Making Prayer a Lifestyle

Greetings my people @blurt.

Let's start by quoting this scripture:

Be joyful always; pray continually;give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

Prayer plays a different role in people’s lives. For some, it is the mandatory preliminary requirement before, as my daughter likes to announce after every ‘Amen’, Let’s eat!'

For others prayer is the lifeline they cling to in trials or hardships but forget about on the sunny and pleasant days of their lives. Some prayers are formal, some are intimate and personal. Praying can be a group activity or a deeply personal moment. But is there a wrong way to pray?

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God gave Moses the instruction for the altar of incense, and He made a point to emphasize two things: The incense was to be burned both morning and night, every day, and no strange incense was to be burned. Before we discuss these two requirements, we must establish the meaning of the incense.

Revelation 5:8 tells us that the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders “… where holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” (Revelation 8:3-4 and Psalm 141:2 also mention the prayers as the incense rising before the Lord.) The altar of incense represented the prayers of the people rising up as a pleasing aroma before the Lord.

Prayers are to be a perpetual offering to God. As 1 Thessalonians 5:16 tells us, we are to pray without ceasing. This is symbolized in God’s instruction to have Aaron light incense both morning and night, each and every day. I once tried to spend an entire day continually praying. I was, I believed, fully committed to the task. However, it wasn’t very long before I felt like the admonition Jesus gave his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane was meant for me

Are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” – (Mark 14:37-38).

Thankfully, Paul did not mean that we needed to pray 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Actually, the Greek word is pantote which means at every and any time.

There is no set hour to our prayer life. God loves the aroma of our prayers. He wants to hear from us when we are happy and sad. He longs to hear our prayers of thanksgiving as well as our requests and cries for help and healing. Pray continually means to pray at every and any time: in the car, while you are walking, in your special praying chair, while you cook or clean, kneeling beside your bed at night or in the rush of your morning routines. God’s door is always open. The veil was torn so we could have access to our God. Let us take advantage of it at every and any time.

When we pray however, let us make sure we are not offering ‘strange’ incense to the Lord. We will soon see that God meant business when He warned Moses to tell them not to burn strange incense. Two of Aaron’s sons would lose their lives because they did not follow this rule. So what is ‘strange incense’? Is there a type of prayer that God does not accept? First of all, the word strange in Hebrew is zur. Interestingly enough, zur is a verb, an action. It means to be a stranger, a foreigner, an enemy, or to act the harlot. The emphasis is on the action not the identity of the person. All of these references have been used in scripture to describe a person who acts in rebellion and disobedience to God.

For instance, James 4:4 says,

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?

People who live in rebellion to God – either by embracing the world or rejecting God’s word, do not have their prayers heard by the Lord. Those prayers are ‘strange’. For example: 1 Peter 3:12 says,

For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.

Also, Isaiah 59:2 says,

But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.

We cannot go to the Lord with a filthy, unrepentant, and rebellious heart. Our words will not be heeded. Our help will not come. God does not accept strange prayers. Prayers that are in open rebellion to His will fall short. Selfish and greedy prayers are wasted breath. The prayerful ultimatum offered by the wicked man to prove God either exists or does not exist is ignored by our righteous God.

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As God’s people, we are called to live a prayerful life. The incense of our prayers should rise to heaven perpetually at every and any time. There are no specific words to draw the attention of the Lord. There is no special posture He demands we place our bodies in.

There is; however, a standard of holiness and sincerity that must accompany our lives. Draw close to the Lord and He will draw close to you. Flee His presence out of rebellion and wickedness and you must first reject those wicked ways and return to God. God will not honor the prayers of the wicked, but He rejoices in the prayers of the righteous.

Thanks for reading.