part 3 of “Talking to Jesus”
There are so many different ways you can pray. You can fold your hands. You can close your eyes. You can kneel. You can sit. You can stand. You can talk out loud. You can pray silently. You can pray inside or outside. You can pray at the beach. You can pray in an alley. You can pray driving down the road. You can pray walking down the sidewalk. So when we want to complicate prayer we start to look over all these different ways places and praying becomes complicated. When all God wants is for us to just talk to Him. Now there is nothing wrong with any of the ways or places to pray that I mentioned. But when we start to overthink all of them, like we are getting a grade on a test, it can make things hard on us to just pray to God.
So first let’s look at when we can pray. This is what the Bible says:
“Never stop praying.” - 1 Thessalonians 5:17 NLT
Pretty simple. The Bible tells us to pray all the time. Never stop.
I have a few friends that when they get up in the morning they pray and then when they are done they don’t say “amen”. Now I know that some of you are thinking “you’re supposed to say ‘amen’ when you are done praying.” This would be because we are trying to follow a traditional way of praying. There is nothing wrong with saying “amen” when you are done praying, but is it necessary? Maybe if you heard why my friends do not say “amen” when they are done you’ll see that it’s not bad at all. My friends have taken the words “never stop praying” to a different level. They don’t say “amen” at the end of their prayer because they want it to be one long prayer throughout the day. It’s just another way to look at praying. Does it matter if we pray a bunch of little prayers? No, of course not. Does it matter if we pray one long prayer over the day? No, of course not. God just wants us to pray!
In the gospels, we see Jesus praying the morning, afternoon, and night. Even late-night [1]. So Jesus prayed whenever. So we can follow that example and pray whenever too! We can pray to God day, night, afternoon, or late night! God is always there to listen and hear our prayers. We are never going to catch Him off guard or at a bad time. We aren’t going to get His voicemail. God hears us when we pray [2]. But where can we pray?
Well, the answer to that is simple too! Anywhere! You can pray to God anywhere. We see Jesus saying prayers to God in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26), after teaching (Luke 5:16), and from the cross [3] just to name a few. I am sure that Jesus prayed in other places as well.
Jesus shows us that we can pray to God anywhere. We can pray to God while we are driving. We can pray to God while on a walk. We can pray to God while sitting on a park bench. We can pray to God in bed before we go to sleep. We can pray to God in that special place where there are no distractions. It doesn’t matter where we pray to God because God just wants to have a conversation with us.
Paul wrote the words “never stop praying” to the church in Thessalonica to encourage them. But the good news is that those words are for us as well. The words of Paul transcend time and are for us just as much as they were for the people back then. We need to take Paul’s words and the example Jesus showed us during His life and “never stop praying!”
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[1]
“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” - Mark 1:35 NIV
“Immediately after this, Jesus insisted that his disciples get back into the boat and cross to the other side of the lake, while he sent the people home. After sending them home, he went up into the hills by himself to pray. Night fell while he was there alone.” - Matthew 14:22-23 NLT
“Then Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane, and he said, ‘Sit here while I go over there to pray.’”
Matthew 26:36 NLT
“One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night.” - Luke 6:12 NLT
[2] “‘Call to me and I will answer you. I’ll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.’” - Jeremiah 33:2-3 MSG
[3]
“Father forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34)
“My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt 27:46, Mark 15:34)
“Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46)
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