I’m Confused — Are We to Pray with Few Words or Without Ceasing?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:04.000 | Should we pray with a few words or should we pray with many words?
00:00:07.400 | Solomon the wise tells us to pray with just a few words
00:00:10.500 | and Jesus himself teaches us to pray with only a few words as well, but Paul
00:00:14.560 | tells us to pray
00:00:15.560 | without ever stopping. And now Luke Barnes is confused.
00:00:18.760 | Luke writes in to ask this, "Hello Pastor John, Jesus and Solomon warn us about using
00:00:23.320 | many words in prayer before God, however Paul commands us to pray without ceasing.
00:00:27.960 | How do these two truths work together?"
00:00:30.900 | Right, we talked about
00:00:33.960 | what it means to pray without ceasing I think back in
00:00:37.900 | episode 933 if I looked it up
00:00:42.060 | right, but Luke has a twist
00:00:46.520 | that he puts on the question that we didn't talk about
00:00:49.620 | there, namely he's asking how can
00:00:54.080 | praying without ceasing fit together
00:00:57.200 | with keeping our words few
00:01:00.760 | in the presence of God.
00:01:03.920 | And let me just say in passing that I think this kind of question
00:01:09.440 | if asked humbly and
00:01:13.320 | eagerly with the expectation that there is a good God-honoring
00:01:17.840 | answer in Scripture, I think asking that kind of question is one of the
00:01:22.480 | most valuable practical kinds of questions you can ask because
00:01:28.080 | when you try to answer a question
00:01:31.920 | like this, it reveals the
00:01:35.520 | measure or lack of measure
00:01:38.960 | of your understanding of the two verses you're trying to
00:01:42.640 | fit together and it forces you to go
00:01:46.360 | deeper. If you take each verse
00:01:50.080 | by itself and don't think
00:01:53.200 | of the other, you may get some measure of insight
00:01:57.240 | but when you take the two together
00:02:00.840 | it forces you to ask questions and to dig
00:02:04.120 | deeper so that you realize
00:02:07.600 | what you had been seeing when you just looked at one of the verses may be only
00:02:12.720 | part
00:02:13.440 | of the picture. So when it comes to understanding Scripture and going deep
00:02:18.600 | with God
00:02:19.440 | I would encourage people in all humility
00:02:22.840 | and with high expectation in God's wisdom and trustworthiness
00:02:28.480 | to ask these kinds of questions. How can this verse
00:02:31.720 | and this verse fit together? That's been one of the
00:02:34.960 | consistent ways that I've tried to go deep with God over
00:02:38.560 | the years. So Luke mentions Ecclesiastes
00:02:41.680 | I think he's referring to chapter 5 verses 2 and 3 where it says
00:02:45.120 | "Be not rash with your mouth
00:02:48.360 | nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God
00:02:53.120 | for God is in heaven and you are on
00:02:56.280 | earth therefore let your words be few
00:03:00.000 | for a dream comes with much business and a fool's voice with many
00:03:06.200 | words." And some of us, I mean
00:03:09.280 | when he said this I thought immediately not of Ecclesiastes but of Jesus'
00:03:13.680 | words in Matthew 6, 7, and 8 where he says when you pray
00:03:17.640 | don't heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do
00:03:20.800 | for they think they'll be heard for their
00:03:24.200 | many words. Do not be like them
00:03:28.120 | for your father knows what you need before you ask him.
00:03:31.480 | And then over against those texts
00:03:35.360 | Luke wonders how they fit together with verse Thessalonians
00:03:39.960 | 5, 17 "Pray without
00:03:43.920 | ceasing," which sounds like wow that's a lot of
00:03:47.760 | talking. Now one of the ways to get insight
00:03:51.640 | into whether or not a perceived tension
00:03:55.560 | is in fact a contradiction is to try to think
00:03:59.360 | of an analogy, a related
00:04:02.400 | or similar kind of situation in which
00:04:05.680 | the tension, while similar, would not be
00:04:09.520 | a contradiction. The one that I thought of goes like this
00:04:13.360 | I might encourage you something like this
00:04:17.200 | "Greet everyone you meet graciously." Never stop
00:04:21.120 | greeting strangers but make sure your greetings are
00:04:25.760 | brief and genuine. So the point there would be that
00:04:29.760 | ceaseless greetings means
00:04:33.040 | keep on doing it, don't leave anybody out,
00:04:37.120 | don't get weary in it, don't cease to be a gracious
00:04:40.680 | outgoing person. And in that sense
00:04:44.360 | you might think my my that's a lot of words all day long greeting all those
00:04:49.480 | people and yet I said
00:04:51.080 | let your greetings be brief
00:04:54.120 | and authentic. Now might
00:04:57.560 | the biblical exhortation to come to God without ceasing in prayer
00:05:03.520 | and yet not to be wordy in your prayers, might that be a similar kind of
00:05:08.760 | situation
00:05:09.640 | and therefore not be a contradiction? And I suppose it
00:05:14.360 | it really does hang on how you
00:05:18.160 | understand pray without ceasing.
