Un-Compartmentalizing Your Prayer Life
“Pray without ceasing.” Hyperbolic, much?
This exhortation in 1 Thessalonians 5, while convicting, seems far-fetched. It’s easy to dismiss it as a practically applicable habit. We have to do stuff - we have a job to do, we have to study, we have to talk to people, we can’t audibly ramble to God incessantly because people are going to think we’re crazy. And even when we’ve tried to pray all day, it never truly happens the way we think it should.
Many Christians have set times to pray every day — early in the morning, before meals, before bed, etc. — as a set part of the daily routine. This is a great way to start a faithful prayer life! Speaking from experience, this kind of habitual prayer can easily get repetitive and stale after a while. It can be a struggle to keep prayer genuine and holistic when it feels just as mundane as brushing your teeth. And most of us are too distracted or busy to remember to pray at random times, especially after we’ve grown comfortable with our routine. Our prayer life becomes compartmentalized, like how we function differently at work/school than at home.
Moving from a compartmentalized prayer routine, to a vibrant, ceaseless prayer life seems like an impossibly large jump. And, speaking from experience, trying to make that jump all at once is unsustainable. You start the morning thinking, “I’m going to pray all day!” and by the end of the day, you realize how many times you forgot or got distracted, and you return to square one discouraged.
So if we can’t sustainably become prayer warriors overnight, what do baby steps look like?
I think there are many options (and other, more mature believers probably have better methods) but I’d like to share a strategy I’ve used that has a terrible name: drive-by prayers.
Years ago, I was taught an acronym for personal prayer: ACTS. Admiration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. It’s a good way to foster well-rounded prayer, but I took it to mean I had to do all of those things every time I prayed. So it felt difficult to pray often, because I assumed every prayer had to be at least a few minutes long. Subconsciously, I told myself a few long prayers a day were better than many short ones.
In time, I found that it doesn’t have to be one or the other. I can have longer, more intentional times for prayer built into my daily routine, while sprinkling in short but profound and spontaneous prayers throughout the day.
In a really painful time of my life, I found that in most of my prayers, I confessed that I needed God. At the time, I was driving to everything — work, classes, social gatherings, etc — and getting out of the car was always the hardest part. Eventually, I started praying the same thing every time I opened the car door to get out: “I need you”. That’s it. My first drive-by prayer.
It was a simple, yet profound and honest confession, and it took so little mental energy. It was much easier to sustain than trying to wedge long-winded prayers into an already busy day. And once I started seeing how God provided whatever I needed for every situation I prayed for, I started saying “thank you” every time I got back into the car. Over time I piled on more tiny little prayers, some more routine, some more spontaneous. They have ebbed and flowed as my life has changed and as I’ve grown more comfortable with them, but when I feel like my prayer life starts falling flat, I return back to these simple prayers.
Drive-bys can be whatever short, pithy prayer seems most honest and growing for you, but here are some options to start with:
“I need you” - for building reliance on the Lord
“Thank you” - for fostering gratitude
“I see you” - for recognizing God’s hand at work
“You’re here” - for remembering God’s presence
“How will you use me?” - for discernment
“This is yours” - for surrendering control
“Forgive me” - for tackling sin in real time
I think these drive-bys work best when paired with a visual or physical indicator, such as opening a door, checking the time, or putting on your shoes. Even those can be quickly forgotten so adding the prayer written out helps sometimes - you can write it on your hand, add it as your lock screen, or put a sticky note on your laptop.
Whether you instill drive-by prayers or come up with your own small method, I believe we need to take our prayer life in baby steps. This kind of strategy is merely a launching point for a more consistent prayerful mindset, it is not a permanent fix. It’s a baby step, meant to break us out of a boxed-off prayer life. And I believe, as we are sanctified, that each baby step will carry us closer to a life of praying without ceasing.
Most of us have decades ahead of us to walk with the Lord and we will have countless things to pray for over that time. Let us be gracious with ourselves as we slowly challenge ourselves towards greater degrees of prayerfulness. Like babies learning how to speak, our Father will patiently coach us into better communication with Him.