Should we pray with a few words or should we pray with many words? Solomon the wise tells us to pray with just a few words and Jesus himself teaches us to pray with only a few words as well, but Paul tells us to pray without ever stopping. And now Luke Barnes is confused.

Luke writes in to ask this, "Hello Pastor John, Jesus and Solomon warn us about using many words in prayer before God, however Paul commands us to pray without ceasing. How do these two truths work together?" Right, we talked about what it means to pray without ceasing I think back in episode 933 if I looked it up right, but Luke has a twist that he puts on the question that we didn't talk about there, namely he's asking how can praying without ceasing fit together with keeping our words few in the presence of God.

And let me just say in passing that I think this kind of question if asked humbly and eagerly with the expectation that there is a good God-honoring answer in Scripture, I think asking that kind of question is one of the most valuable practical kinds of questions you can ask because when you try to answer a question like this, it reveals the measure or lack of measure of your understanding of the two verses you're trying to fit together and it forces you to go deeper.

If you take each verse by itself and don't think of the other, you may get some measure of insight but when you take the two together it forces you to ask questions and to dig deeper so that you realize what you had been seeing when you just looked at one of the verses may be only part of the picture.

So when it comes to understanding Scripture and going deep with God I would encourage people in all humility and with high expectation in God's wisdom and trustworthiness to ask these kinds of questions. How can this verse and this verse fit together? That's been one of the consistent ways that I've tried to go deep with God over the years.

So Luke mentions Ecclesiastes I think he's referring to chapter 5 verses 2 and 3 where it says "Be not rash with your mouth nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God for God is in heaven and you are on earth therefore let your words be few for a dream comes with much business and a fool's voice with many words." And some of us, I mean when he said this I thought immediately not of Ecclesiastes but of Jesus' words in Matthew 6, 7, and 8 where he says when you pray don't heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do for they think they'll be heard for their many words.

Do not be like them for your father knows what you need before you ask him. And then over against those texts Luke wonders how they fit together with verse Thessalonians 5, 17 "Pray without ceasing," which sounds like wow that's a lot of talking. Now one of the ways to get insight into whether or not a perceived tension is in fact a contradiction is to try to think of an analogy, a related or similar kind of situation in which the tension, while similar, would not be a contradiction.

The one that I thought of goes like this I might encourage you something like this "Greet everyone you meet graciously." Never stop greeting strangers but make sure your greetings are brief and genuine. So the point there would be that ceaseless greetings means keep on doing it, don't leave anybody out, don't get weary in it, don't cease to be a gracious outgoing person.

And in that sense you might think my my that's a lot of words all day long greeting all those people and yet I said let your greetings be brief and authentic. Now might the biblical exhortation to come to God without ceasing in prayer and yet not to be wordy in your prayers, might that be a similar kind of situation and therefore not be a contradiction?

And I suppose it it really does hang on how you understand pray without ceasing. If it means that every second of every day you are consciously speaking words to God then the words would indeed have to be very very very very many. And I argued in episode 93 that pray without ceasing means at least these three things.

One, have a continual spirit of dependency on God. Two, pray repeatedly and often in every situation of need and thankfulness. And three, don't ever come to the point where you give up and cease praying and say it's not working, I'm quitting, don't ever go there. And I don't think that meaning of praying without ceasing contradicts the other teachings that our words should be thoughtful and not empty and to the point and succinct and not unnecessarily drawn out.

So basically I think what what the warning against many words is doing is protecting us from thinking we can twist God's arm by repetitions as though saying something five times would be more compelling than one heartfelt authentic request that leaves the matter with him and moves forward in faith.

God is not hard of hearing and he's not reluctant to bless his children. And of course that conclusion doesn't say anything about how much time we spend in prayer because there are so many different things to bring to the Lord in prayer for ourselves, our families, our churches, our communities, our nation, our world, missions.

There's so many things to bring to the Lord that if we expressed ourself with appropriate faith-filled brevity with each one, we'd still be praying a very long time and lingering in the presence of the Lord for goodness an hour or more. So conclusion, yes, continually go to the Lord.

Let's have a constant spirit of dependence on him. Let's never grow weary in asking and seeking and knocking. But let's not fall into the trap of thinking that multiplying many words, multiplying phrases will get more out of God than to the point faith-filled requests. Amen. Or Spurgeon so famously told his friend, "I always feel it well to put a few words of prayer between everything I do." And I remember reading in his autobiography too that he said he treats prayer pretty businesslike and seldom spends more than 20 minutes or so at a time in prayer, if I remember reading correctly.

Yeah, that's what I heard too. It's always good to put a few words of Spurgeon into the end of an APJ episode as well. Thank you, Pastor John and Luke, thank you for the question. If you have a follow-up question of your own to this or other previous episodes, email us your question at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

And of course you can find our audio feeds and all of our episode archive at our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, what in the world does it mean to be baptized for the dead? Are the Mormons on to something Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15-29? Or are the Mormons dead wrong?

John Piper will give us his take on Friday when we return. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. you