00:05:21.640 | If it means that every second of every day
00:05:26.160 | you are consciously speaking words to God then
00:05:29.520 | the words would indeed have to be very very very
00:05:33.200 | very many. And I argued in episode
00:05:36.720 | 93 that pray without ceasing means at least these three things. One,
00:05:41.840 | have a continual spirit of dependency on God.
00:05:44.960 | Two, pray repeatedly and often in every situation of need and thankfulness.
00:05:51.000 | And three, don't ever come to the point where you give up and cease praying and
00:05:56.120 | say it's not working, I'm quitting, don't ever go there.
00:05:59.440 | And I don't think that meaning of
00:06:02.880 | praying without ceasing contradicts
00:06:05.880 | the other teachings that our words should be
00:06:09.360 | thoughtful and not empty and to the point and succinct
00:06:14.320 | and not unnecessarily drawn out.
00:06:17.400 | So basically I think what what the warning against many words
00:06:22.480 | is doing is protecting us from thinking we can
00:06:27.480 | twist God's arm by repetitions
00:06:30.600 | as though saying something five times would be more compelling
00:06:35.160 | than one heartfelt authentic request that leaves the matter with him
00:06:40.160 | and moves forward in faith. God is not
00:06:44.240 | hard of hearing and he's not reluctant to bless
00:06:48.880 | his children. And of course
00:06:52.360 | that conclusion doesn't say anything about
00:06:55.440 | how much time we spend in prayer because
00:06:59.040 | there are so many different things to bring to the Lord
00:07:04.200 | in prayer for ourselves, our families, our churches, our
00:07:07.560 | communities, our nation, our world, missions. There's so many things to bring
00:07:12.120 | to the Lord that if we expressed ourself with
00:07:15.480 | appropriate faith-filled brevity with each one, we'd
00:07:20.040 | still be praying a very long time and lingering in the
00:07:23.880 | presence of the Lord for goodness an hour or more.
00:07:27.960 | So conclusion, yes, continually go
00:07:32.760 | to the Lord. Let's have a constant spirit of dependence on him. Let's never
00:07:38.600 | grow weary in asking and seeking and knocking.
00:07:41.800 | But let's not fall into the trap of thinking that
00:07:46.040 | multiplying many words, multiplying phrases will get more out of God
00:07:52.680 | than to the point faith-filled requests. Amen. Or Spurgeon so famously told his
00:07:59.640 | friend, "I always feel it well to put a few words
00:08:02.840 | of prayer between everything I do." And I remember reading in his
00:08:07.080 | autobiography too that he said he
00:08:11.000 | treats prayer pretty businesslike and seldom spends more than 20 minutes or so
00:08:15.880 | at a time in prayer, if I remember reading correctly. Yeah,
00:08:18.840 | that's what I heard too. It's always good to put a few words of Spurgeon into the
00:08:22.520 | end of an APJ episode as well. Thank you, Pastor John and Luke, thank you for the
00:08:25.640 | question. If you have a follow-up question of your own to this or other
00:08:28.680 | previous episodes, email us your question at
00:08:32.040 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. And of course you can find our audio
00:08:35.320 | feeds and all of our episode archive at our online home at
00:08:39.960 | desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, what in the world does it mean to
00:08:44.840 | be baptized for the dead? Are the Mormons on to
00:08:49.080 | something Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15-29?
00:08:52.360 | Or are the Mormons dead wrong? John Piper will give us his take on Friday when we
00:08:56.760 | return. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John
00:08:59.880 | podcast.
00:09:03.560 | you
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