Without ceasing

Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.  – Acts 12.5

Things were bad – really bad. King Herod decided that it was time to put an end to this new movement so he decided to ‘vex’ them as the old King James translation puts it. He thought he could harass and trouble them enough they would surely give up and go back to their homes and forget all about this new teaching. Rome would be happy, the Jews would be happy, and chances are he would get a transfer from this horrible posting in the middle of nowhere.

So he had the apostle James executed. The people liked that so he next had Peter arrested and thrown in jail with every intention of dealing with him after the Passover.

There was not a whole lot the believers could do, but there was one thing. ‘Constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church.’ The people prayed without ceasing.

I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story, but just want to mention this idea of ‘praying without ceasing.’ In this case it looks like the believers met together to pray for Peter and were not going to stop until they saw an answer.

While it is very literal in this case and there may very well be cases where we out to well to meet for this kind of unstopping prayer I think it goes further than that.

Jesus once told the disciples ‘Men ought always to pray and not to faint.’

Paul later wrote to the Thessalonian church that they should ‘pray without ceasing.’

I think the point is pretty clear. When we have things to pray about they ought to be a priority. We have so much going on sometimes that while we set out to pray with all the best intentions we can easily get distracted and move on to something else.

Praying is a serious matter. When people ask us to prayer it is far too easy to write down their request (or even worse depend on our memory to remind us), leave the room, and forget about it till the next time we hear the request.

I know my prayer life falls far short of this target of ceaseless prayer. I am grateful for the pattern of this early church prayer meeting. May I not just be blessed by their example, but begin to apply it to my life.