Pray without ceasing.
—1 Thessalonians 5:17
How different is the standard of the average Christian, with regard to a life in the service of God, from that which Scripture gives us! In the former the chief thought is personal safety—grace to pardon his sin and to live the kind of life that will secure his entrance into heaven. How high above this is the Bible standard—a Christian surrendering himself with all his powers, with his time, thoughts, and love wholly yielded to the glorious God who has redeemed him! He now delights in serving this God, in whose fellowship heaven is begun.
To the average Christian, the command, “Pray without ceasing,” is simply a needless and impossible life of perfection. Who can do it? We can get to heaven without it. To the true believer, on the contrary, it holds out the promise of the highest happiness, of a life crowned by all the blessings that can be brought down on other souls through his intercession. And as he perseveres, unceasing intercession becomes increasingly his highest aim upon earth, his highest joy, his highest experience of the wonderful fellowship with the holy God.
“Pray without ceasing.” Let us take hold of these words with a large faith, as a promise of what God’s Spirit will work in us, of how close and intimate our union to the Lord Jesus can be, and of our likeness to Him, in His ever blessed intercession at the right hand of God. Let these words become to us one of the chief elements of our heavenly calling, to be consciously the stewards and administrators of God’s grace to the world around us. As we think of how Christ said, “I in them, and thou in Me” (John 17:23), let us believe that just as the Father worked in Him, so Christ the interceding High Priest will work and pray in us. As the faith of our high calling fills our hearts, we will begin literally to feel that there is nothing on earth for one moment to be compared to the privilege of being God’s priests, walking without intermission in His holy presence, bringing the burdens of the souls around us to the footstool of His throne, and receiving at His hands the power and blessing to dispense to our fellowmen.
This is indeed the fulfillment of the Scriptures that say, “Man was created in the likeness and the image of God.” (See Genesis 1:26–27.)