Those three words can feel like a flunking grade to a tender conscience. The vague fear that we are failing the Christian life has once again been confirmed. Others of us struggle to see this call as anything other than an impossible ideal, perhaps attainable for pastors, but not for mothers with four children or businessmen with sixty-hour workweeks.

       Still others hear the command to pray without ceasing as we might hear the command to jog without ceasing. We know prayer is good for us, and we genuinely want to pray more, but we still feel prayer as more of a burden than a blessing, more of a drain than a delight.

       None of these feelings, however, captures the essence of “pray without ceasing.” This command from God is not a guilt trip, a monkish dream, or a summons to drudgery. It is, rather, a call to become who you were made to be. It is a command to live up to your privileges in Jesus Christ. It is an invitation to enjoy your God, not just once in the morning, but all day long. And for those who are in Christ, no matter the stage of life, it is possible.

       Pray without ceasing,” of course, does not require us to spend every hour on our knees. The same apostle, in the same letter, commands all sorts of other duties that forbid literally constant prayer. The Thessalonians must “work with [their] hands,” “build one another up,” and “admonish the idle,” for example (1 Thessalonians 4:11; 5:11, 14) — all activities that send us out of our prayer closets and into the world