Prayer As A Lifestyle

We are admonished, within the Christian lifestyle, to pray unceasingly (Luke 18:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:17). It is a fact that we cannot weary the Spirit of God. Sending our adoration, confessions, thanks, pleas, and intercessions is the role of those who call Jesus their God. But how do we integrate such prayerful activities as constants in otherwise busy lives? And how do we pray without losing heart?

Simply Prayer – A Matter Of Simplicity

We need a simple model for prayer; one that stands the test of time and that’s beyond our guilty conscience that we don’t pray enough or well enough:

“[This] is the simple meaning of prayer: reaching forward, wishing forward, desiring forward, seeking the upper, the higher, the nobler.”

~G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945)

Prayer as a lifestyle can only be managed as it fits within the prearranged context of our lives. In other words, prayer can be, and perhaps was always meant to be, fitted to life as we currently live it. Prayer is no mystery. It’s no impossible task to sustain. It’s simply a heart to commune with God—to come into holy Presence; to share honestly.

So, prayer can easily fit each of our lives as we live life, now.

More fundamentally, prayer as a lifestyle is more about our commitment to God, through our conscious awareness of the Divine in our day-to-day walk through life.

Connecting Prayer With The Seeking Of God’s Will

Can there be any more central a task for the prayerful life than the seeking after God’s will? There cannot be. Our Lord, himself, stated the imperative of seeking the agenda of heaven first; that all things appropriate would be added underneath (Matthew 6:33).

There is nothing more important than the acceptance of God’s will.

Only as we achieve compulsion toward things-holy, seeing and accepting things as God anoints by the fact of their occurrence, will we come close to the actualisation of our spiritual lives.

Prayer as a lifestyle is taking our consciousness and placing it before the altar of God, forwardly and fervently, in such ways to pleasingly accept the rock ‘n’ roll of life, communicating commitment through holy acquiescence. By acceding to the Lord we gleefully celebrate the flow of life—even if/as it occurs against us.

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Prayer as a lifestyle is never simpler than seeking after God’s will. When we stop battling with God—to have our prayers ‘heard’ and answered affirmatively—we invite the Holy Spirit to create encounters of truth with us. Intimacy with God is the result. Then we’re blessed.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.

Graphic Credit: Alison Batley.