Acts 1:1-14

Matthew 26:36-46

1 Thess. 5:14-24

Ephesians 6:10-18

2 Kings 6

What do these verses tell us about the return of Christ?

In what way do the passages describe prayer as integral to our being alert to God’s presence and work?

What actions regarding prayer accompany those who believe in and are preparing for His coming?

What is the Spirit showing us about the Church or ourselves regarding our need to live awake and pray without ceasing?

Prayer is both the means to awakening and the response of the awakened soul. It is a bit like breathing. We pray to be awake; we pray because we are awake. The verses in this study give us both instruction and examples of prayer or in one case prayerlessness. I appreciate the pithy exhortations that Paul writes to the Thessalonians. He had only a few weeks with these new believers and in this letter he does his best to encourage them and establish them in their new found faith. He closes his letter with bullet points on what he knows is critical to their growing faith: prayer.

• Rejoice always
• Pray without ceasing
• Give thanks in all circumstances
• Do not quench the Spirit
• Do not despise prophecies
• Test everything
• Hold fast to what is good
• Abstain from evil

In an abbreviated way, Paul is describing a full orbed prayer life. Prayer is all of these. Here’s how I would add to these bullets with descriptions of what these types of prayer might be.

Rejoice always is the prayer of praise and worship. We rejoice in who God is no matter what. He does not change, His character is utterly dependable and that is a cause for constant rejoicing. As Paul says elsewhere, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice!”

Pray without ceasing describes our access to continual communion with the Lord in our heart. Sometimes it involves words and conscious thought, sometimes it is merely the groans and sighs of our hearts, too deep for words. Pray without ceasing is less a command and more an invitation that we will never wear out our welcome.  

Giving thanks in all circumstances is the prayer of gratitude. It certainly is acknowledging God as the generous giver of good gifts, food, family, safety, answers to prayer, provision, guidance. It is also the harder prayer of thanks, in, not for the difficulties that inevitably come. This prayer is sacrificial because this prayer comes hard. It acknowledges His promise that though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we fear no evil because He is with us.

Do not quench the Spirit is the prayer that invites the Holy Spirit to help us and direct us as we pray. I don’t know what to pray, often. By asking the Spirit to pray through me what He desires rather than praying what I think is best, I invite His intercession which is powerful and effective.

Do not despise prophecies refers to the things that God may show us as we pray: a picture, a word or phrase, a word of knowledge, a scripture.  Prayer is communion and just as one would expect a conversation to be two way, so too prophecies, words, scriptures, pictures can be God’s communication back to us as His response to our praying.

Test everything is the prayer of discernment. This prayer involves holding those things that we have seen or heard up to the Lord and asking Him to sort out what is truly from Him and what is the product of my overactive imagination. This may also require asking others to pray with me to discern together what is from God and what is not.

Hold fast to what is good is prayer with perseverance. Once we know that we are agreeing with God’s desires and asking according to His will, we hold fast and persevere. In this way, we obey Jesus’s instruction to keep on seeking, keep on asking and keep on knocking.

Abstain from evil is the prayer of resistance and deliverance. Lead me not into temptation and deliver me from evil. We summon God’s help and protection through prayer when evil threatens from without or within. 

Prayer is not just asking God for things. In these simple yet profound words, Paul invited the Thessalonians to a life as awake, alert followers of Jesus. Prayer is our means of being in a responsive relationship with the God who speaks and the God who listens to the praises, the cries, the desires, and the groanings of our hearts. An awakened person is a prayerful person