God for the help He’s promised or offered for you or those around you in the world; and then go on to the next words of verse, turning it all into prayer for yourselves or others as the Word leads you to it.

Prayer is nothing more than the communication in an ongoing and growing love-relationship between you and God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Anybody can do it because only one thing is required: Love.
So, “never stop praying”; or as Paul says to the Romans, “keep on praying” (Romans 12:12); and to the Ephesians, “pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion… alert and… persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere” (Ephesians 6:18); and to the Philippians, “devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.”
Would you pray with me?

Father in Heaven: By Your Spirit, help us to honor those who lead us in Your work. Grant us the grace to show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. Be among us that we would live peacefully with each other.
Speaking the truth in love, move us to warn those who are lazy and to encourage those who are timid and to care tenderly for those who are weak. Holy Spirit, overflow us with patience for everyone.
May we so follow after our crucified King, Your life the source for our lives, Lord Jesus, that not one of us would pay back evil to those committing evil against us, but always seek to do good to each other and to all people.
Fill us with Your joy; disciple us so that we never stop praying; and, move us to thanksgiving in all our circumstances.
May we never stifle the Holy Spirit, not scoffing at prophecies, but testing them instead. Grant us to hold on to what is good and to stay away from evil of every kind. We know this is Your will for all those who belong to Jesus Christ. And we ask, praying in Jesus’ name.
Amen?