Summary
Prayer in the Advent Life
Advent is the season of the in-between. Its texts and themes hold believers in two waiting postures at once: looking back to the longing for Christ's first coming, and looking forward to His second. Most of life, in fact, is lived in such in-between times—anticipating fulfillment, waiting on God. A second marker on the road map for living the Advent life is therefore prayer, the speech of a people who are not yet home.
Martin Luther named three things that make a theologian: prayer, meditation on the Word, and trials. The connection is not accidental. Trials very often drive us to our knees, and that is good—but it can also distort how we view prayer, as though it were the last resort when nothing else has worked. Scripture turns this around. Paul writes, "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing" 1 Thessalonians 5:16-17. The same word translated "without ceasing" appears in Romans 1:9, where Paul remembers the saints in his prayers. It means repeatedly, often. Prayer is not the emergency call after the alarm sounds; it is of first importance.
The whole of Scripture echoes this call. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God" Philippians 4:6. "Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray" James 5:13. "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving" Colossians 4:2. And the Lord Jesus Himself models the life of prayer: He withdraws to desolate places to pray Luke 5:16, rises before dawn to pray Mark 1:35, and spends whole nights in prayer to God Luke 6:12.
Prayer is both joy and discipline—gift and work. Some treat any scheduled prayer as legalism and insist it must always be spontaneous. But spontaneous prayer is actually rooted in and served by set times of prayer. Daniel, when threatened with the lions' den, "got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously" Daniel 6:10. Set times formed his life, and out of them flowed the resilience of constant prayer. The pattern still holds: the more disciplined the rhythm of prayer, the more naturally prayer bubbles up across the day.
Our struggle with prayer is real. We were made for communion with God, yet sin and laziness leave the time for Him with the leftovers. But God does not give the silent treatment to His quiet children. Like the most loving of parents, He keeps coming through His Word, saying, "Talk to Me." He keeps coming with forgiveness purchased at the cross, claiming us in baptism, and freeing us as a forgiven people to speak to the Father.
Out of those set times then come the "bubble-up" prayers that punctuate ordinary life: a glance at creation that becomes thanksgiving; listening to a hurting friend that becomes intercession; a single word—help—in a moment of need; and, like a parent who turns to a child for no reason but love and says "I love you," the simple lifting of the heart to God. This is the rhythm of the Advent life in the in-between time: rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.
Video citations
- "Pray" 12-5-21 — Would you open your Bibles, please, with me, too? First Thessalonians, the fifth chapter for our study today. If you're using a Pew Bible, you're going to find first Thessalonians, chapter 5, page…