Prayer a Habit.

There’s a little sentence of Paul’s that used to puzzle and bother me, “Pray without ceasing.”  But it has become a great help to me.  It puzzled me because I didn’t see any practical way of doing it.  It didn’t seem to mean the repetition of prayers, with little mechanical helps, such as some use.  It surely doesn’t mean staying on your knees a long time.  But, as I tried to pray my way into its meaning, it came to mean four distinct things to me.  And I would not be surprised to find more yet coming out of it.

First of all, it means that prayer should be a habit.  There should be a fixed time every day, or times, for going off alone to pray.  Into that time the Book is taken.  Quiet time is spent in reading it.  For this is listening to God.  And that comes first in praying; listening first, then speaking.  The reading may be rapid and broad, or slower and more meditative.  Whichever it may be, there should be a cultivation of the habit of meditation.

I do not mean a sleepy trying to imitate what we suppose some holy men do.  But a keen thinking into the meaning of the words, and into their practical use in one’s own life.  Then the praying itself.  The being still before God, and the definite prayer for particular things, and persons, and places.  That habit can be fixed until it becomes second nature.  It can be cultivated until it becomes the sweet spot of the day to you.

A Praying Bent of Mind.

Then while the daily habit continues prayer may become an attitude, a bent of mind.  Whatever comes up suggests prayer to you.  The bent of your mind is to pray as things come up in the daily round.  You can’t stop your work, but you think prayers.  Your heart prays while your hands are busy.

I shall never forget the school in which I learned to pray this way.  A case of protracted illness in my home required my personal attention constantly for a time.  It seemed as if no assistance I could get meant quite as much as what I could do personally.  The life in peril was so precious that all else dropped out of sight.  My habits of life were completely broken up.  I was up night and day.  The early morning hour of reading and prayer was broken into, with everything else of a regular sort.

But as I went about my round of service I found myself praying constantly.  I was much wearied, and things sometimes seemed desperate.  I realized how everything depended on God’s touch.  And without any planning a habit of continual praying formed itself.  I could be engaged in conversation, thinking intently into something needing great care, and yet there was an undercurrent of prayer constantly.  I shall never cease to be grateful for that trying experience, because in it this new habit of a praying bent of mind formed itself.